If Only I Had Known More About ... Dealing With Tragedy

If Only I Had Known More About ... Dealing With Tragedy
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Co-authored with Morton Schapiro

At the start of this academic year, one of us learned that a multiweek search operation had been called off for a beloved student who went missing while hiking in the mountains. The other saw his campus shaken on the third day of classes by the death of a first-year student in an accident.

Thankfully, the loss of a student is an infrequent occurrence. But with more than two decades as presidents, we have seen too many of them. And without a doubt, these losses are the toughest challenges of our jobs.

Seldom are we without words, but invariably we find ourselves confounded about what to say at the memorial service. How does one even know what to call a gathering for someone so young and vital? A remembrance? A celebration of life? And how are we to pull ourselves together and "act presidential" when our minds are filled with sorrow for the family? Would we ever recover, we wonder, were this our child?

We worry, too, about the student's friends and classmates. Presidents can usually find ways to cheer up students who feel alone or abandoned. We invite them to dinner at our homes and befriend them in the dining halls. But to allay the grief and confusion of a 19-year-old who lost the person she expected to be a confidant for life requires expertise that most of us lack. Perhaps presidents who come from the clergy or from counseling professions have an advantage on these occasions. But the rest of us can rarely call on our academic training for useful advice on what to say or how to act.

Fortunately, staff members in our student-affairs and religious-life offices are trained professionals who care deeply about our students, families, and campus communities. They're the ones who bring us the news that a student has died, and we have learned to rely upon them to counsel us in the weeks that follow.

Our days are full of joyous celebrations -- reunions, graduations, award ceremonies -- but how we deal with tragedies matters as much as anything else we do.

Barry Glassner is president and a professor of sociology at Lewis & Clark College. Morton Schapiro is president and a professor of economics at Northwestern University.

This commentary originally appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Education, November 20, 2016.

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