Obituary writers at the student-run newspaper at Boston University have faced an uncomfortable honing of talents lately, as campus-related deaths soared into the double-digits in recent months.
In total, 11 BU undergraduate and graduate students have died over the past 13 months, university spokesman Colin Riley said, to ABC.
“We get them in these little clusters,” Emily Overholt, the editor-in-chief of the student newspaper, the Daily Free Press, said in the ABC report. “It’s hard, because it’s really catching up to people. It’s one thing after another.”
Ms. Overholt never anticipated having to write so many obituaries, she told ABC.
“[It’s a] nonstop barrage of bad news for BU,” she said.
BU has a graduate and undergraduate student body of 33,000, most below the age of 25.
The most common cause of BU-related deaths has been due to injury, followed by homicide and suicide, ABC reported.
The deaths began in April of last year, with the shooting death of 24-year-old Kanagala Seshadri Rao. His body was discovered just 500 feet from his apartment, ABC said. Soon after, a doctoral student committed suicide, and then three from New Zealand studying at the university were killed in a vehicle crash. An archeology student died during a fall in Turkey, and a freshman was found unconscious – and later died – after attending a fraternity party, ABC reported.
“It’s staggering,” said Mr. Riley, in the ABC report. “Young people should be going through their lives reaching old age.”
• Cheryl K. Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.