Hundreds Gather At University of Texas-Austin To Remember Slain Student

AUSTIN, TX -- Hundreds of students gathered on campus grounds at the University of Texas at Austin to remember their fellow student, Haruka Weiser, murdered this week along a creek running through campus.

The 5:30 p.m. vigil in the shadows of the UT Tower in a portion of campus known as the East Mall Area was spontaneously staged on the same day police confirmed the identity of the freshman dance major as the person killed.

Haruka Weiser, 18, was a first-year dance major at the university who was poised to declare a second major in pre-med, her family said in a statement. The family described a modest young woman who was excited to be attending UT Austin.

Despite its spontaneity, the evening gathering was heavily attended as hundreds of students descended upon the East Mall Area to pay their respects. President Gregory L. Fenves addressed the students as did representatives from the dance deparment and the president of the student body.

"It is incredible to see so many students here to honor her," Fenves said as he gazed into the crowd from a lectern. "This is an incredibly difficult time for our community, but it is important we all gather here."

He asked students to always be vigilant, assuring them steps were being taken to further safeguard the campus. But he added that he welcomes input from students on how to make the university a "...safer, more inclusive community."

The iconic UT Tower -- the highest point on the 40-acre campus customarily bathed in orange light to celebrate academic honors and athletic victories -- would go dark that night, Fenves said.

"We are mourning as a community, and tonight The Tower will be darkened."

As Fenves and others spoke, the students gathered were silent and the outdoor gathering took on the characteristics of a church service. Throughout the crowd, young people bearing tissue boxes meandered through the throngs in attending to those in the crowd overcome with emotion.

There were many succumbing to grief. Sniffling was heard all around the otherwise hushed crowd, punctuated by sighs and quiet sobbing on what normally would've been just another beautiful sunny springtime day in the state's capital city.

Students were given note cards and a pen as they arrived at the East Mall Area, and were asked to write down their thoughts and drop off the notes at baskets staged at entries to the portion of campus where they had gathered.

Many of the details surrounding Weiser's death are still unknown. In an earlier press conference, Austin police declined to even specify the exact location along Waller Creek where Weiser was found. They also refused to say whether or not she had also been sexually assaulted before being killed.

But at the gathering it wasn't the desperate, final moments of a young woman's life that were the focus. Instead, it was a time to celebrate and honor the young woman who was taken too soon and was, by all accounts, loved by many.

Student body president Kevin Helgren said that while he never met Weiser, he felt that he had, vicariously, through his friends.

"Although I didn't know Haruka personally, I have many friends whose faces lit up each and every time her name came up in conversation," he said.

Representing the dance department that lured Haruka to enroll at UT far from her Portland, Ore., home were Charles O. Anderson and Brant Pope, associate professor of theater and dance in the College of Fine Arts and chair of the Department of Theater and Dance, respectively.

"We were so grateful she chose us," Anderson said of Haruka's journey from Portland to Austin -- a trip of 2,053 miles -- to pursue her dreams of becoming a dancer. "To look out and see all her classmates is to know she impacted us in a way we're just beginning to understand."

Pope steeled himself to remember his prized dance student. But, ultimately, he conceded words were hard to find: "There is so little we can say. We gather because life is precious, as Haruka was precious to us."

He instead drew from a common spring well of inspiration in the landscape of poetry, suffused with cadence in words forming broader, rhythmic stanzas not unlike the graceful pirouette of a ballet dancer -- of Haruka herself -- interpreting music that is viscerally felt.

The poem Pope read in his attempt to assuage students' grief was "Remember" by Christina Rossetti, which starts: "Remember me when I am gone away/Gone far away into the silent land."

The poem's ending plea -- for mourners to remember her not in sorrow but with happiness -- is something Pope believes Haruka would likely convey to those she's left behind -- those who loved her -- now in the throes of grief over her passing:

Yet if you should forget me for a while

And afterwards remember, do not grieve:

For if the darkness and corruption leave

A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,

Better by far you should forget and smile