And once he was turned into a symbol, the details of his tragedy were glossed over, forgotten. The realities of student life were lost in a swarm of flashing cameras, screaming headlines, and political grandstanding. Life at MIT became surreal. As some students tried to mourn at a candlelight memorial service, others lined up for the television cameras. All sense of context was lost, and with it went any chance of really learning from Krueger's death.
College is a nuclear reactor.
Students bounce around wildly, colliding and combining and falling apart in the chaos between early adolescence and adulthood. Universities try to contain this energy, to direct it toward learning and growth. Sometimes the controls on student behavior snap, and something explodes. Scott Krueger's death was an explosion, as violent an accident as the crash that killed Michelle Micheletti. And just as Micheletti might have been saved by a traffic light or an overpass walkway, Krueger might have lived if some aspects of college culture, particularly fraternity culture, had been different.