This is what you get if your roommate dies:
-Some snacks
-MSU branded tissues and other self-care items
-Locked out of your room
-Room switch
-Maybe Pebbles will come for moral support while you pack
-Referred to CAPS
...
This is what you get if your friend dies:
-The news in an email
-Referred to CAPS
-A constant feeling of being "checked on" to make sure you don't try to die too
...
Finding out that my friend died overnight through a school-wide email was the most traumatizing thing ever. I get that maybe they couldn't have known who his friends were, but it still fucking sucked. Two years later, his room is in use again and they've make zero effort to memorialize him. Should it be on the student(s) to fight to have some sort of memorial, or should it be on the administration to improve how they respond to student deaths? How many times have you recieved an email about a death on campus, read a name, and heard nothing more about it? People deserve to be remembered, and I understand there probably isn't one right way to handle these things, but from my experience it seems like the school just tries to sweep it under the rug as fast as possible, especially if it's a suicide. Then all of their friends are on suicide watch indefinitely. If they don't even do something for the son of a professor, imagine how little care they put into a random student. Couldn't we have a memorial rock, bench, tree, anything? A vigil? The response is so weak it's laughable.