Reported today that the headmaster of King's College,

Bradley Fenner, is considering phasing out the school ball following the death of David Raynor. He is reported to be considering speaking to other college headmasters about the same issues of student safety. I can't help but being reminded how poorly we are all equipped to deal with suicide, the way it works silently among us, among youth in particularly often without visible outward signs and the shock it brings to bear in it's aftermath.
However, the answer for Kings most likely lies within the school and the current pupil crop. That is an answer good enough that can be arrived at for a very complex situation. The school could conduct a confidential audit of sorts, among the peer groups of those who have used alcohol to excess, and friends of the deceased. Simply banning the ball is shifting the whereabouts or catalyst for potential problems like this into the future. I think the pupils and their parents deserve to know as much as possible about what, if anything has linked the recent deaths and look for common denominators that will allow strategies to put in place to overcome the deeper problems of alcohol and drug abuse. Parents and staff might not necessarily like the answers but they will be armed with an understanding and strategies to help the pupils cope through what is proven to be a difficult time for all teenagers.
Those conducting the audit would be probably ex pupils or those of an age the pupils would be able to identify with and share what isn't being seen now. There is a picture adrift from those presenting neatly in uniform, high achieving but with elements of disarray that appear to be contributing, or potentially contributing to binge drinking or drug taking without control for at least a number of pupils. Wouldn't the interest of other pupils, parents and the school be better served of a composite profile of all those who past through the school gates, something able to map changes as the pupils become older. An informal study of what they perceive as socialising, what underlying pressures might be brought to bear by sub-cultures within the school culture. Could knowing more about the pupils, behind the facade, be in anyway detrimental?
Isn't every parent, right across society, concerned about their child's teenage years and how they should be navigated without harm? Does Kings have anything to lose? I wouldn't say so, but everything to gain. Even the argument between parent and school responsibility is already crossed on this one. Who is the real Kings pupil and what are their characteristics, what changes does Kings bring about in them or they in one another.
On the question of what is to lose, I'd suggest nothing. Kings, through Fenner and others, has acknowledged problems within the school and that is a significant step. He has also rightly pointed out that the problems are not universal to all King's pupils and are probably shared with pupils from other schools - there is no denying that. But it appears that the shock that follows such things, or a number of such things can be immobilising, and not formerly something which might have been prepared for, or indeed even envisaged - a situation that doesn't necessarily bring blame but which however cries out for a remedy.
To many minds Kings are getting beaten up, but probably to a greater number an anticipation of what Kings might do. Shutting down the ball (whilst probably a good general idea) doesn't measure against the known phenomenon - that geographical change (or in this case another less public event) doesn't correct the drivers of problems that manifest themselves into disaster.
Two points are already defined, alcohol abuse, and suicide, the later perhaps being suicide from a particular bridge or in a particular way, and surely no adult could be as naive to expect that there is not a subtext of covert dialogue underway among King's pupils over these issues, nor that the dialogue is divorced from a probably largely hidden sub-culture among the same pupils.

Suicide gives no answer.

On a day it is revealed that 13 teenagers suicided in our North Island community of Kawerau in the last year, we also learn that David Gaynor has died after an 'accident' after an after ball in Auckland.

The following morning after Jordan Elliot of Kawerau hung himself his mother Michelle, finding him dead, screamed at his corpse the question 'why have you done this to yourself?' Of course he couldn't answer, his life was cut short in a way his mother might never understand of how her boy had gone, raw and mean for those left to wonder.

Meanwhile David is dead. Read from the news that King's College is 'reeling' after booze accusations against the school and students. But whether the booze accusations and David's death are linked is not established except for good newsprint copy while a hungry press seemingly delight in the 'fact' one of the Country's most prestigious schools has to deal with the death of a 4th pupil in 2 years for which, the blame, can be placed in accusatory headlines while a family and school friends are left dazed.

Michelle Elliot spoke about her loss and the agony of not understanding why her son had left so suddenly to death. About David, and what happened to him, we don't know except that he too is also dead, and forget for the moment that it is not news at all that a boy is lost until his family, like Michelle Elliot, has decided to do, speaks out. But David's name of course is attached to an illustrious school while the school to which Jordan attended escapes attention.

Suicide gives no answer, nor does traversing 'facts' that can never be connected but it is recognised that NZers kill themselves in great numbers and a vulnerable group are teenagers, and that alcohol or grief, or both, feelings of inadequacy, of missing friends whom one might be somehow connected with again in death, of the responsibilities of preparing to take the helm in one's own life where formerly a mother and father led with safe hands might be avoided and then they are gone.

So Michelle Elliot, tattoo showing on one breast, living in a town that the locals recognise as struggling, and the family of David wanting prosperity and happiness for their son are visited by the same horror question for which there is no answer. Why? The question for all of us to recognise those kids are just that, even when they seem suddenly arrived from another place and to walk with them so that they might always know that love is an answer, the only one when gambling chips are considered being put down.