Yet again, our campus is confronting the tragic death of a member of the USC community.
We must guard against being desensitized to this death in the wake of all the other tragedies that have hit USC this year. Yes, our campus is large, and chances are the events at Pi Kappa Alpha did not effect every student directly. And yes, there are a lot of questions yet to be answered about what happened. But we should all take time for reflection on the loss of our classmate and to send good wishes and condolences to his family and friends.
We should return to the spirit shown at USC after the death of a fraternity pledge at Clemson. We as a campus made an effort then to focus on the important things, not those things that have a chance to divide us. Greek or not, we are all brothers and sisters at USC — and we must remind ourselves of that today.
Hopefully, the conversation in the next few days will center around the loss of an individual, not the institution he was a part of. It may be tempting to frame this as a Greek life incident, but that's an assumption, and does a disservice to the inherent tragedy of the death of this student.
While the search for facts about this case continues, we must keep the larger truth in mind — tragedy has struck our campus, Greek Life, Pi Kappa Alpha and most of all this young man, his friends and his family. Those are the immediate facts, and we as a campus should strive to honor our fallen classmate's memory in our actions and discourse in the next few days. We promise to make that effort in our reporting.