*************SENSITIVE CONTENT WARNING******************* This episode discusses a recent suicide. Please listen carefully, or if this is particularly triggering for you, forgo listening completely. ”If we could save one student, one kid, one life, we are spreading his shine,” Neeru Duggal. On July 23, 2025, Vaibhav Duggal turned 24. He spent the morning of his birthday in a women's health clinic in El Paso, on his OB/GYN rotation as a third-year medical student at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center. Six days later he was dead. In this episode, I sit down with Vaibhav's parents, Vivek and Neeru Duggal, who are passionate about spreading the truth about what happened to Vaibhav with hopes to prevent this from happening to anyone else. We talk about who Vaibhav was, why he became a physician, his dreams for the future, and the events that ultimately crushed those dreams. We also reconstruct those six days, hour by hour, email by email. Vivek and Neeru hope to turn this needless tragedy into a campaign for reform. The burning question: when a university opens a disciplinary process against a student, what does it owe that student while the process is underway? As Vivek puts it: nothing can bring their son back, but if another family is spared this, they will be able to look themselves in the mirror. Neeru and Vivek describe a son who had wanted one thing since childhood: to be a doctor. By every measure available before that week, he was on his way. He graduated summa cum laude from Texas A&M with a 4.0 in biology, finished a semester early, volunteered at a medical center through COVID, and came to Texas Tech El Paso on a scholarship. He had no prior professionalism concerns anywhere on his record. The clinical encounter at the center of this story lasted a few minutes. The nurse practitioner conducting the exam and asked whether the patient was comfortable having a student present; the patient consented. On her way out, according to Vaibhav's account, the patient invited him to follow her on Instagram. At 10:34 a.m. he did. About an hour later he unfollowed and blocked her, telling the dean days afterward that he'd realized it crossed a professional line. That afternoon, the patient filed a complaint. The same day, the nurse practitioner who had been in the room the entire time completed Vaibhav's clerkship evaluation. She marked him as exceeding expectations in every single domain, including medical knowledge, patient care, communication, professionalism, all of it. Under "opportunities for improvement," she wrote nothing. Two days later, a faculty physician emailed the clinic director and the dean describing the incident as an egregious breach of professionalism. The clerkship director wrote that she believed Vaibhav should be pulled from clinical duties. On July 28, at 10:26 a.m., she submitted a formal referral to the Grading and Promotions Committee, and in that same referral, wrote that she had not yet had the opportunity to speak with the student because of clinical obligations. Vaibhav was, at that hour, sitting for his OB/GYN shelf exam, which he passed. That afternoon he met with the dean. He gave his account and was told he was removed from all patient contact, placed on a temporary leave of absence, and would appear before the GPC on August 15, eighteen days out. The family's account notes that the instruction not to contact patients was repeated eight separate times in that meeting. He was referred to counseling. He went to the counseling office at 3:30 p.m. that same day; the director spoke with him briefly, did not see him for a session, and directed him to intake paperwork. Vaibhav emailed that evening asking for the paperwork. The reply came back at 6:01 p.m.: the intake forms were only accessible weekdays between 8:15 a.m. and 3:45 p.m. He would have to try again tomorrow. He spent that evening with his girlfriend, called his parents, and made weekend plans. At 11 p.m. they went to bed. At 11:36 p.m. his phone lit up with an email from the dean's office. Attached were the meeting notes and the GPC presentation instructions: the document telling him to prepare a PowerPoint, explain to the committee why he was there, be convincing that he was sorry, and humbly request permission to resume clinical work. Attached beneath that was the policy excerpt listing what the committee could recommend: individual remediation, delayed progression to Year 4, repeat of Year 3, delay of graduation, or dismissal. A second provision noted the committee could place a permanent professionalism notation on his MSPE (the dean's letter that follows a physician into every residency application). He died the next day, July 29. He was 24 years old. Three days later, the family says the president of the university called them and made a claim about physical contact that appears nowhere in the complaint, the evaluation, or the referral. The Duggals dispute it, and it is one of the central grievances in the litigation they have since filed. If parts of that timeline sound familiar, it is because a version of it happened three years earlier and 1,200 miles away. Katie Meyer was a Stanford goalkeeper (the one who captained the team to the 2019 NCAA championship), a resident advisor, and an aspiring lawyer awaiting word on her Stanford Law application. In late February 2022, four months before graduation, she received a lengthy email informing her she faced disciplinary action that put her degree at risk. She had thrown coffee on a football player who had allegedly assaulted a teammate. Her parents did not know the process was happening. She died by suicide on March 1, 2022. Gina and Steve Meyer built the rest of their lives around a single, narrow, achievable reform: no student should have to navigate a disciplinary process alone. Their advocacy produced California Assembly Bill 1575 — Katie Meyer's Law — authored by Assemblymember Jacqui Irwin, passed unanimously through both chambers, and signed by Governor Newsom on September 28, 2024. The law gives students at UC, CSU, and community college campuses the right to select an adviser of their choosing — a parent, a coach, a professor, a peer — to accompany them through a disciplinary proceeding. Critically, the institution must train that adviser on its own procedures. The adviser is looped in from day one and, with the student's permission, receives regular updates. The Meyers call it a front-end safety net: someone in the room who knows how the machine works, so the student isn't facing career-ending stakes alone against a panel of professionals. On September 23, 2025 — almost a year to the day after the California signing — Representative Julia Brownley introduced a federal version in the U.S. House. It would extend the adviser right to students at any institution receiving federal funds, and would additionally require colleges to disclose student suicides in their Annual Security Report, a transparency measure with no current federal analogue. The Meyers have said plainly that they believe this law could have saved Katie's life. They also founded Katie's Save, a nonprofit focused on student mental health and suicide prevention. The overlap with Vaibhav's case is hard to miss. A student with no disciplinary history. A serious allegation. A process that moved before anyone had spoken with him. A high-stakes hearing scheduled weeks out. A counseling door that was closed by the time he reached it. And an eighteen-day wait to be alone with. In February 2026, the Duggal family filed suit in El Paso County District Court against TTUHSC and several administrators, seeking more than $30 million and alleging gross negligence, wrongful death, and denial of due process. Since going public, Vivek Duggal says other students from the same institution have come forward with their own accounts. Texas State Representative Cody Vasut, who has been working directly with Vivek and Neeru, has committed to introducing legislation when the Texas House reconvenes in January 2027 that would require universities to provide advocates to students in disciplinary proceedings: the Texas answer to what California has already passed. We close the interview by asking the Duggals what they want listeners in medical education to do differently. Their answer is not complicated, and it does not require a bill to pass: treat students like the human beings they are. Links & ResourcesJustice for Vaibhav — memorial and advocacy:Katie's Save — katiessave.orgCalifornia AB 1575 (Katie Meyer's Law), signed September 28, 2024Katie Meyer's Law (federal), introduced in the U.S. House, September 23, 2025 If you or someone you know is struggling, the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline is available 24/7 by call or text in the U.S. Medical students and physicians can also reach the Physician Support Line at 1-888-409-0141, staffed by volunteer psychiatrists.
