GWU Suit Prompts Questions Of Liability

Until the 1960s and '70s, colleges were expected to take care of students almost as parents would. Then students demanded to be treated as adults. Now Broe sees another shift, with more talk of sharing responsibility.

And there's more nervousness, Pavela said. "College administrators are talking about it and looking for guidance. . . . Some have decided that the safest thing to do is to get rid of these kids, if someone talks about suicide, or looks depressed."

More schools are adding involuntary-leave policies. Some ask students to sign consent forms so their confidential medical and psychological records can be shared. Schools can legally alert parents and others if there is a threat to health or safety -- and now, some say, they are far more likely to do that. And some are expanding training for professors, dormitory staff and others, giving them warning signs to watch for or designing crisis intervention plans with mandatory counseling.

"To have knowledge and fail to act is just an invitation to liability," said Sheldon Steinbach of the American Council on Education. The decision has to be balanced against whether a student would get the best support on campus, he said, but keeping a troubled student in a dorm means taking a tremendous risk.

There's a risk in mandatory-leave policies, too, Pavela said. Federal law allows schools to remove students who are a threat -- but they need to go through a slew of steps to ensure that it's the best option and that the student has had a chance to respond.

Most students wouldn't confide in a counselor, he added, if they knew it could get to a dean.

GWU was Nott's dream school, he said recently. He'd always wanted to study foreign relations in Washington, he said, so after starting classes, making friends his freshman year and getting straight A's, he was the happiest he'd ever been.

But it was a tough year for GWU, with several sudden student deaths. One evening in April, near the end of the semester, a freshman jumped from the fifth floor of a dorm.

He was one of Nott's closest friends; they had planned to room together sophomore year.

When he jumped, the complaint says, Nott and two others were trying to open his locked door to help.

In fall 2004, when Nott came back to school, he started feeling depressed, he said. He kept thinking about how his friend had died.

In September, another student committed suicide.