Dylan Buginas ‘16 died of an alleged suicide, suggested by his last post on his Facebook page, on April 7.

“He was enthusiastic, fun and had a positive attitude,” Buginas’s LTTV teacher Bill Allan said. “I want to remember Dylan for all of the good things that he brought to the world and I hope other people do too. He was a good kid, he had a good heart and I will miss him tremendously.”

Buginas posted a video on YouTube on Feb. 22, 2014, titled “My Life and my self-harm story.” In this video, he explained his family situation, and said that he had severe depression since the third grade and has had non-fatal attempts at suicide.

“In junior high I was abandoned by everybody, treated as though I was an outcast for no reason,” Buginas said in the video. “That was when I got into drugs and self-harm and depression.”

Buginas talked about the problems he was having in the April Facebook post, and also apologized for things he had done. People commented on the status, hoping to stop Buginas.

“I’ve known him for a long time, and knowing that something this tragic and heart breaking happened to a good person is horrible,” friend Destiny Hurd ‘15 said. “I want people to know him as more than just another statistic, but a guy who would put others before himself.”

Buginas was involved in LTTV once he started the TV Production class this semester. He did more truck shoots than the class required, he worked more crew shifts during Rock-a-thon and he worked really hard on his first film project, Allan said.

When a tragedy occurs, LT has a crisis response team, consisting of around 30 people, including the principal, assistant and associate principals, guidance counselors, social workers and psychologists, that meets as soon as they can to come up with a plan of action based on research that asks all of the necessary questions to address the problem, and then has follow up meetings to see how the situation has been dealt with.

“With this situation, we wanted to make sure we reached out to as many individual students as we could to make sure that they were safe and help them through the process,” Principal Dr. Brian Waterman said.

The crisis team determines which students have been impacted by it, and in the case of a student death, they find which students were friends with the student. A counselor also follows the student’s schedule to explain the situation to the classes, and lets students know that if they need to come down to the counseling office, they can.

“Every life is valuable, and that’s one of the things that I tried to say in the classroom when I visited,” social worker Mary Palacios said. “This was a valuable life, please respect it. This is a loss in our family, in our LT community, and it should be respected as such.”

There are many ways for students who are struggling to get help. Guidance counselors and social workers are available, and they can get a student further help if needed. There are also links on www.lths.net regarding topics such as eating disorders, suicide and depression.

Anyone who has a concern that does not need immediate action can also call the Speak-up Line.

“What I’m hearing from students is that the perception is that it’s kind of a joke,” Waterman said. “Unfortunately there are some kids that view it as a joke. There are a lot of cases, though, where students have provided really good information about students that needed help, and we were able to get those students help. That’s the reality of the Speak-up Line.”