When Dustin “DC” Clemons, 20-year-old then-mass communication sophomore, was struck and killed by a car as he walked across Nicholson Drive on April 16, 2005, the University community mourned his death. His funeral service was standing room only as people gathered together to cry, laugh and remember Clemons. Clemons had many friends before his death, and thanks to Facebook, more University students were able to connect with the his family after his passing.Facebook has taken note of users’ connections to deceased loved ones, and last month the social-networking giant changed its policy to allow family members to “memorialize” accounts, or set profiles to have increased privacy measures while still allowing users to express grief and memories.”Myself and [Clemons’] family and friends find comfort in being able to visit his page and see the funny and endearing messages,” said Kevin Brown, one of Clemons’ close friends and president of Dustin’s Cause, a non-profit organization dedicated to pedestrian safety issues. “It’s powerful in the sense of creating a lasting memory. Facebook is not the end-all-be-all, but it is an avenue … to relive memories of him, his sense of humor and his personality displayed on his Facebook profile.”Clemons had 990 University students listed as friends on Facebook the day he died, according to an April 18, 2005 Daily Reveille article. As of Nov. 3, 2009, Clemons has 1,163 Facebook friends. Harvey Werner, one of Clemons’ childhood friends and an enrollment adviser in the Office of Undergraduate Admissions and Student Aid, said Clemons was the first of their friends to have more than 1,000 Facebook friends.Brown said he used to have access to Clemons’ profile, but he has not accessed the account in a while.”Early on, we would accept friend requests and try to clean out some of the junk messages and event invitations,” Brown said. “If his family wanted to get on, they could.”FACEBOOK’S POLICYMax Kelly, Facebook head of security, experienced a similar dilemma and blogged Oct. 26 about Facebook’s new policy regarding the profiles of deceased users.Kelly said his best friend and colleague died in a bicycling accident six weeks after starting work together at Facebook. He said the question regarding what to do with his friend’s profile soon arose.”When someone leaves us, they don’t leave our memories or our social network,” he said. “To reflect that reality, we created the idea of ‘memorialized’ profiles as a place where people can save and share their memories of those who’ve passed.”When an account is memorialized, only confirmed Facebook friends can see the profile, leave posts or locate it in a search, according to Kelly’s blog. Memorialization removes contact information and status updates and prevents future logins.”I still visit my friend’s memorialized profile to remember the good times we had and share them with our mutual friends,” Kelly said. Kelly said to memorialize an account, family or friends of the deceased must contact Facebook.Patrick Shockey, business administration senior, said in an e-mail that Facebook has helped him remember his good friend Ellen Hinson. Hinson, then-mechanical engineering sophomore, died in a car accident in summer 2008.”When someone passes who was a member of the Facebook community, their wall sort of transforms into one of those online memorial guest books,” Shockey said. “I don’t have many pictures of [Hinson], and some of the stories are nice to read when I want to reflect on how [Hinson] touched people’s lives.”Brown said he knows Clemons would not want his Facebook profile to be deleted because of Clemons’ frequent use of the Web site.A MODERN WAY TO GRIEVESusan Dumais, sociology professor, said Facebook is a modern and more public way for family and friends to grieve.”It’s the next step to other kinds of memorials that we’ve had in the past,” Dumais said. “[In the past] people just had photo albums, and we’ve moved on to videos … Having commemorative films or videos of the loved one, and now, to have a piece of them in cyberspace, is the next step beyond that.”Dumais said to have the existence of a deceased friend on Facebook is probably hard for people at first, but as time goes on, they likely appreciate having a piece of that person around.Patrick Radecker, civil engineering senior and close friend of Hinson, said he wouldn’t go out of his way to contact Facebook to “memorialize” Hinson’s profile. He said he did not like how “memorialization” of a Facebook account would prevent any future login attempts.”Her mom gets on all the time, and it helps her,” Radecker said. “If she couldn’t get on, [Hinson’s] mom isn’t a friend of [Hinson’s] on Facebook, so she wouldn’t be able to see her own daughter’s pictures.”Shockey said Hinson’s parents update her Facebook status to tell her friends about the different fundraisers and charitable events held in Hinson’s name.”Without some of these updates, I feel it would be much harder to find this information on my own,” Shockey said. “[These events] help [Hinson] live on through her parents.”Werner also had access to Clemons’ Facebook account right after his death. Werner said he wouldn’t mind not having access to Clemons’ profile if his account were memorialized. “It’s amazing that in the year and a half he was in school he was able to touch so many people,” Werner said.- – – -Contact Mary Walker Baus at [email protected]