Tijuana Madness

The commencement of the school year typically generates all types of education-related news and anecdotes. This year they sadly range from the tragic to the bizarre. NYU was shocked by the suicide of 23-year-old grad student Joanne M. Leavy, the second Tisch School of the Arts student to die within a week and the seventh death of an NYU student in a year.

Fortunately, however, a local recent case involving a missing UCLA undergrad has had a relatively happy and highly unpredictable ending.

Ahmad Yaseen Arain mysteriously disappeared in July, and turned up this week, of all places, in Tijuana. Reports explain that a “mental breakdown,” including amnesia symptoms, catalyzed the 20-year-old honor student’s disappearance.

This was not the outcome predicted by his mother, who in August claimed that "deep down in my heart, I believe that he's alive somewhere [and] held against his will." The Los Angeles Times notes that Arain allegedly spent “six weeks disoriented and penniless” and was eventually taken in by a local family—hardly the typical college-student-lost-in-TJ tale.