The University of West Georgia student newspaper did the best it could when a secretary in the music department hanged herself last Wednesday, “during class hours in the Humanities building.”
Since the death occurred in a very public place on campus, it was a news story and had to be reported that way. “The Humanities building was announced as an official crime scene, and everyone was evacuated from the building while classes were in session.” The police needed to make sure she wasn’t murdered.
She was thirty years old. A diabetic, she’d been told by her doctors that parts of her limbs would have to be amputated.
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Her friends speak of her with eloquent simplicity. “[I] spent all day thinking about her as she was when we were younger.”
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It’s a good article, finding a balance between reporting how she died and evoking the person she was. Yet many on the comment thread are upset and offended; for them, the act was private, and reporting on it only increases her family’s anguish.
SOS absolutely knows what they mean; and yet she agrees with the dissenting commenters:
I’m glad the article was written because before the rumored reason for her death was due to a love affair gone bad. This seems much more appropriate.
If she wanted her suicide to remain private, she would have chosen a more secluded location. The West Georgian reports news that relates to the campus, and it is doing its job.
October 1st, 2009 at 10:09PM
Sad.
I’m sure we all think of Sylvia Plath and John Berryman when hearing about things like this. But kudos to the student paper.
Life is fragile. Since these people had control (?) over the circumstances in which they exited – excuse me, a euphemism = ended their lives – I wonder what the message is that they were trying to convey in doing it this way.
Requiescant in pace.