A Senseless Act and a Shining Life is Extinguished
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Emily Rachel Silverstein, a sophomore anthropology major and peace activist at Gettysburg College, was brutally murdered early last Thursday morning, allegedly by her ex-boyfriend, a fellow student and senior at the school. She went to visit him around 3:00 AM to console him because he called her and “he was not acting right” a family friend told me. While I didn’t know Emily well, I knew of her, and by all accounts, her response to her ex-boyfriend’s cry for help was consistent with who she was—a bright, compassionate, peace-loving, social activist who believed that the world could be a better place.
I attended Emily’s memorial yesterday that was held in Roosevelt, NJ, a town founded by artists and social activists in the late 1940s. My wife, 15 year old son and I were there because Zach is good friends with Jaime, Emily’s younger brother and we know his parents Linda and Bob. Also, one of our best friends’ son dated Emily when she was a senior at Hightstown High School, our local high school. Everybody in the tightly-knit, surrounding communities of East Windsor and Hightstown, NJ has been grieving and affected in some way by Emily’s death.
There were hundreds of people at the memorial, many of whom who spoke and shared their stories about this beautiful and extraordinary young woman. At Gettysburg College she lived at the “Peace House,” founded a new chapter of the resurgent Students for a Democratic Society (SDS for those you who can remember) and was studying Arabic to spend a year abroad in Morocco helping battered women. As one of Emily’s best friends said “she was a vegan, but unlike some vegetarians, she didn’t chide her meat-eating friends because she believed that vegetarianism is a personal choice. That was Emily!”
Many of the men and boys who spoke sported pony tails and beards and the women and girls who shared childhood and college stories about Emily had flowers in their hair. All of them, regardless of age, race, religion or ethnicity, spoke of Emily’s dreams and plans for peace and social change—the things that mattered most to this vibrant, smart, compassionate young woman who truly believed that she could help change the world by one act of kindness at a time.
I hadn’t thought much about social activism since the early 1970s and found myself fondly thinking about those days and what they meant to me as young man trying to find his way in the world. And, as more people shared their stories about Emily, I remembered what it felt like to be 19 again and I began to recall my own dreams and plans to make the world a better place. Despite my profound grief and sadness, I began to experience feelings of joy and hope—because unlike some of us who have lost sight of the importance of social activism—many GenYers and Millenials have embraced it, believe in its power and plan to use it to change the world into a safer and more peaceful place.
Emily’s senseless murder was tragic, but the tragedy would be if we don’t try to keep her principles and ideals alive even though she is no longer with us. Please visit a Better World dot net a fund dedicated to the memory of Emily Rachel Silverstein.
