Grief on the Internet

It began with a terse message on Alvin Henry's Facebook wall from his cousin that the 21-year-old senior had died in a car accident Saturday night and that mourners should contact him for more information.\nBy Sunday afternoon dozens of other friends of Henry posted their own short comments, words of shock and grief. As the night wore on the comments became longer and more heartfelt. By Wednesday afternoon, more than 100 messages in all had been posted expressing condolences the fallen Eigenmann resident assistant.\nHenry's Facebook wall had become a full blown memorial.\n"There are more people using Facebook than anything else," said IU alum Jonathan Griffin, Henry's cousin who left the original wall message. "It's the easiest way to let people know he passed. I sent one or two messages and it spread like wildfire."\nSuch online memorials have become common on the Web site when students die, regardless of a school's size or location, Facebook spokesman Chris Hughes said in an e-mail.\n"Facebook is and has always intended to be a reflection of 'real life' social situations and groupings," Hughes said. "Unlike other Web sites like MySpace, people don't log on to Facebook to imitate or lie about who they are, but instead to build a virtual representation of their 'real life' personality. To that end it does not surprise us that students often move to Facebook after a peer has died to express their grief at the loss."\nIn addition to the messages on Henry's wall, another friend of his set up a memorial group, another common occurrence online.\nSuch groups can remain on the network indefinitely, but the profiles of deceased students are deleted after a month.\n"Whenever we learn of a user who has passed away, we remove some of the functionality for the profile (such as membership in groups) and the basic and contact info for the sections," Hughes said. "We preserve personal info, photos and the wall for a period of one month, then we remove the profile from the network."\nBesides the common wall posts and memorial group, senior and Black Student Union President D'Anna Wade memorialized Henry in a picture collage a friend of hers made using the program Microsoft Picture It!\n"Although my primary purpose for the collage was to get the word out, I believe it has done much more than that," Wade said in an e-mail. "This particular piece is helping many cope with Alvin's passing because it shows him in the various lights that we remember him -- laughing, smiling and genuinely enjoying life. He was truly an angel here on this earth and a very lovable human being."\nSince Wade posted the collage Sunday, dozens of people on Facebook have made it their profile picture.\nThough Henry's profile will eventually be removed, Griffin wishes the site would reconsider their policy.\n"They should leave it up," he said. "It's a daily tribute so people won't forget him"