rest in peace jasmine lynn.

the night before last, one of my spelman sisters, jasmine lynn, stepped out onto the infamous CAU promenade, not knowing or realizing that a few minutes later she would be struck by a stray bullet from the gun of an idiot. why ? why is it that we can not visit our friends in our AUC community ? why did an innocent 19 year old girl have to die in order for atlanta police to get a wake up call ? my prayers go out to her family and friends at spelman and in kansas city. i can't imagine waking up at 2 am and receiving a phone call that your daughter, who you just dropped off at school two weeks ago to begin her sophomore year, is gone. even as i am writing this, tears fill my eyes because i can't imagine the pain that her friends and family are experiencing at this very moment. they trusted spelman to take care of their child and within a blink of an eye, she's no longer on earth with us. i didn't know her personally, but from what i hear and from what i've seen, she was a fun-loving, outgoing, spelmanite who's life ended wayyy too soon.

sometimes we ask God, why he takes our youth away from us so suddenly ? death is something that everyone has to face but why so soon and abruptly ? i think God was telling us to wake up and realize that tomorrow is never promised. be thankful for all of our blessings. never take life or friendship for granted. if you love someone, tell them every chance that you get. on top of that, we need to do something about this community that we are living in. we come to school to become doctors, lawyers, politicians, teachers so how are we going to begin to prepare to help the african american community ?

what will it take ? how many more deaths or shootings or robberies will have to occur around here for somebody to get the picture ? jasmine lynn was not the first but she should definitely be the last.

you come to school to get away from crime and ignorance, to better yourself so that you won't have to deal with violence, to be able to escape the statistics, only to have it staring you in the face no matter how far you go. that's the scariest thing for me - knowing that no matter what you do, you can' get away from it.

rest in peace jasmine lynn c/o 2012.