Opinion: Why we need to remember Penn State student Justine Gross

“The death of a student should be important enough to be discussed carefully and remembered by anyone fancying themselves a part of a ‘Penn State community.’... And we need to talk about what it says about our community that almost no one wants to talk about it.”

These words of Penn State Professor Rosa A. Eberly were written after the death of 19-year-old Penn State student Justine Gross, who is remembered by those who knew her as a “ray of sunshine” and a “remarkable person, brilliant student, and supportive peer to her friends” after falling 11 stories down a trash chute in an off-campus high-rise on Nov. 10.

Eberly was moved to write those words when Columbia University President Lee C. Bollinger personally issued a statement on the death of a student on Dec. 3, nearly a month after the death of Justine, about whom the Penn State administration, outside a statement offered via spokesperson, has been virtually silent.

In fact, in a public Dec. 7 Facebook post, one of Justine’s professors this semester, Michael Steudeman, announced that he had only just learned about her death in passing during a morning conversation with Eberly.

This silence says something about our community that I learned less than three weeks ago, when my grandfather died.

I did not know him well. The circumstances of my upbringing precluded me from spending much time with him. But I knew that he was a valued member of many communities: his church, the Marine Corps (in which he served), my family. So that whether those at his funeral viewed him as a churchgoer, brother-in-arms, or grandfather, each of us felt that his life had come to define us and our communities.

But I was afraid that no one at the funeral would properly say this — would help us wrestle with his death, celebrate his life, and explore what his memory means to us and the communities who knew him. I was terrified that he might die — and, therefore, have lived — meaninglessly. Gone forever in silence.

Because if someone among us dies meaninglessly, what does that say about the value of a human life? Of our own lives? Of our communities?

So, I spoke at his funeral. Because my Penn State education has taught me that talking about something creates a memory, and that memory creates meaning.

This is why rhetoric Professor Curry Kennedy taught me that speech, under the Greco-Roman rhetorical tradition, is what enabled humanity to emerge from primordial chaos — equipping us to define, orient ourselves in relation to things and ideas, and develop codes of conduct. That a powerful allegory of the Genesis story of creation is that through speech, the whole universe can be brought into existence; but that in its absence, nothing can.

Eberly has now reminded us that communities, in turn, exist to fulfill the human need for belonging by assembling speech into value systems, social continuity, and shared memories. And that these memories are what give rise to meaning: what matters and what we should do about it.

But after the death of Justine Gross, a fellow student, Penn State has failed to live up to this most basic definition of community. Instead, silence threatens to condemn her to a meaningless death. And if her death was meaningless, what is the value of any human life? Of our lives? Of our Penn State community?

Let us talk about Justine Gross’s life, because it matters. And let us talk about Justine Gross’s death as though it could happen to any of us, because it did. We should do something about it.

In a few days, I will proudly turn my tassel as a first-generation college graduate. I would also like to proudly become a member of the Penn State alumni community. But Penn State’s silence amid the death of a fellow student might make that difficult.