The Washington Post report
UofA News Update

A UofA freshman stabbed her roommate then killed herself this morning.

Life on campus seems normal. I didn’t even know anything about it until I got a text from a friend asking if I was okay. A girl who sat behind me in my Human Geography class said that her friend was interviewed by a news crew, but she didn’t know what had happened.

No one has given it a second thought. It really isn’t one of those, “Wow, that could have been me,” situations. I pass by the Grahm-Greenlee residence hall every day, but I have no connections. This isn’t at my school. This didn’t happen to me.

Walking through a hall, you can hear the quiet snickers of somber jokes being made.

“Those sorority hazings get tougher every year…”

“Who has a knife around here? Was it a butter knife that she was using?”

“I personally believe that U.S. Americans are having blood, and South America…”

Perhaps this crime has something to do with the stress of dorm-overcrowding. Some dorms have three people crammed in a tiny room that was meant for two people and would be optimal with one. Some people don’t even have a room and were given cots to sleep on in the residence hall student lounges.

Or maybe this year at UofA is cursed. This is the second suicide in just over a week.

I’ll probably never know, because all the communication I’ve received from the University is an email saying that someone died and a phone number to call for counseling.

***update***

Sept. 5, 2007
5:41 p.m.

Galareka Harrison, 18, was taken into custody this afternoon by the University of Arizona Police Department after being released from University Medical Center. She will be charged with first-degree murder and will be booked into the Pima County Jail. She has been placed on interim suspension from the UA and is not permitted on campus until further notice.
(source)

I like Tucson. It has a small town attitude despite its size, and the people here are consistently among the most friendly I’ve ever met in Arizona. I’m pretty sure you have to be at least half hippie to live here year-round.

My friend said that I don’t actually like Tucson–that I actually like the UofA campus. He said that if I would leave the downtown area I wouldn’t like Tucson so much. I’m content with the downtown area though. It’s nice. It has what I need.

Most of the buildings in Tucson are old and a little dilapidated. They stand in stark contrast with the bright, new cookie cutter strip malls of Phoenix. Tucson stands like a defiant record of the past. A past where houses were original, where the tree in every single front yard has a history to tell.

Tucson is like a favorite pair of old shoes: the soles are a bit too thin, the laces are fraying, the style is out-dated.  But, even though you spend the money to buy new shoes, you go back to your old pair because they’re comfortable, familiar, and the dirt on the bottom holds memories of where you’ve been.