Early Saturday morning, two Boston University students, Rhiannon McCuish and Stephen Adelipour, tragically lost their lives.
These somber reports are coming at much too rapid a rate — 12 BU students have died since 2005.
This weekend’s fire hit many BU students so close to home because the circumstances were too ordinary, too accidental and seemed all-too-possible to happen to any one of us.
And these students were Terriers just like the rest of us. As upperclassmen, they had time to plant deep roots as members of the BU community.
McCuish, a College of Arts and Sciences junior, was very active at BU. The psychology major and avid Boston Red Sox fan was a part of the Big Brothers Big Sisters Program, worked in a School of Management office and played intramural soccer. McCuish’s friends adored her, and many looked up to her.
Friends of Adelipour, a School of Management senior, knew him as someone who brought people together; he organized basketball and soccer games, but more than that, he was described as a loyal friend and a great listener. He was also an extensive traveler and didn’t hesitate to study abroad in Sydney. At the Charles River campus, Adelipour studied finance and law.
As this page asserted after a fatal 2005 accident that killed two College of General Studies students, any time BU students depart from this world, it is heartbreaking for everyone. When two deaths occur simultaneously, the sadness is twice as powerful.
Although it is often difficult for BU’s 31,697 enrolled students to feel like a connected unit, during times of crisis and great loss, administrators have proven again and again they can bring us together.
Dean of Students Kenneth Elmore composed an eloquent email the evening of the wretched blaze informing university members of memorial services and grief counselors’ availability. The students’ names hadn’t been released at the time, but the message still had significance: They were one of us.
The moment of silence observed by fans at Saturday’s hockey game at Agganis Arena also involved the BU community in the grieving process. The game removed the dividers between colleges and turned everyone into supporters of the university as a whole, as University of Vermont’s head coach expressed in his statements after the game. Collectively, the 6,056 fans had the chance to remember two students no longer with us.
Friends of the deceased students immediately began to commemorate their lives on a personal level. Facebook profiles for Adelipour and McCuish have been transformed into online memorials. Many peers have posted thoughtful words of condolence on their walls, and some have even created celebratory photo albums — clearly, these two were loved and will be sorely missed.
Facebook provides a forum for friends dispersed across the country to forever remember the two as they were — full of life. And others can find how closely connected they were to Adelipour and McCuish by taking note of mutual friends.
Finding relationships can link us together, and the more shoulders that are available to cry on, the easier it is to grieve. We also need to grasp how close we all could be to such a catastrophe.
One tiny flame of a candle is all it took. The students were indoors — safe from traffic, crime and other possible risks — but tragically, not safe enough.
Other residents of 19 and 21 Aberdeen St. who experienced the terror of the flames learned all too well how easily disaster can strike. But for now, despite damaged homes and wrecked and lost possessions, they are alive.
And the university is providing them apt support. The displaced students were housed at the Sargent Activities Center gymnasium over the weekend, and officials are coordinating a more permanent set up.
For those who wanted to pay their respects to Adelipour, BU provided buses at 4 a.m. this morning to take students to Great Neck, N.Y. for his 10 a.m. funeral.
BU administrators are once again demonstrating the ability to seamlessly cope with such difficult circumstances. They have had far too much practice.
Before 2005, BU’s student community went four years without losing one of its own. It’s already been stated, but 12 students have died in two years.
And there hasn’t been commonality to these deaths, which makes them even harder to come to terms with. Life ends much too abruptly and in vastly different situations, stunning everyone it touches.
What we can really learn from each passing is how much we should cherish our own lives and how important it is to remember those who lost theirs.
The BU community will never forget Rhiannon McCuish and Stephen Adelipour. Just as we will also never forget Michael Robertson, Beatriz Ponce, Juliane Miller, Marek Madej, Meghan Sennott, Zhizhang He, Andrew Lawrence, Anne Meadows, Andrew Voluck and Molly Shattuck.
And most of all, we must never forget that they, like us, will be eternally connected to the spirit of this university.