More than 60,000 students across four campuses have a right to wear the maroon and gold. That’s about equal the population of Flagstaff, almost twice the size of Dover, Del., and at least 5,000 more students than NAU and UA’s undergraduate populations combined. In sum, we’re big. ASU is more like a small city than a school, so don’t be disappointed if your English 101 teacher forgets your name…or never learns it.
While being big has its benefits—packing Sun Devil Stadium and deafening the ears of the opposing team—it also has its drawbacks.
On May 26, ASU lost two members of its large community.
In the early hours of that Wednesday morning, Phoenix police officer Travis Murphy was shot multiple times while tracking down a hit-and-run suspect north of downtown Phoenix. He later died at a hospital. Murphy, 29, was a criminology and criminal justice junior at the Downtown campus.
Sixteen miles away, at around the same time, pre-law junior Kyleigh Sousa, 21, was dragged by a car during a purse-snatching attempt in Tempe. She was pronounced brain-dead later that evening.
Chances are, you never knew Sousa or Murphy. Chances are, they never knew each other.
In a community that operates like a small city—fit with it’s own police station, governing system and, well, newspaper—it’s easy to get lost in the crowd.
And because we’re so big, we sometimes feel numb when a student death is reported. It’s easy to forget that they too were Sun Devils.
In the last issue of The State Press, we featured Sousa’s story on the front page, but made no mention of Murphy. We admit we were unaware Murphy was an ASU student, and it’s probably not the first time a student’s death has gone unpublished.
In fact, because The State Press does not publish between the end of the fall semester and the beginning of summer, we made no mention of the death of Chrisopher Volpe, a 24-year-old ASU student who was hit by an SUV on May 10 while riding his bike. A memorial for Volpe can still be seen at the intersection of University Drive and Ash Avenue. We apologize to Volpe’s family and friends for not recognizing him in our articles. He was a Sun Devil, and therefore, his name deserved the black print.
When a person dies, they should be remembered. The dead deserve that right. When you’re a Sun Devil, you’re one of us. You’re our brother and you’re our sister. And when a family member falls, we should hang our heads for at least a moment and say a prayer.
The State Press is dedicated to serving and informing the ASU community and that includes publishing the deaths of our fallen classmates. But information can get lost in the intricate network of schools, colleges and campuses that make up ASU.
If there is a fallen brother and sister of ours that we have not recognized, please e-mail our editor at kjdaly@asu.edu. We will be sure to publish the name of that person in our next issue or issues to come.
