Case Study #1:

After a terrible car accident in an upper Midwestern state that resulted in the deaths of two high school students and serious injuries to two other students, Aristotle played an impactful role that potentially saved a fifth student's life.

Using Aristotle’s™ feature to track use of words and phrases on computer systems, the high school Technology Coordinator tracked “kill myself” and “suicide” for a few weeks after the accident. Within a few days Aristotle™ alerted the Coordinator that two students had used these words and phrases. In one situation Aristotle identified the user account of a student using WordPerfect to update their personal journal with the message; “I really miss my friend Billy, I don’t know what I’m going to do, I miss him so much. I think I’ll be better off if I just kill myself.” 

The entry in the journal of the phrase “kill myself” triggered Aristotle’s™ policy created by the Technology Coordinator to automatically alert him on the use of that phrase. It identified who this student was by their personal school login and even identified the computer lab they were using. Immediate intervention was taken to get this student help. That help may have saved this young man’s life.

The other alert was the use of the word “suicide” by a young girl on a school library computer. It turned out that her Health Class was studying Teen Suicide and she was in the process of doing research for the class assignment. She was using the Internet to find more information and statistics, her Google Search included the word suicide. No further action was necessary.