One week after Cheltenham teen Jacob Marberger was buried, his college revealed a task force will be formed to review the culture on campus. Marberger's suicide prompted accusations of bullying and harassment.
In a letter to students in the school's newspaper, Washington College President Sheila Bair said in order to truly honor Jacob, the college community needed to learn and grow:
"That is why I have decided to convene a Task Force comprised of administration, faculty, students, alumni, and outside experts to evaluate the adequacy of our policies in protecting our culture of mutual respect, trust, and support and the feeling of safety for all of our students. And I would like the work of this task force to include a review of the impact of social media and anonymous messages on our culture."
Marberger, a sophomore at the college, shot himself to death after a six-week spate of tumultuous events which began when Jacob made a sexual harassment report against two other students who were then forced to step down from their student government jobs. That upset a handful of other students who friends say verbally and physically made Jacob — a kid whose father described as always striving for acceptance — feel persecuted. One night he got drunk and waved an unloaded gun from his antique collection at fraternity brothers, which got him kicked out of Phi Delta Theta and temporarily suspended from school.
Marberger’s tipping point came a week after he was allowed to return to campus when fellow students began talking about him on Yik Yak, an app where people can post anonymously. The conversation about Jacob got really ugly. That same Sunday night, he resigned his coveted student government post, left the small liberal arts school abruptly, drove up from Chestertown, Maryland to Cheltenham Township in Pennsylvania, sneaked a gun out of his parents’ home while they slept and vanished.
His disappearance — with a gun, after being socially ostracized — was alarming enough to shut the college down for two full weeks. Jacob’s body was found the Saturday before Thanksgiving in a famous bird sanctuary in Berks County, Pa.
“As a mother, I cannot imagine the indescribable grief Jacob Marberger’s parents must be going through; my heart aches for them,” President Bair said in her letter to students Thursday. She encouraged them to email their confidential suggestions or recommendations for the new task force to taskforce@washcoll.edu.
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The college hired an outside crisis management firm to help the school caretake its image and to help students who returned this week, move forward.
Along with the president’s task force announcement, the school newspaper also posted the eulogy Dr. Joseph Prod’homme gave last week at Marberger’s funeral:
"A model scholar whose mind was brighter, whose wit sharper, whose love of learning more unshakable than any I have known in 15 years as a college professor. I pray all my students this day and every day would be just like Jacob: would have that softness that endeared him to his fellow students; would have that rapier intellect that would let not a single solecism or sloppy syllogism rest unchallenged; would be as decent, as kind, and as loving to their core."
You can read the rest of the eulogy here and President Bair’s letter, here.
