While students prepare to celebrate the end of the year, the UW-Madison Carillon Memorial Bell Tower will play host to a more somber event. The tower's 56 bronze bells will play a concert Thursday in honor of the UW-Madison students who passed away during the 2005-'06 academic year.
The event, organized by the Dean of Students Office, is the first of its kind, according to Interim Dean of Students Lori Berquam.
Berquam said it is important to remember the University's deceased at the close of the year.
I think often a semester goes by and we forget or a year goes by and we forget those who we lost, so I just think it would be important,\ she said.
Thursday's program will commence at 1 p.m. and will include six one-minute pieces, one for each student who passed away during the academic year. Each piece will be followed by a minute of silence, a time for reflection on each student's life, Berquam said.
A longer piece titled ""In Memoriam"" will follow the small pieces, as a conclusion to the program, which is expected to run about 15 minutes.
According to Berquam, the concert represents a ""simple"" memorial to the deceased students and a chance for the friends and classmates they left behind to remember them.
The students being honored are Hannah Claire Means, Christopher David McMahon, Lisa Marie Trafton, Matt Scott Nelson, Tamera Carolyn Anderson, Eric Ryan Passon and Andrew C. Eastman.
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