Today the University is focused on two things vital to our community – safety and hope.
Safety seminars are running all day in the Union and the community will join together for a Vigil of Hope this afternoon devoted to hope for the safe return of Carrie Yoder, an LSU graduate student missing since last week. Yoder’s family and friends have spent the past week waiting and fearing the worst. They are left clinging to all they have left — hope that Carrie will come home, that she is all right and that their prayers will be answered.
In this time of great stress for Yoder’s family and friends, of great fear for a community that learns and works just blocks from Yoder’s home and a time when hope and fear seem to be the only thing anyone has left, our community must actively work to bring Carrie Yoder safely home and remain safe ourselves.
Chancellor Mark Emmert met with Reveille staffers Tuesday afternoon for the routine Q&A session he agrees to each semester. After Emmert met the new staff, the questions this semester transformed into a discussion about Yoder’s disappearance and the fears that she may be the next serial killer victim.
Both Emmert and The Reveille staff agreed Yoder’s disappearance has shaken the campus a little more than the past incidents. Recent months have been tumultuous for the LSU community. Last May, LSU lost two graduate students when students Christine Moore and Charlotte Murray Pace were murdered in separate incidents. Police later connected Pace’s murder to the Sept. 2002 murder of Baton Rouge resident Gina Wilson Green and to the July murder of another resident, Pam Kinamore. In December 2002 police connected a fourth victim, Trineisha Dene Colomb, who was found murdered in the woods in Scott, La.
And while people still morn the loss of the University’s other two graduate students, this time we are more aware. It again happened close to campus and within the campus community. Emmert attributes this phenomenon to a change in attitude since the past incidences. This time we see and commend the campus community for joining together in hope.
“We are all kind of angry. We are all just feeling like we are running out of things to do. We are responding differently. We’ve done all the things we know how,” he said.
Emmert and other administrators are working closely with police to aid in the search.
“We are working and hoping and praying this still all ends okay,” he said Tuesday.
As students, faculty and staff, we must do the same. Because this incident happened so close to campus, the LSU community may have the key information needed to find Carrie.
“Police are convinced people have seen things but are not reporting them because they didn’t think they are important to report,” Emmert said.
As students, we must comb our minds for any odd occurrence we may have seen between Monday when Carrie was last seen and Wednesday when she was reported missing. Any suspicious person, car or action could be the missing piece that solves the puzzle of where Yoder is.
The numerous murders of Louisiana women have students gripped by fear of the unknown. They should reinforce the importance of tracing our footsteps from early last week and looking for clues as to anything that may help investigators bring Yoder home.
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