OP, I'm somewhat familiar with university policies surrounding threat assessment, especially in relation to suicide and NSSI, as I work with college students and research those topics. Recent OCR rulings have generally held that colleges and universities can not count suicidality/suicide attempts/NSSI as code of conduct violations *unless* the college has taken extensive and well-documented steps to mitigate the behavior (e.g., multiple behavioral contracts). This came on the heels of several DOJ court cases where schools did treat suicidality/suicide attempts as code of conduct violations and were found in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Here's a really good white paper on the topic, though I don't care for the tone in places:
http://nabita.org/documents/2012NCHERMWHITEPAPERTHEDIRECTTHREATSTANDARDFINAL_001.pdf
In general, provided there weren't mitigating circumstances like multiple behavioral interventions with explicit consequence chains, it sounds like your university could be looking at an OCR violation. Of course, OCR complaints can take a while to process. so may not be of immediate help, and there's no 100% guarantee that your name won't end up attached to it via Google. Still, it bothers me a whole lot to here that some universities may still be treating suicide/suicidality as conduct code violations. Civil rights perspective aside, that places a horrible stigma on people experiencing suicidality (and there's enough of one already!) and probably decreases help-seeking and thus decreases student safety, rather than increasing it.
Please feel free to PM me if you have any questions!
Edit: As to
@oathkeeper 's question of why the school was notified, from the OP's post, it sounds like the *campus* police were involved. Post-Virginia Tech, most colleges/universities developed threat assessment/behavioral intervention teams that have the goal of increasing communication and transparency across university agencies (counseling services, security, disability services, legal, etc) in order to better address students who are risk of harm to self or others. One side effect of this is that intra-campus confidentiality is greatly decreased when it comes to any situations involving harm to self or others or ideation thereof, especially if this ideation or behavior is comes to light outside of a counseling context (as in the OP's case). As I understand it, this is largely due to the difference between HIPAA (counseling and health services) and FERPA (most anything else at a university) protections, though counseling center staff definitely can and do report students to these teams, especially if there was a hospitalization, imminent threat of harm to self or others, or indication of intent to harm others. Done well, these teams have the potential to improve safety, coordinate care and follow-up, and connect students to resources, but they also have the potential to walk all over vulnerable students' privacy, because there are a good number of people on these teams.
I'm personally of the (minority) opinion that suicide/self-harm should be handled separately from threat of harm to others, because this blurring of the lines sometimes does lead to suicidal students or those who engage in NSSI but have no homicidal ideation or inclinations being treated like they do. Like the OP's situation demonstrates, this can lead universities down the path of treating suicidal and self-injurious behavior like conduct code violations. It's rare, but I do know of a couple of universities that explicitly state that their threat assessment teams do NOT treat self-harm and suicidal ideation, absent threat to others, as conduct issues in any way and that the goal of the team in these cases is to link the student up with efficient, appropriate care and resources.
