TO THE EDITOR:
At 8 p.m. on Oct. 29, the UNC community convened for a vigil remembering David Shannon, yet another of our number who passed away too soon.
A few weeks ago, the same was done for Faith Hedgepeth. The same was not done, however, for Trevor Dolan, who left us on Oct. 7.
But whoever chose not to (or forgot to) organize a vigil for Dolan isn’t the only one who should take time to ponder their decision.
Students and faculty did not receive email notification in the hours after Dolan was recovered by police.
Instead, they were offered a too late news feature in The Daily Tar Heel that made Dolan into a little more than a mascot for suicide prevention; the article was supposed to be about his life, friends said, much like the recent article about Shannon.
To make matters worse, The Charlotte Observer writer Elisabeth Arriero effectively erased Dolan from memory in her article about Shannon on October 28.
She contextualized Shannon’s death as “the second death of an undergraduate student at a North Carolina state university in less than a month,” mentioning only Tyler Blalock. The error was reported Sunday night, but the article has not changed as of 9 a.m. Oct. 29.
I hope the irresponsible nature in which information about Dolan’s death was communicated, at UNC and beyond, is not pushed aside as easily as his memory has this past month.
