The Drexel Community was hit hard with grief this week by the untimely passing of two of our peers: sophomore english major Thao Nguyen and senior business student Jakub Susul. It is one thing at The Triangle to have to write an obituary for a tenured Drexel professor who lived a long, fulfilled life, but it’s another thing entirely to write obituaries for students who are gone too soon.
It always pains us to write these obituaries. Each writer spends a lot of time to get the stories exactly right, talking to friends and loved ones of the deceased so much so that we feel like we knew him or her. We want our pieces to allow the Drexel community to get to know the person as well.
Sadly, The Triangle staff felt the recent tragedies more personally than usual. Nguyen was one of our copy editors this past fall term, and Susul was a good friend of one of our own. We’re lucky here because we’ve built our own micro Drexel community, and we’ve learned to lean on each other during difficult times. We think of our microcommunity as just a model of the larger Drexel community. When one of our own is suffering, the Drexel community comes together, and we help each other get through.
At the end of every one of our memoriam pieces, we share the contact information of the Drexel Counseling Center for students affected by the tragedy. We cannot urge enough how important we think it is for those in need to seek help. The Center is available for anyone at any time for any reason, as President John A. Fry says in his emails to the Drexel community whenever a student dies. You can reach a counseling professional by calling 215-895-1415 during business hours or 215-416-3337 any other time.
We’d like to take this opportunity to urge students to be extra kind to each other as we approach the end of the term and finals week. It’s been a rough time not only for those personally affected by the recent tragedies but for the entire community. We’d like for everyone to take this time to let the friends you’ve met at Drexel know how much you care about them. It is important to show that we are a strong Drexel community and that we’re all here for each other. We are the Drexel Dragons, after all, and what is more powerful than a Dragon?