One year after graduate student Katy Benoit was shot and killed by former University of Idaho assistant professor Ernesto Bustamante, UI hosted the Katy Benoit Safety Forum. The forum featured the “I Got Your Back” campaign and initiated conversations encouraging bystander intervention. The “I Got Your Back” campaign has continued into the spring semester to help address high-risk behavior in students because, if a lesson was learned from Benoit’s death, it’s that tragedies can be prevented.
Recent incidents only cement the pressing need at UI for students to look out for one another, and to make the right choice at the right time.
Two student deaths in two days devastated UI Saturday and Sunday. Joseph Wiederrick was last seen leaving Sigma Alpha Epsilon after midnight Sunday.
His body was found around 4 p.m. Sunday under a bridge over Paradise Creek, hours after he was reported missing by a friend. The other was a suicide Saturday in the dorms.
And as with Benoit, the saddest aspect of these deaths is they could have been prevented.
Take a careful look at yourself and your friends. Odds are you have been part of dangerous scenarios, from binge drinking to illegal drugs, drunk driving or even texting while driving. Chances are this “normal” weekend activity in the life of a college student will result in the deaths of several of our peers during the 14 remaining weeks of the semester.
As children, we relied on our parents for everything from sustenance to safety. As college students we are responsible for ourselves. But this responsibility does not stop at one person — it extends to our families, our friends and the communities we live in.
Doing the right thing isn’t always easy, but it also isn’t that hard. UI prides itself on creating a family of Vandals where students feel safe. Take care of one another as though we’re all siblings or friends, because the life of a stranger is just as precious.
Watching each other’s backs is as simple as not letting your friend drink that last beer or walk from the library to their car alone in the dark. These small gestures sound hollow in the grand scheme of death, but it is behaviors such as these that ensure our safety.
Take every step possible to create and maintain a safe environment for your friends and yourself. Care for one another, and make responsible choices. The two recent deaths might not be UI’s last, but if we all truly had each other’s backs, they could be.
— EE