danse macabre

(this entry was written at the same time as the above one, but deals with quite a different topic)

in sad and distressful news, a hopkins student was murdered last week, and another one has apparently committed suicide this morning. it's a lot for hopkins to handle. personally, i didn't know either of the students but it still sucks a lot. i would hate to be president brody right now, with students not only clamoring about their physical safety in charles village but about their emotional safety as well. brody works hard; he's one of the highest-paid college presidents in the country and i think he deserves what he gets paid. dealing with these crises, though, will probably take a lot out of him. (incidentally, police leads indicate that the murdered student knew her attacker.)

i think it's interesting that typically when we hear that someone has died, we are immediately curious as to how. it's as if we want to picture the person's last moments to get an idea of what happened. call it macabre, call it curious, call it morbid. it's human nature. i don't know why people are afraid of death. it's part of life, just like eating and sleeping. imagine living without sleep (hopkins students, this is a feeling you know all too well). it's impossible. you can't live without sleeping and you can't live without dying. when you die may or may not be up to you, but only that moment is absolute proof that you ever truly lived in the first place.

ed: according to this website, the trial of the main suspect in the trinh case is set to begin in november 2006. -9/5/06