This one's for Joe

The two weeks of class after Thanksgiving Break are two of the toughest for me. And it's not because I have a lot of work or because I'm anxious about the finals I have to take. The two weeks really just make me think about Joe Bisanz.\nMany of you are probably wondering why that name seems to stick at the top of your brain, while others might recall what happened.\nJoe was the student who died of asphyxiation at the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity house Dec. 13, 1998.\nIt might seem like a moot point to some people, because the incident happened nearly two years ago. But the weeks leading up to finals always make me go back to the aftermath of Joe's untimely death.\nIt makes me think about people complaining about the administration and its new vigor for cracking down on underage drinking. This action was met with complaints from parts of the student body, and the opinions on both sides of the issue were running rampant through campus.\nYet the thing that drove me nuts back then was that people seemed to take Joe's death in stride. A guy who was a friend of mine even said he didn't think everyone should be punished because of the misfortune of one person. He went on to say he wanted everything to go back to normal. The idea I found in his diatribe was that he wanted to pretend the whole incident never happened.\nI was forced to hear others echo this opinion when I returned to campus after winter break, and it made me sad more than anything else.\nJoe was my friend. He had other friends too, and I'm sure it hurt them when people talked about him like he was more of a situation than a person.\nI won't lie to you and say we were really close, but Joe was someone I had known since high school. And no matter how much I wanted to distance myself from the whole idea of his death, it was something I couldn't think about without finding a lump in my throat.\nAnd the context of my own life that surrounded this incident is something I think about every time I submit my column.\nI was embarking on the spring semester of my sophomore year, and I hadn't written a thing for any publication on this campus. I told people that I didn't know why I hadn't written anything. I usually said "I hadn't gotten around to it yet" or "I didn't have the time." But the real reason I hadn't written anything was that I was a little scared.\nI was worried my writing wouldn't be good enough. I was worried people would tell me my chances of finding a coherent sentence were about as good as a guy finding a black cat on a moonless night.\nBut when I heard people talking about Joe, it sent me to my computer. And I wrote a letter to the IDS. \nIt asked the students on our campus to stop talking about Joe like he was something in the way of the rest of their lives. All I wanted was to make people realize there were more important things in life than the alcohol policies on this campus. \nI was trying to give people the perspective they were lacking, and that's what I try to do every week.\nI started writing a column consistently the summer after the incident, and I owe it all to Joe. \nHe is the reason I started to write again, and he helped me find a sense of purpose.\nJoe gave me a direction for my column, and for that, I am eternally grateful. There is really nothing I can do that will ever come close to what he did for me.\nI tried to write this column last year, and I couldn't do it. Maybe I wasn't ready to write it, but all I know is that I couldn't find the right words. I'm not even sure if I've found them today, but there was no way I was going to scrap it again after I realized what I know now.\nMy column has always been for Joe. And it always will be.