Monday, September 12, 2011

Durkheim's Theory on Suicide


Today in chapel, we had a speaker speak to us about suicides on the Baylor campus. Two people have committed suicide every year since 2008, I believe. The speaker spoke of reasons why people commit suicide. On his Power Point presentation, he mentioned three of Durkheim's four types of suicide: hopelessness (fatalistic suicide), depression (egoistic suicide), bad grades (anomic suicide).

Conformity

During our last football game against TCU, I was standing in the Baylor Line section of the stadium. At the beginning of the game, sic em's were done only before kicks, but as some people in the Baylor Line began doing sic em's every time TCU had possession, more and more students began doing the sic em's too. Eventually, the sic em's were happening all the time, even when Baylor had possession. As freshman students tried not to look awkward, they did what everyone else was doing, a sic em. Later on towards the last 2 minutes of the game, the older clansmen behind the freshmans got angry and confronted the freshmans about not doing sic em's during Baylor's possession that they should instead be quiet. This shows how conformity can shape an audience's mentality especially during a football game.