Silence, not cliches, best for expressing emotion after tragedy

It seems that horrific events like those of last Tuesday often spawn the most unpredictable… It seems that horrific events like those of last Tuesday often spawn the most unpredictable responses. The response that surprised me the most occurred last Friday at Carnegie Mellon’s fraternity quadrangle.

I was at my boyfriend’s fraternity that evening for pledge night, the night rush ends and all the fraternities welcome their new pledges to their houses. Generally, pledge night involves a dinner at the house, an initiation ritual and lots of drinking: Basically, all the stereotypical fraternity behaviors.

But this year, pledge night was different.

After dinner, all the pledges, brothers and guests of the houses gathered on their porches for a moment of silence. Everyone lit candles, and for the first time I can remember, the entire quad was silent.

It proved a dramatic contrast to just a few hours earlier when the same porches had been full of brothers screaming their respective house’s chant and yelling to greet pledges. I had seen guys