The notification emails that are sent after the death of a student began arriving soon after the semester started in September.
“Our condolences,” they each begin, followed by the student’s name and a hauntingly vague explanation. “It is with great sadness that we share news of the sudden passing.”
At Rowan University, a state school in southwest New Jersey, there have been at least three suicides in just over two months, a sober statistic officials acknowledge is the most ever in a single semester.
The trauma on campus escalated on Thursday, after a male student was critically injured in a fall from a parking garage, less than a week after another student jumped to his death from another nearby garage. The authorities were investigating the circumstances of the fall.
The 15,500-student campus in Glassboro has erupted in a groundswell of anger and frustration at a crisis that is growing agonizingly common on college campuses across the United States.
“Everything has been building up, but this incident was the final straw,” Alyssa Steinberg, 21, a junior studying elementary education, said in an interview, referring to the student who fell.
About two dozen students and faculty members gathered Thursday afternoon outside Rowan’s Wellness Center, to discuss access to mental health services, as others organized a candlelight vigil “honoring those lost to suicide.” Many took to Twitter to criticize the school’s therapy offerings.
The head of the wellness center, Scott Woodside, held an impromptu forum Thursday night, where he urged unity. “There’s been a lot of loss,” he said during a meeting that was live-streamed by the student government on Instagram.
The owner of the two private parking garages is installing temporary fencing on the top levels of the garages and will operate 24-hour patrols until permanent barriers are erected, Joe Cardona, the vice president of university relations, said on Friday.
“It’s horrific,” Mr. Cardona said. “To have three in a semester, when there’s still three weeks left, that is extremely unusual.”
Across the country, suicide has been on the rise. In October, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that suicide had become the second leading cause of death for people age 10 to 24.
Universities nationwide have been facing a growing epidemic of mental health crises as well, with schools reporting a rising demand for counseling and psychological services.
In one study, researchers at Harvard Medical School found that one in five college students reported having thoughts of suicide in the course of one year.
At the University of Southern California, at least three students died in apparent suicides this semester.
Not far from Rowan University, the University of Pennsylvania has also grappled with its own spate of recent suicides. Since 2013, 14 students have died by suicide. In the fall, the school’s head of counseling and psychological services also took his own life, rattling a campus that had made a concerted effort to improve access to mental health resources.
Mr. Cardona said that Rowan had taken various steps to alleviate what in past years were long student waiting lists to see a counselor. Three new therapists are joining the staff of 15 in the coming months, a ratio he said exceeds the recommended ratio of one therapist for every 1,000 students.
This fall, the university opened a full-time pet therapy center in the Wellness Center after a $3 million gift from a donor, Gerald B. Shreiber, of J & J Snack Foods.
“We want one-on-one therapy, and we also don’t want to be put on a wait-list,” said Justin Tobolsky, 19, a sophomore from Cherry Hill, N.J.
If you are having thoughts of suicide, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 (TALK). You can find a list of additional resources at SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources.
Michael Gold contributed reporting.
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