A coroner has strongly criticised the University of Exeter over the suicide of a student, claiming it failed to respond effectively to his “cry for help” after a disastrous set of exam results that followed months of isolation in near empty halls of residence during the pandemic.
Guy Davies, the assistant coroner for Cornwall, concluded that Harry Armstrong Evans’s death was due to a “mental health crisis” preceded by a “catalogue of missed opportunities coupled with systems failings” leaving him without the “safety net” the Russell Group university should have provided.
Less than a month before he was found dead, Armstrong Evans, 21, told his tutor in an email that isolation during Covid had affected his mental health and his performance in his third-year physics and astrophysics exams.
