Music School blogs remember crash victims

Three weeks ago at IU, close friends and family members were shocked and devastated with grief after five young IU students and promising vocalists perished after their plane went down in the dense woods south of Monroe County Airport. \nHowever, just two days after the tragic events transpired, the Jacobs School of Music would create a unique and modern outlet for the sorrows, desperation and confusion by allowing it to be expressed and shared throughout the community by creating blogs, or Web journals, to memorialize the victims. \n"We are pleased to say that the blogs have become the most important point of reference for us (to remember the victims)," said Alain Barker, director of marketing and publicity for the Jacobs School of Music. "They have become a powerful therapeutic opportunity to express emotions and thoughts."\nBarker said there was a lot of discussion of how to express the sorrow that the music school was feeling immediately following the crash when Mary Ann Hart, chair of the voice department, said students had suggested a blog could be used to provide a proper outlet for grief and remembrance. \nEven though the Music School had no experience using blogs, they conducted their initial research and found that this would be easy to accomplish, using Google's blogger.com Web site, Barker said. After making the necessary preparations to make sure they were to be used in a sensitive and appropriate manner, five blogs for each of the victims were created within just two days of the crash. \nPosts began to appear immediately on the pages, ranging from close family members, classmates and even people who had never met the victims in person. Currently there has been an average of approximately 50 posts for each blog. \nGraduate student Greg Brookes, who was a roommate of the late Chris Carducci and close friends with three of the other victims, said he has read every entry to each blog, totaling over 250 posts. Hart asked Brookes to moderate Carducci's blog, and after finding the relative ease of his task, he took on the role of moderating all blogs. \n"The blog submissions are wonderful," Brookes said. "Some are funny, others are poignant, some break your heart, but they are all so meaningful. In this way, they allow us to contribute to a community of family and friends who are all committed to keeping the memory of our five friends alive."\nJunior Steven Eddy said that even though he didn't know any of the five personally, he knew Robert Samels as his ear training teacher this fall and felt compelled to submit a post in the days following the crash. \n"He was one of our favorite teachers, so I felt it would be nice to express my impressions and memories of him on his blog," Eddy said. "Writing that entry helped me to realize how much he had taught me not only about music, but life as well, and that I should treasure the memories that he gave all of us."\nOne of the added benefits of the blogs is that it allows people from outside Bloomington an opportunity to mourn with others. \n"I had to leave Bloomington directly after the accident, so it gave me a link to people who were in the same state of shock and mourning as I was," said graduate student Jamie Barton. "(Reading other's comments made me feel) sad, happy, nostalgic ... as stupid as it sounds, it's nice to know that others miss them as much as I do."\nBrookes said he does not expect the posts to stop coming anytime soon. He believes that for some of the people closest to those who were lost it will take some time before they are able to write a blog entry. He added that he is just now finishing his post to Carducci's blog. \nBarker and Brookes both said that they have received nothing but positive feedback from the public and the families of the victims, as they have said it has helped them grieve and properly remember their loved ones.\n"The site is a giving opportunity," Barker said. "Reading through the wide spectrum of responses -- the very touching, very funny and sometimes very beautiful words about the five of them -- paints a very accurate picture of them and what they were to us"