At the request of those involved, the names of people and places in this article have been altered.

The snow was finally melting, and the sun was radiating an intense spring light on March 27, 1995. It was the last class period of the day, AP American History, and as a second-semester junior, the most important thing on my mind was the college visits I was beginning to take. Midway through the period, a girl ran by the hall outside with her hands covering her eyes, crying hysterically. My teacher, Mr. Johnson, closed the door and continued the lecture. I assumed the girl had probably broken up with her boyfriend. Yet, throughout the rest of the period, muffled crying became more and more noticeable from behind the door. Three minutes before the bell rang, Mr. Johnson announced, "There's something I have to read to you." He unfolded a piece of paper on his desk, sat down and read, "There has been a fatal incident on the Metro-North train tracks in Oakdale involving a ninth grade student of Oakdale High School, John Smith. We have no more information at this time. Counselors will be available through the rest of the day at the school, which will remain open until midnight." Mr. Johnson put down the paper and stared blankly ahead. One student laid his head down on the desk. Another, who had been leaning back in his chair, slowly tipped back up to a vertical position. We sat there for a minute or so, the silence permeated only by whispers of "Oh my God" and "I can't believe this." Mr. Johnson finally broke the silence by saying, "I'm sorry I didn't tell you at the beginning of the period, but I just didn't think I could deal with forty-five minutes of this." We stumbled out of the room and into the hallway. Usually, at the end of the day, the hall was filled with students laughing, smiling, and making plans for the rest of the day. All I can remember from the day of John's death was a strange mixture of deathly silence and unconstrained hysteria.

The rest of the day, in my memory, is a series of blurred images: walking to the house of a friend of mine who knew John well; the terrible fight that developed between two of my friends who each did not like how the other was handling the situation; calling my parents. The next night, there was a candlelight vigil at the train tracks. Five days later, there was a funeral. Less than two years later, I was a freshmen at Amherst, in my room in Valentine, when I got a call from my mother. It had happened again. This time, a senior, Jane, had chosen to jump off the George Washington Bridge.

Oakdale is a very small and very close-knit community. My graduating class had fewer than 80 people. The town barely covers two square miles in area. Everyone knows everyone else, and these suicides had a profound effect on nearly every group connected to the school system. The aftermath of both suicides was handled by a "Crisis Team" of administrators, community members and counselors. The final draft of the "Crisis Team" plan, put together four years before it actually came into use, states that the Team's goal is to "attempt to restore order while also allowing for both staff and students to express and cope with feelings of grief. É In the event of a suicide, our actions must neither ignore nor glorify the event." However, the task was far more difficult than the statement implies. In this kind of situation, the magnitude of people's needs was immense. Often, the needs of different groups conflicted, and the consequences of actions were enormous. Students who knew the deceased well desperately needed time to work out their thoughts and feelings. Students who were not as close to the deceased needed their lives to go on. Teachers and administrators were forced to ask themselves, especially after the second suicide, whether there was something fundamentally wrong with Oakdale. The families of the deceased had rights to privacy that needed to be respected. The press had to be dealt with. And finally, everyone was concerned about the dangers of a copy-cat suicide.

Once it had been established that adeath had occurred, it was important in both cases that everyone in the school be given the same facts, no more, no less. There had to be enough facts to accurately describe the incident, but not so many that the family's right to privacy was violated. Why did the message that was read to my history class not mention the word "suicide?" Because there was no way to determine for sure, at that point, that it was not an accident. Why was there never any mention of drug use in the initial announcements about Jane's death, though it soon became clear that drugs were involved? That information was not considered to be essential. It was seen as the family's right to reveal it or to keep it secret. To disseminate the information, in both cases, teachers were given a specific paragraph to read and a specific time to read it. In John's case, that happened at the end of the day. In Jane's, the announcements were made in homeroom.

Depending on how well they knew the deceased, students dealt with a wide range of emotions that first school day following the announcement. As a result, teachers were instructed to ask the class whether they wanted to sit in silence, to talk about the tragedy, or to continue with their classwork. Students who could not stay in the classroom were brought to a number of crisis rooms set up for that purpose. These rooms were kept open for at least three days after the tragedies. There were also teachers who had tremendous trouble dealing with the death. At the beginning and end of each day, staff meetings were held to allow time for faculty members to vent their feelings and support each other.

A suicide in a high school is always accompanied by fears about copy-cats - borderline kids who see how much attention is paid to the deceased, and thus choose to kill themselves. As a result, there were no official memorial services in the school for either suicide. There were only announcements about memorial services outside of school. But Oakdale went one step further. Immediately after the suicides, the Crisis Team put together lists of students considered "at-risk" for suicide and brought the students in to talk to counselors. The lists were composed of students who supposedly had a history of depression or who knew the deceased well. Some of the students who were identified were offended by the Crisis Team's invasion of their privacy and by the assumptions it made. In talking to the people who made those decisions, however, it seems clear that they were prepared for the criticism that their actions might generate. But they did not really care. The Crisis Team made a choice to put the value of a potential life lost above other students' concerns.

The parents of students in Oakdale were also affected by the suicides. Many were concerned about whether or not something similar could happen to their children. At a parents' meeting held a few days after the second suicide, these feelings surfaced. As the Crisis Team tried to assure the community that Jane's action was not a possibility for every child, her father stood up at the meeting and said the opposite. By declaring that drugs alone made Jane kill herself and then noting the terrible drug problem in Oakdale, he seemed to be saying, "It could happen to anyone." The Crisis Team was then in the awkward position of having to assure the community that indeed, it could not happen to everyone, while respecting Jane's father's right to speak about his daughter.

Normally, there is an understanding among the press that suicides, especially those involving young people, are not to be covered in depth. Too much attention paid to a suicide seems to encourage more and more people to see it as a viable alternative. However, both of Oakdale's suicides involved very public actions. John killed himself on the tracks of one of America's busiest commuter railroads; Jane, on one of the most heavily used bridges in the metropolitan area. The press paid attention. The news of Jane's death was broadcast on radio stations that reached me, 160 miles away in Amherst. The high school psychologist, a member of the Crisis Team, remembers the press' actions as "disgusting É they were like vultures." He recalls that after the first suicide, some students, fascinated by the presence of the press, gave interviews to the local news. By the time the second suicide occurred, students were throwing sticks at the television vans lined up around the school.

It has been nine months since Jane's suicide and almost three years since John's. Still, somehow, John's is the more real, more powerful one to me. I guess it is because I was not in Oakdale for Jane's. Immediately after getting the news of her suicide, I called my friend to relay the news. After the initial shock, I distinctly remember pausing and slowly getting out the words that expressed what both of us were feeling. I told her, "I'm so glad I'm not back in Oakdale right now. It must be terrible there."