Parents, teachers, and kids at Henry M. Gunn High School, attended by three of the victims, are doing everything they can to lessen this risk. Students have created a peer support group, t-shirts that say, "Talk to Me," and a no-suicide pact. Teachers are giving out their home phone numbers, and parents are following advice to ask their kids directly if they would ever consider suicide.
[...] Usually when a private citizen commits suicide, family and friends grieve, but the wider world hears about the tragedy through a small notice in the paper, if at all. But just as trains bring together people whose lives wouldn't ordinarily intersect, a suicide on the tracks has a collective impact: it's an oddly civic death, one that becomes an entire community's to analyze and mourn.
Because of this, the Palo Alto train suicides seem uniquely suited to a communal response. Gunn High School's programs are a start.