The University held a memorial service on Thursday at Anniversary Plaza for students who died in the past year.
“The loss of any student affects our entire community,” Associate Dean of Students Ann Marie Morgan said opening the memorial. “This memorial allows us to come together to remember those that have died, to honor their contribution to Illinois, and to support and care for one another.”
University faculty, community members and families of the passed students chanted the names of eight students in unison to honor their lives and contributions to the University.
The students remembered included Nathanael Assefa, Shrikar Chennuru, Akul Dhawan, Xinchen “Isabella Huang,” Artur Kostrubyak, Eva Liu, Jaylene Llamas and Eric Nethercott.
Not all students who died last year were named in the memorial, as per requests from their families.
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Illinois Student Council Vice President and Urbana-Champaign Senate Representative Hunter Farnham recited the poem “I Remember” by Sylvan Kamens and Rabbi Jack Rierneras.
“As long as we live, they too will live; for they are now a part of us,” Farnham said. “We remember.”
Rita Llamas, mother of Jaylene Llamas, was touched by the effort by the University to commemorate her daughter and the children of others.
“Jaylene was always smiling and she was very dependable; she always made time to be successful,” Llamas said, translated by a friend of Jaylene’s. “She was just a wonderful person.”
After a performance of the Illinois State Song by Barrington L. Coleman and the Varsity Men’s Glee Club, Vice Provost for Undergraduate Admissions Kevin Jackson gave a parting speech.
“With each life lost our University also experiences a loss; we are less gifted than we were, we are less curious … we are less whole,” Jackson said. “It’s my hope and my prayer that each of you will find peace and that those parts of life that feel empty will in time be filled.”
This is the fifth “We Remember” memorial the University has held since 2019, which always occurs on the last Thursday of September.
