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Last year on February 28 the Carleton community mourned the loss and celebrated the lives of Michael Goodgame, Paxton Harvieux, and James Adams, members of the Class of 2015. Goodgame, Harvieux and Adams were on their way to the Minneapolis/St. Paul Airport to catch a flight to an ultimate frisbee tournament with the Carleton Ultimate Team (CUT) when they were killed in a car accident.
Now, a year later, Carleton prepares to recognize the anniversary of the tragedy.
The chapel will host a candlelight vigil in memory of the three men on Saturday from 9am-5pm, and Chaplin Carolyn Fure-Slocum says, “we will have support people here, in case anyone needs to talk to someone.”
Seniors Lucy Wasserburg and Avery Rux have reserved the Cave on Saturday from 3:30pm-6pm as “a space for anybody to drop in to listen to music, eat, and just be around other people,” said Wasserburg.
Friends and family of Paxton Harvieux organized a facebook event for Saturday called Light the Darkness, which encourages people to take a photo of a light, and post it in the Facebook group in order to honor the memory of the three men and add “light and inspiration” to this day darkened by tragedy.
Russell Hanson ’16, a member of the Carleton Ultimate Team (CUT) hopes that many people will participate in Light the Darkness. “That’s how everyone can really remember them– through social media. People will be looking at pictures of them all day because lots of memories of them will be in our heads next weekend,” he said.
CUT plans to spend time as a team together on Saturday night. “I’m looking forward to the opportunity when everyone will feel very open about talking about them. I’m sort of in this place where I like to talk about them because it makes me happy. Thinking about them on my own makes me sad,” explained Hanson.
Senior CUT Captain Alex Tratuman agreed, and added “I think, in most cases, people are excited to talk about them– though definitely saddened– but ready to share memories. I think that’s a good thing for the school to know. It’s not a taboo subject. If it’s taboo, their memories kind of disappear.”
Soon after the accident last year, Megan King ’16 organized the creation of a memorial in the Weitz Center lobby inspired by the Japanese tradition of making one thousand paper cranes in order to bring peace and grant a wish. Members of the Carleton community folded over a thousand paper cranes, and people are still adding to it.
“When terrible things happen, you kind of turn to art to express what you’re feeling inside,” said King, “it seemed like a really healing process.”
“It kind of bothers me that it’s the only thing so far. I think the campus needs to have artwork around because I think it’s important to remember, not just pretend like nothing happened. I think we are all dealing with it separately, and the more we can come together and heal together, the better,” she added.
Rux is involved in the creation of a memorial to honor the lives of the three men.
Though it is only in the initial stages of planning, the group recently received $15,000 in CSA funds to go ahead with the project.
“It’s happening in the sense that we have money, though we still have to go through administrative hurdles,” said Rux.
Although the group of students involved with the Harvieux, Goodgame, Adams memorial were initially working alongside the administration, they have since gone their separate ways.
Carleton’s administration was, at first, onboard with the idea, but decided that they would rather create a memorial that remembers “more than 100 students who died while enrolled at Carleton since the founding of the college,” according to Gayle McJunkin, Associate Vice President for External Relations.
This broader memorial’s initial design was created by Tom Oslund, of Oslund and Associates, Minneapolis.
McJunkin says the sculpture will be comprised of a simple “L” shaped steel frame, fifteen feet high, with each student represented by a six-inch cast bronze letter “C”, connected by a steel cable which can rotate in the wind, and create a wind chime effect as the strands of Cs move in the breeze.
Though the location has not been finalized, CSA president Becca Giles says, “the top choices all reside on the east side of campus, near Lyman Lakes.”
The Tuesday Group, Carleton’s president’s group of senior staff, allocated funding to the student memorial project from existing budgets.
Rux is not opposed to the creation of this all-encompassing student memorial, but feels a memorial specifically honoring Goodgame, Harvieux and Adams is what the student body wanted.
“We hope that the administration is receptive to this, but it’s hard for them to see it from our perspective,” he said.