Candle-Light Vigil

On Tuesday evening, a memorial service was held on the Shawnee State campus for William Travis Ralston. The ceremony was an opportunity for family, friends and fraternity brothers to gather and honor Travis' memory.


The TKE Fraternity lost a brother on early Monday morning. The vigil was arranged by the University to give the students a forum to grieve. The use of the 'vigil' got me thinking. How is a vigil seperate from the standard funerary services held by the deceased family

"A vigil (from the Latin vigilia, 'wakefulness') is a
period of sleeplessness, an occasion for devotional watching or observance"

With recent events such as the shootings at Virginia Tech, Candle-Light Vigils seem to be the University's way of ritualizing the process of loss for a student who dies violently. It seems, then, that the Vigil is a more public means of expressing whatever feelings one might have.


If a funeral is presumably a private, family affair, then the Vigil is a public gathering. Did everyone present know Travis? Probably not. I would say that they were connected to him; through friends and classes and the like.


When this happened, I saw some students leaving bouquets of red carnations at the foot of a flag pole; a poor substitute for an altar in my opinion. The University needs a center-point for such things. A place for pictures, for candles and for flowers. Humanity has always had its village shrines and why should the University, essentially a small village, be any different?

-Tom