This is a time of mourning in Chapel Hill. David Shannon’s death this week has brought us to our knees once again.
I seek to honor David.
I seek to honor Faith Hedgepeth, as her grieving family still awaits answers.
But I also seek to honor the life of a friend I knew, a friend whose death I believe has been drastically overlooked at this University.
As Hannah Weinberger pointed out in a letter to the editor this week, UNC senior and Chapel Hill resident Trevor Dolan died earlier this month.
Students found out about his passing in an article by The Daily Tar Heel that minimized him to a statistic. “1,100 backpacks lined the walkway between the Student Union and the Union Annex to represent the 1,100 college students who commit suicide every year,” the article read.
The hard fact is yes, Trevor committed suicide. But he was more than a backpack.
He possessed a unique, warmhearted character. And he deserves to be remembered for that. He was the kind of person who always asked you how you were doing, even if his day was terrible. He always had some crazy story to tell. Junior year, he and his four roommates — all of whom have been friends since the start of college — hosted competitions. If you lost, you had to empty the dishwasher. They all found out, to their horror, that Trevor could eat a giant carrot in 45 seconds and stuff five ice cubes in his mouth at one time. He never emptied the dishwasher. Not once.
He was enraged when Duke beat UNC by one point last year. He could argue with you until he was blue in the face. When assigned a two-page paper on Nazi Germany, he wrote 10 pages because he had that much to say.
