The Auburn Plainsman/ Auburn UniversityNatalee Holloway. Lauren Burk. Eve Carson.
They are three names that everyone, especially women, should know.
They are three women between the ages of 18 and 22 who died violently and at too young of an age.
Almost everyone has heard of Natalee Holloway, the pretty blonde who disappeared in Aruba on her last night of her senior trip. Almost three years after her disappearance, her body still has not been found, but Joran van der Sloot’s recent on-tape confession proves that she is dead. Van der Sloot now claims he was lying on the tape but at this point it’s a lost cause and everyone knows that Holloway is no longer alive.
Lauren Burk and Eve Carson are two girls who were murdered last week. Burk was a freshman at Auburn University in Alabama and Carson was a senior at the University of North Carolina, as well as the student body president. The girls were shot within hours of each other and both were found on the side of the road. Carson was found already dead and Burk died at the hospital.
The violence in our world and lately, the heightened violence on college campuses is seriously disturbing. Both men and women are always told to be careful in college but it seems that no one, especially women, can be careful enough.
Both Burk and Carson’s murders appear to be random, which adds another level of disturbance. The saddest part is that this happens every day.
When did our world get to the point where a girl should think twice about getting in her car alone at night?
Is it really possible to ever be careful enough? It seems like the only solution is never leaving your house and even that doesn’t guarantee anything.
Most women make it a point to stay with their friends when they go out at night. Stories like Natalee Holloway’s have taught that. But what about stories like Lauren Burk’s and Eve Carson’s?
The student body president stayed in to do work instead of going out with her friends and ended up dead on the side of the road. The obvious question of what she was doing out at five in the morning is still unanswered but the point remains that she wasn’t out partying and making stupid decisions, she apparently chose to do the opposite. In her case, if she had gone out with her friends that night she may still be alive.
At both memorial services held for Lauren and Eve, everyone who spoke made it clear that although people may be angered by these acts of violence, that they need to turn their anger into happiness. Yes, it’s an awful thing that happened to them both, but they said that thinking about the good things they both did in life were more important in the long run.
Life is a constant game of circumstance. If you do one thing, another may follow, whether it be good or bad. Everything happens for a reason; although two tragic deaths occurred on different campuses last week, both ladies were loved and made an impact on other people’s lives and that’s the most important thing in the world.
