One Year Later

March 5th marks the one-year anniversary of former UNC student body president Eve Carson's murder. A year ago we were all slowly singing the alma mater on the quad; a year ago we were leaving for spring break in confusion and grief; a year ago I wrote a blog, asking the question "Why?" and openly admitting it couldn't be answered.

There is now a scholarship fund in Eve's memory, and the directors have held any kind of campus event you could imagine to raise money: the Eve Carson Memorial 5k, Eve's Dance Party, and concerts and shows all school year. Thursday night, the anniversary of her death, a local bar, Player's, is hosting a huge party in her memory and everyone will wear Carolina blue shirts. I can sense the campus coming together again, like we did a year ago, then in shock and numbness, now in memory, now to reprocess everything mentally and in our hearts, but now maybe in a different kind of numbness. A year has passed; for a year we've worried about midterms and papers, how our resumes are shaping up, whether light wash or dark wash jeans look better with this top, things of complete insignificance... But then we will come across her name in an article in the Daily Tar Heel, or see a poster of quotes from her speeches for sale in Student Stores, or see the clouds part a certain way and watch the sun come through and think how devastatingly unnecessary, how fundamentally wrong it is that she has been gone, an entire year now.

In my entry a year ago, I said I believed that God was not responsible for what happened, that Eve's death was not part of a greater plan, that it just happened, and that God was sad, too. I still feel that way. It may not quite match the theology of traditional Christianity, and it makes me reluctantly question the viability of praying for God's help in good times, too--but in my limited human understanding of God, I don't see how it could be otherwise. It's been a year now, and we've thought of Eve so often and even those of us who never knew her as more than our student body president with the great hair who was always everywhere on campus have still dealt deeply with that one-word question, why. With the distance of a year, it's still unanswerable.

Faith has helped. Faith is like a workout for those "dealing with unanswerable questions" muscles. Accepting a God who is beyond human understanding is an exercise in intellectual humility. There are so many answers we don't have. There is so much that doesn't make sense. And while we are here, it doesn't have to make sense. Maybe it doesn't make sense to Him, either.

Please pray for Eve, her family and friends, and her family here at UNC during this week.

By Erin Becker  |  March 3, 2009; 11:44 PM ET  | Category:  Tar Heel Testament Save & Share:                 
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Posted by: Chip | March 5, 2009 8:50 AM
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