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UC Chancellor commits suicide

A sad piece of news.
Denice Denton, UC Santa Cruz Chancellor, committed suicide yesterday by jumping from an apartment window in San Francisco. She had been despondent about her job and personal issues, according to her mother Carolyn Mabee. Rumors are now running rampant about her relationship with her partner and about university financing. Who knows if we will ever hear her true story. I remember her for her stand against Harvard President Lawrence Summers after he declared that women were genetically inferior to men when it came to scientific pursuits.
in the blue sky of summer 25.Jun.2006 12:51

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Very sad. I know it sounds trite, but especially in summer. It's so beautiful. How could such a person have no other option? The occurrence frightens me.

in santa cruz everything's supposed to be perfect 25.Jun.2006 22:20

and that can make it worse when of course it's not

The incidence of serious depression in Santa Cruz seems, at least in my anecdotal memory, quite startling. Maybe being in a superficially perfect Northern California small town might tend to magnify one's own problems, and any other immediate irritants, by comparison. In a big city the craziest weirdness just blends in with the ambient noise. In Surf City somehow you feel the craziness and weirdness must be either aestheticized in some acceptable way or else destroyed, and if you fail then you're the problem yourself.