As students return to campus this weekend, busying themselves with buying new textbooks, greeting old classmates and decorating new rooms, many of them will have their excitement tempered by the realization that one or more of their close friends are forever absent.
Georgetown’s faculty and student body were dismayed at hearing news of the deaths of three students – a rising sophomore, junior and senior – through illness and accidents, the largest number of GU student deaths during any summer in recent years.
Matthew Navien, a rising sophomore in the School of Foreign Service, was killed in June after a car swerved into oncoming highway traffic near North Andover, Mass., striking his vehicle. Paul D. Mscisz, the other driver, was arrested shortly afterward on manslaughter charges, and is currently awaiting a hearing to determine whether he will face trial in Massachusetts Superior Court.
Investigators declined to discuss whether alcohol was a factor in the accident, but police officers attempting to interview Mscisz shortly after the crash said they detected an odor of alcohol on his person. Witnesses also described Mscisz’s driving before the accident as erratic.
Lydia Ngonyi, a rising senior in the School of Nursing and Health Studies, died in July after a long struggle with lymphoma. Ngonyi, who had planned to become a physician and travel to Africa to help AIDS victims, was forced to take a leave of absence from Georgetown last fall after her illness was diagnosed.
Sumer Alvarez, a rising junior in the College, died in late July in an electrical accident in India, where she was spending her summer tutoring rural children in English. Alvarez fell off a raised platform in a hotel nightclub in Jaipur, the capital of Rajashthan state in northern India, striking an air cooling unit and receiving a strong electrical shock.
Administrators in the university’s dean’s offices say they are planning memorials for the students to be held early this fall.
THE HOYA is profiling each of the three students who died this summer, as well as the events surrounding their deaths, in three articles in this issue.
