So much promise

Chapel Hill grieves in the wake of a prominent student's death. Eve Carson was a joy to all, and an inspiration to many

The violent death of Eve Marie Carson, student body president of UNC-Chapel Hill, has shaken the entire university community to its core, and for that matter, has shocked the nation. Her family and her close friends will not recover from this. The memory of their child and that friend -- this remarkable, accomplished young woman who would have done great things with her life -- will be shadowed though not diminished by the shocking circumstances of her death.

Hearts go out to UNC students, who will suffer for some time. "This is a tragedy magnified and multiplied by the number and depth of relationships, many relationships, that Eve Carson had on this campus," UNC Chancellor James Moeser told several hundred students who turned out for a hastily arranged memorial service Thursday night.

Young people understandably think they are invincible, and see their lives stretching before them in terms of decades, not days. Carson was 22. She died from gunshots in a neighborhood not far from the off-campus cottage she shared with roommates. Some in Chapel Hill doubtless were given pause, even in their grief over this loss, wondering if this death might somehow have been related to a larger threat. Everyone thinks that way now on campuses, in the wake of other tragedies.

But in this case, police say they believe the slaying was a random act, and they were still seeking a motive and suspects as of week's end.

The anguish is multiplied, as Moeser said, because of Carson's trajectory. She was by all accounts an extraordinary person. She was friendly and outgoing and uncommonly helpful. She had been valedictorian of her high school class in another southern college town, Athens, Ga., and holder of the university's most prestigious scholarship, the Morehead-Cain.

In two months, she would have graduated with degrees in biology and political science. She planned to become a doctor.

All of these things serve to bring more intense attention to her death. But the death of any young person, whether or not one with a long list of accomplishments, is an unspeakable tragedy.

All parents, of course, are feeling suppressed fears, the same ones they felt when they dropped their children off at college. There is no absolute guarantee of anyone's safety, anytime. Criminal violence can be, as it appears to have been here, entirely random.

Chapel Hill, and Athens, and all those places and people touched by Eve Carson -- she had done volunteer work in Ecuador, Egypt and Ghana -- are profoundly sad today. And they will be tomorrow, and tomorrow. Undoubtedly, there will be official and everlasting memorials such as a scholarship, appropriate for one whose record would seem to be one of the most outstanding in the university's history.

But the loss...the loss of such promise, such heart, such a lovely smile and an infectious spirit, such an optimistic outlook...No, there is no way to make up for that. Except in remembering.