“Aaron Tenenbaum. Allen Y. Lew. Angel Torres. Anita Crumpton.”
These are the first four names at the top of the City University of New York’s (CUNY’s) “In Memoriam” webpage. They lead two long columns of faculty, staff, and students, all in the CUNY system, who died of COVID-19.
The online memorial project started in May 2020, when New York City was still the epicenter of the infection. Creating a website to memorialize the dead felt a little strange, said Dr. Félix V. Matos Rodríguez, CUNY’s chancellor. “It isn’t the way we’ve learned to grieve.”
He did not anticipate the overwhelming, positive responses he would receive from the CUNY community.
“It’s been touching, humbling, to see how much of an outlet it became,” he said. CUNY is one of the only higher education institutions to create a public, online memorial for those they lost to the pandemic.
By CUNY’s count, to date, they have lost 21 staff members, 18 faculty, and nine active students to COVID-19. They are not alone; across the nation, thousands of higher education staff, faculty, students, alumni, and community members are coping with loss.
An online memorial may not be the right way for everyone to grieve. Some cultures observe death in a private way. But what’s most important, according to grief and bereavement expert Dr. David Schonfeld, is that institutions listen to the concerns and needs of their students, faculty, and staff and acknowledge these deaths in some way.
