basera.id- On 15 October 2025, sociology student Timothy Anugrah Saputra at Universitas Udayana (Unud) in Denpasar, Bali died after falling from the fourth floor of the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences (FISIP) building. According to investigators, at about 08:30 local time the victim arrived at the fourth-floor terrace carrying a backpack, appeared agitated and looking around, and shortly thereafter is believed to have jumped. He was rushed to the emergency department at RSUP Prof. Dr. IGN Ngoerah where he arrived conscious but later succumbed to severe injuries. The hospital confirmed his death. The university’s internal timeline originally reported a fall from the second floor, but police clarified evidence pointing to the fourth floor. His father subsequently filed a report to the Denpasar police to seek clarity on whether this was suicide, accident or foul play.

In the aftermath of Timothy’s death, screenshots of social media chats involving Unud students surfaced, showing mocking and de-humanising messages about his death. One message read, “So lame to commit suicide from the second floor, huh?” followed by another comment “Seriously” Other comments discussed the costs of repatriating his body from his hometown in Bandung, West Java: “Cargo is expensive now, the coffin already costs millions, not to mention the plane cargo thirty-million lost.” The university acknowledged the chat originated from students of Unud but claimed the conversation occurred after his death and insisted it was not a direct cause of the incident. The student political-society unit (Himapol FISIP) issued an apology and pledged disciplinary measures, including dismissal without honour for those involved.

This tragic case has ignited wider concerns about a profound empathy deficit in Indonesian higher-education institutions. The callousness of the comments equating a human life to a financial burden and a platform for jokes suggests a culture where students feel free to laugh at suffering rather than respond with compassion. Such behaviour is symptomatic of an environment in which emotional awareness, peer support, and mental-health sensitivity are severely lacking. Furthermore, the fact that these messages emerged in a campus setting raises alarm about how institutional culture has failed students: rather than fostering care, the environment appears to tolerate cruelty, dismissal of distress and peer isolation.

Beyond individual failings, the educational environment at Unud and by extension in many Indonesian universities appears to be structurally deficient. The absence of timely intervention, inadequate oversight over student welfare, and delayed acknowledgement of responsibility by the university all point to systemic weaknesses. If institutions cannot ensure safe, respectful and empathetic spaces for learning and social interaction, they risk becoming breeding grounds for de-humanisation and silent suffering. In this light, Timothy’s death – and the reaction it provoked – serves as stark evidence of a crisis of empathy and institutional neglect in Indonesia’s educational sector.