8B THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
NEWS
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 27, 2005
STUDENT LIFE
facebook farewells
Welcome to the Facebook!
Profile postings offer students opportunity to say goodbye
Friends at Kansas
Jona has 64 Kansas friends
The Wall
[ see all of them ]
Other Schools
Jono has friends at...
ASU (2)
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Clark
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Jennifer Gunn wrote
at 5:47pm October 18th, 2005
I love you and miss you. But I know you one in a better place. I'll miss you. You were always the sunshine in my day.
Missouri (2)
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School (1)
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Texas
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wrote
at 9:44pm October 17th, 2005
Class is just not the same without you. I wish you were here
God bless you.
Message - Delete
(Missouri) wrote at 6:29pm October 17th, 2005
I'll never forget the adventures we have, the time we spent together.
Message
*(Point Park)* wrote
at 10:31 pm October 15th, 2005
There are so many great things I could say and so many wonderful memories that I could ramble on and on.
Message
wrote
at 11:45pm October 4th, 2005
Hope all your dreams are being filled.
Message
WITE
at 2:29pm October 1st, 2005
where did all the time go?
Where did all the time go?
Message = Delete
BY FRANK TANKARD
fiankard@KANSAI.com
KANSAI STAFF WRITER
Illustration by Jonathan Kealing/KANSAN
Now there's another way for mourners to come together. facebook.com. Unwittingly, the creators of the popular college networking Web site have created a unique way to memorialize students who die — at least temporarily.
When someone dies, friends and family want to remember the person. They call each other, write e-mails and send letters. They laugh, cry and share stories. It's part of moving on.
When KU senior Nicole Bingham of Wichita died Oct. 7 in the fire at the Boardwalk Apartments, friends across the country immediately started writing on her 'wall.' the place on students' Facebook profile pages where users can post comments. Within days, the page turned into a living memorial for her.
On Oct. 12, which would have been Bingham's 22nd birthday, fellow Alpha-Delta Pi member Lindsey Gold, an Overland Park senior and University Daily Kansan photographer, posted an announcement for Bingham's memorial service on Bingham's wall. Gold then sent invitations to friends using the site's "party invitation" feature.
Coincidentally, several friends at other colleges who didn't know of Bingham's death visited her page that day to wish her happy birthday. They'd been reminded of her birthday by
Facebook's feature of posting birthday announcements on friends' profile pages.
When Braden Ackley, a childhood friend enrolled at Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas, clicked on Bingham's profile, she was shocked by the sad news. But she wrote a birthday message anyway, and on that day the postings on Bingham's wall changed from rest in peace messages to final birthday wishes.
"I think it really brought everybody together, because she had so many friends across the United States who aren't in Kansas and didn't know each other," said Ackley, a Crested Butte, Colo., native who saw Bingham during Bingham's trips to Colorado each summer.
Bingham isn't the first KU student to be memorialized on Facebook. When Lydon Wells, a Chesterfield, Mo., sophomore, died on May 20 of complications from surgery related to a long-term illness, his page also became a makeshift memorial, with comments ranging from a simple "R.I.P. Lyndy" to 100-word message.
About a week after he died, his profile disappeared. Friends still don't know why Facebook administrators deleted the page. His friend Mac Crawford, Topeka junior, started a Facebook group called "Bring Lyndy Back!" The profile didn't come back, but the group still has 41 members.
Crawford, still miffed about
the page's removal, said, "I don't know whether they needed a little more space for their broad-band width or more room for ads or what."
Chris Hughes, Facebook's spokesman, said it's the Web site's policy to remove the profiles of dead students when site administrators learn of their deaths.
"We simply cannot leave a deceased person's profile available to everyone in her or his school community." Hughes said. "There is no way to verify whether or not that person would have wanted his or her information to remain available posthumously, nor is there a way to regulate what is said about that person."
Before Wells' profile was taken down, another friend, University of Missouri student Tyler Kessler, copied it and pasted it onto a Web page he created, www.lyndy.tylkeresler.com, so Wells' profile would live on.
'Bingham's friend Gold, who was also friends with Wells, realized that Bingham's page wouldn't stay up forever. So she warned friends who'd grown attached to the memorial that one day it would vanish. She also printed a copy for Bingham's mother.
On Tuesday, Gold noticed that Bingham's profile was gone. She said she saw friends of hers and Bingham's on campus that day, but didn't have the heart to tell them.
Edited by Erin Wisdom
The only Home Grown Bookstore (no pesticide used)