By: James Renner

When she felt like cutting herself again, she had a code she used to tell her friend she needed help. She would write “OIC” on her friend’s dry-erase board in the dorm. To passersby, it looked like some acronym. Only she and her friend knew that it was a subtle restructuring of the letters, “D”, “I”, “E”.

“It meant, you need to come find me,” says Alicia McCoy, today, recalling her life at Gilmour Academy, the preferred private high school of the sons and daughters of Cleveland’s most prominent lawyers, politicians, and construction companies, located in Gates Mills on the East Side. “She was a cutter, too. So we made a point every night to do something to take our minds off the cutting. Something physical. We’d wrestle each other. Beat on each other. Some nights, we’d go outside and lay in the snow in just a pair of shorts and a T-shirt so we could feel that pain.”

Portrait of an American teenager.

Alicia’s story, told to the Independent as she prepared to begin a new life outside of Ohio and away from therapists for the first time since her experiences at Gilmour, is symptomatic of a larger trend seen across the state, as students face mounting pressures from an education system that values standardized tests and college placement more than the psychological well-being of the young adults it creates. We push. We coddle. But, it seems we’re still dangerously unprepared to deal with kids like Alicia, when the stress of school finally overwhelms.

It was the stress of the never-ending homework. The stress of the endless conditioning for sports. The stress of bi-sexuality in a Catholic school that got to her.

“I would get so overwhelmed with what I had to do,” explains Alicia. “Cutting would bring myself back. I had a wound to focus on. I had pain to focus on instead of class work.”

She was a cutter before Gilmour, of course, though the private school’s rigorous academic standards and the fact that her tuition and room and board were contingent on good grades and behavior, since her family was not rich, greatly increased her level of stress—yearly tuition with room and board runs $35,000.

In fact, Alicia began inflicting pain on herself in order to focus better when she was seven. Back then, she inserted needles into her skin and wore them throughout the day. Her instrument of choice at Gilmour was a safety pin. No one questions a kid with a safety pin. She used it to dig a hole into her arm, its dullness only increasing the pain, so much the better to quiet the stress.

Cutting is a compulsion, a method of control, akin to anorexia. And though it can lead to severe health problems, it is not, necessarily, a sign of suicidal tendency.

“It’s just a habit,” says Alicia. “Not that I’m downplaying it.”

When she recognized another cutter in her class, though, she quickly realized her friend’s condition was quite serious. She first noticed the cross carved into the other girl’s ankle and learned from her that she, too, cut as a means to control her stress. But, she says, this girl also carried a shoestring with her and talked of hanging herself in the girls’ dormitory bathroom.

“I even used a picture of her cross in a religion project,” says Alicia. “No one questioned it.”

Alicia thought she’d never make it to graduation. As it turned out, Alicia was the one who left early.

It’s difficult to express your individuality in a private school, where students must adhere to a strict uniform code. Harder, still, when you live in the dorm and every moment of your day feels scrutinized.

Alicia tried. Students could wear black dress clothes, usually matched with blue or white tops. Alicia wore all-black and a lot of jewelry. It was as close to goth as she could get, without violating the code. “My teacher called me Satan.”

Her boyfriend helped her relieve some stress, though hook-ups were hard to come by on campus. Eventually, though, they found the few private spaces reserved for quicky teen sex at Gilmour: the back office, behind the work out room; the stairwell; the basement of Tutor House, next to the boiler; the space beside the pool room.

It was easier to fool around with other girls in the dorm.

“I hooked up with one girl on the hockey team, in the bedroom, when my roommate was gone,” says Alicia. “There were brick walls, but you could still hear what was going on in the next room. A lot of us were doing this.”

Halfway through her sophomore year, Alicia had a panic attack, the kind that usually leads to self-mutilation. All she wanted was to go for a walk outside, she says. But the woman in charge of her dorm wouldn’t let her. The woman called her mother and claimed Alicia was “suicidal”.

They took her to a psychiatric hospital. And Alicia was not allowed back in the dorms. For her, that meant she could no longer go to Gilmour, since her family lived so far away and could not afford to truck her back and forth everyday. She wonders if they meant to get rid of her. She couldn’t help noticing that others who had exhibited mental health issues also left, never to return; the girl with anorexia, the teacher who once confided to her that he, too, had psychological problems.

“I think Gilmour is wonderful,” she says. “They give awesome opportunities for these genius kids who would fail in public school. But I also think it’s important for these schools to be aware of the psychological problems their students may be facing due to the pressure we’re under.”

Gilmour currently offers counseling and religious guidance to students, a step further than some similar institutions. Alicia only wishes her problems hadn’t resulted in the end of her relationship with the school.

It’s not even a private-school issue, really—visit any public school on Ohio, and the cutters, the anorexics, the hair-eaters are there, too, silently struggling. We need to recognize this as a symptom of our broken education system, one that needs to be taken more seriously than performance scores and championships. We might be creating smarter students, but we’re breaking their spirit in the process.

If you or someone you know needs help, please contact the Cleveland Psychological Association.