I woke up on Monday, April 7^th full of sadness. The previous night, I had learned of Minghui Yu’s death. Mr. Yu was doctoral student at GSAS who was killed within a block of my school. His death was shocking and impossible for me rationalize. Usually, being able to make sense of things comforts me. In this instance, I felt like there was no way for me to reconcile the sheer senselessness of his death, the loss of a talented statistics scholar, or the pain placed on a family that had lost its only son. I had not known him, but it didn’t not keep me from feeling the loss.

As I walked down 121st St and turned the corner there was nothing that made the median between 121st St and 122nd St look any different than it did on any other day I had hurriedly walked past it–nothing to distinguish it except the ardent sense of anger and loss I felt welling up in me.

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By now, most of you should have heard about death of a PhD student Minghui Yu from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences who fled from a mugging, was hit by a car, and later died in St. Luke’s hospital.

Some personal reflections: Now, there are a few stock responses to the accidental death of a student–we call it a tragedy, we receive a letter from President Bollinger, and we hold a memorial service. While these are natural, sympathetic responses to a loss of talent, promise, and youth, it is strange  feeling such deep sadness for a loss of a person that is so detached from my immediate world. I had never heard the name, I had never seen the face. Yet I completely identify with the accident.

I believe a lot of people can feel this way–not in an entirely sympathetic turn for the victim and those closest to him, but an inherent fear of something like this happening to oneself. I feel this is almost a distortion of the type of empathy that should be evoked. In times like these, I can’t help feeling that I should avoid identifying with a loss, but rather lend a supporting hand to those affected.

Most of us cannot even comprehend the pain that Mr. Yu’s family must be feeling right now, so I will not insult them by trying. I will give them my shoulder to rest on and a hand to hold onto. I won’t pretend I can feel or do anything more.

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill student body president was found dead in Chapel Hill early Wednesday and identified on Thursday. Eve Carson, a 22-year old from Athens, Georgia, was a recipient of the prestigious Morehead scholarship and part of the North Carolina Fellows leadership program. By all accounts, she was an amazing human being.

Ms. Carson’s body was found with gunshot wounds in a residential Chapel Hill neighborhood, reports the Associated Press. So far there are no suspects.

Hearing about an incident like this is heartbreaking and bewildering, especially when the setting is a quiet, idyllic college town like Chapel Hill and the victim someone as gifted and well-loved as Ms. Carson evidently was. It’s a senseless crime. I send my love out to a mourning campus.