Last night approximately 200 students gathered in Dahlgren Quadrangle for a candlelight vigil to remember the individuals who died on Tuesday.
The Rector of the Jesuit community, Father Brian McDermott, S.J. gave the opening prayer after students, faculty and administrators sang hymns and lit candles. “We are gathering in a place of darkness and light … of sadness and of sound,” McDermott said.
Students from several religious faiths shared prayers of mourning and of hope.
“As our hearts are filled with those of the dead and the missing … let us hear the sounds of the Lord,” McDermott said. “Teach us through these events how to truly to be brothers and sisters.”
Muslim student John Halliwell (SFS ‘04), who spoke at the vigil said that he felt the vigil, was successful in demonstrating campus unity.
“It gave a chance for the entire religious community and Georgetown as a community as a whole to show solidarity in their grievances in this matter,” Halliwell said.
Halliwell said that he had not personally experienced any anti-Muslim sentiments since Tuesday’s occurrences but had heard of at least one female Muslim Georgetown student who had been verbally harassed. He added that he had heard of several instances of anti-Muslim discrimination since Tuesday at several university campuses across the nation.
Halliwell said that the Muslim Students Association was telling Muslim students at Georgetown to travel in groups. He said that the MSA may be planning events in the future with the Jewish Student Association to show their solidarity.
“We are going out to show this event is just as saddening and outrageous to the Muslim community as it is to every other community,” Halliwell said.
GUSA Vice-President Brian Walsh (CAS ‘02) said that the vigil was effective in illustrating campus unity.
“It was the right atmosphere,” Walsh said. “It was the right setting for this moment.”
