- Campaign: Ceramics studio named in honor of benefactors
- WCU to bestow honorary doctorates, alumni award at spring commencement
- Barnes named one of UNC system's top teachers
- WCU to partner with Asheville, Yancey schools on grant-funded project
- Students selected to attend prestigious Media Sales Institute
- Bob Buckner to direct community band May 13
- Campus pauses to remember nine students who died in past year
- SCC, WCU partner on program to prepare provisional students for college
- WCU lands national grant to help Canton with flood recovery efforts
- WCU's brass quintet planning Carnegie Hall arts weekend
Above: Ashleigh Brooke Sides, who will be a freshman at Western Carolina University in the fall, helps plant a tree on the WCU campus in memory of her brother Andrew. Their mother, Cindy, awaits her turn with a shovel during the memorial tree-planting ceremony.
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Cody Grasty, president of the Student Government Association. |
On a somber day that matched the mood and with light raindrops falling from the sky accompanying the tears in the eyes of participants, the Western Carolina University community paused Tuesday, April 24, to honor the memories of nine students who died during the past year.
As part of the ceremony, friends and family members of the deceased helped plant a white fringe tree on a hillside overlooking Brown Cafeteria on the WCU campus. The memorial event is designed to reassure those who have lost loved ones that the university shares their grief and sorrow, said Robert Caruso, vice chancellor for student affairs.
Cody Grasty, president of the Student Government Association, told the mourners that the university mourns with them.
They were not just students at large, faces in the crowd, numbers on a database or names randomly placed on an attendance sheet. They were members of your family and of our family, Grasty said. True, when they returned home, they had their immediate family mom, dad and siblings. But when they came back to Western, they had their extended family of more than 8,000 people. They will forever be a part of your family and ours. They will forever be Catamounts.
Students honored on Tuesday were:
Jonathan Drew Anderson of Robbinsville, a sophomore majoring in English.
Kyle Cashwell of High Point, a sophomore majoring in political science.
William Fisher of Wake Forest, a computer science and mathematics major.
Isaac Green of Sumter, S.C., a junior majoring in business.
Jordan Jenkins of Bakersville, a junior majoring in biology.
Andrew Sides of Concord, a sophomore majoring in criminal justice.
Jonathan Tatem of Midland, a music major.
Mary Tucker of Granite Falls, a distance-learning student majoring in entrepreneurship.
Jessica Williams of Albemarle, a recreational therapy major.