n What happened this weekend is something that could have been easily prevented with a simple phone call, or some other form of communication on my behalf. Unfortunately, my phone was dead and I did not consider calling from a landline or sending out another form of communication.
Because of my irresponsible way of handling this situation — and also because my friends are true friends — actions were taken to report me as “missing.”
Many people were dragged into this fiasco, whether they knew me directly or had only heard about my vanishing act.
The community of Boston University was turned somewhat upside down while I was fast asleep until 5 p.m. on Sunday. The authorities were called in to assist with this situation, responded promptly and did an amazing job of making sure things were being taken care of.
When I returned to Warren Towers on Monday morning at 8 a.m., I was greeted by my friends with tight hugs, relieved sighs and tears. My mother drove up from Providence, R.I. and showed up bawling, seeing that I had, in fact, been completely unharmed over the previous 26 hours.
I will have to live with the pain, worry and grief that I caused my friends, family and members of the greater BU community for the rest of my life. I definitely do not condone my actions, and I am ashamed that my selfishness and irresponsibility affected so many people.
However, I am extremely grateful to those who stayed up countless hours trying to track me down, and to everyone who was truly concerned with my safety.
For me, an apology does not come close to expressing how horrible I feel about putting people through this event, and how very sorry I am for this situation.
Learning from this experience is all I can do, and I hope others can learn from this as well.
It is important for friends to stay together as a group, and be attentive to each other during situations that can potentially lead to more dangerous ones. By making sure everyone is well and accounted for, situations like this can be prevented.
As for the stories published by The Daily Free Press, there is not much I can say about those. It is unfortunate that while my friends were grieving — wondering if I was hacked up in a box somewhere — they were taken advantage of for the sake of a juicy story. Much of the information was misconstrued, and it is a shame that a gossip piece was the result of the Free Press’s lack of ethics and judgment concerning this situation.
Again, thank you all so much for your prayers and concerns. You are the ones who make the BU community a great one. Thank you to everyone who was involved in making sure I returned home safely, especially Sgt. Patrick Nuzzi of the BU Police Department. I apologize from the bottom of my heart and hope you understand how ashamed I am to have caused these events.
Sara Vasquez
CGS ’10