College Union

by Chaplain William M. Finnin @ Southern Methodist University

Death has a way of seizing and refocusing our attention. This is especially evident on a college or university campus. On the weekend before finals last fall such a death occurred on our campus. A young man died, in that most intimate place he called his home, in his own room at his fraternity house, silently surrounded by folks he knew and partied with, relaxed with and teased. His heart just stopped and he died, apparently, and according to later-released toxicology reports, from an overdose of cocaine, alcohol, and a highly toxic drug used to medicate terminal cancer patients, fentanyl. In a disingenuous and unhelpful press release the next day, his national fraternity proclaimed his death an “isolated incident.” That it was not certainly has complicated inquiry, conversation, and relationships on campus.

When death occurs on a university campus, campus ministers, and counselors stand in the breech it creates. They become mediating instruments of healthy grieving and patient grace in the midst of confusion and pain. In the face of death’s devastation of community, campus pastors’ presence and nurture mediate God’s word of grace….over time as healthy grieving yields to healing, re-composition, and hope.

Chaplains and student life staff responded to the situation immediately. We met on the fraternity house steps with friends and inside with public safety officials. Chapter advisors and a few parents embraced small knots of students. We conversed with medical examiners who accurately predicted the toxicology results but could not speak publicly. University public relations staffers whose job it is to manage relations with and provide information to publics beyond the institution assured everyone that information would flow when it became available. We mingled with stunned, shaken, and anxious students who gathered as word spread, despite a pall of silence.

That Saturday afternoon the shock of loss shot through the fraternal community then beyond the Greek community and across campus at large. The deceased student had been a very public person, and his death created great unsettlement just at the time almost everyone hopes for calm – the day before finals began. There was no hiding or denying the trauma of this loss.

Campus ministers, chaplains, student affairs counselors, though trained to respond to crisis situations involving student death, inevitably do so with the wish it weren’t true. As the reality “sinks in” pastoring necessarily involves radical presence, that is, a willingness to suspend time and be available to as many and for as long as needs seem apparent. Such presence became extraordinarily difficult in light of secrecy and advisor-counseled-non-speech took hold of the fraternal community.

Presence is a two-way street. Campus ministers and chaplains found ourselves willing to debrief students, to listen to stories of friendship with the deceased, to spend time over coffee hearing of experiences and memories. In the early hours and then days following the death, talking about “cause of death” ceased to be an acceptable option. NO one wanted to talk about “that” aspect of our common situation.

Healthy grieving involves, depends upon and even requires levels of truthfulness difficult to attain when there is conflict between generally accepted “knowledge based on experience” and “official information.” But often it is in that unsettled state of such tension that formal grieving rituals must take place, funerals planned, memorial services shaped. In the face of death’s finality for a young student, the chaplain or campus pastor must negotiate a language of truthfulness from conflicted sources, mindful of the costs of concealment to the dynamics of healthy grieving. So we planned a memorial service. A copy of my memorial message is available on request: wfinnin@smu.edu .

Dealing with death as a result of possible or confirmed chemical abuse is always a difficult pastoral problematic. After all, we lead with the faith assumption that God seeks us out and encourages us to choose life. This affirmation notwithstanding, questions still abound, not only for those whose task it is to comfort, counsel, and support but also for those most traumatized by the loss: close friends, family members, friends, fellow student peers. Was death accidental or intentional? Did the decedent have access to chemicals at the scene? Was he alone or with another before or at the time of his passing?

Here at SMU we are still dealing with this student’s death as January draws to a close. Students who left for the holidays and have now returned. As the spring semester gets underway, the University has rejected silence and denial as possible responses: clearly, too much is at stake. Our Vice President for Student Affairs, himself an ordained clergyman, has convened a cross-departmental group to look afresh at issues related to chemical use on campus, to inventory existing educational programs on campus, to clarify issues of legal enforcement, and to propose how best both staff and the institution itself can deal with a culture of denial where chemical use abounds. The campus newspaper continues to report on the student’s death, toxicology revelations, and responses of faculty, fraternity leaders, and others, calling for creative engagement about the issue of chemical use among fellow students on campus. The conversation has begun in earnest.

The troubling response of the national fraternity coupled with responses of fraternity advisors continues to demonstrate the strength, resiliency, and power of the culture of denial. That perspective influences how individual chapter members fashion the meaning of their brother’s death. Of course, communities, families, individuals struggling with chemical dependency issues seldom welcome inquiry, inspection, and change with initial openness. Denial among friends about a colleague with a chemical problem demands that what “outsiders” consider legitimate concern be identified as meddling and inappropriate encroachment upon private behavior regardless of its lethality: this is the power of denial. In such a setting, the “brothers’ keeper ethic” becomes meaningless.

It is easy to mistake institutional caution for denial. There is importance difference. Any legitimate desire to be truthful must be weighed against predispositions to avoid and diminish risk.

Into this mix at the memorial service the Chaplain introduced the matter of “truthful grieving,” without which grief gets foreshortened and truncated in ways that only heighten dysfunction. Only the Truth, illusive and paradoxical as that reality has always been and as our Christ knew it to be, will be our liberation: from denial, from the false realities induced by chemicals and alcohol, from distorted loyalties. In this complex cultural mix we are called to minister, standing beside many troubled young people. And we shall.

Chaplaincy should never be mistaken for that tendency to provide warm and fuzzy accommodations to difficult and conflictual situations. Our calling requires presence that encourages rigorous and prayerful examination of both the light and the darkness each of us bears within ourselves, contrasts so apparent in situations such as these. Only then can we speak an unambiguous word that affirms God’s gift of life.

William M. Finnin, Jr., Th. D.

Chaplain and Minister to the University

Southern Methodist University

January 19, 2007

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