UW-Madison community members joined classmates and family members of Brittany Zimmermann at a memorial vigil Sunday to remember a woman who was always smiling.""
""Tonight will serve as a reminder to her friends and family that she was part of our family also. She was a peer, a classmate, a neighbor,"" Union President John Barnhardt said. ""Tonight will also provide our campus for the chance to rebuild, to reunite, to join hands as one family, one school.""
""Please keep all of Brittany's family in your thoughts and prayers as they struggle with the meaning of it all.""
Members of Brittany's family and classmates said she would be remembered for her smile, as someone who was always laughing and who was warm and kind.
Attendees were asked to sign a Wisconsin flag Dean of Students Lori Berquam said would be sent to Brittany's family.
""This is obviously a tragedy that has really impacted us as a campus and us as a community,"" Berquam said. ""We need to keep the light of Brittany alive.""
""We probably all know about ourselves that it could have been any one of us that this happened to - it happened to Brittany. She will be missed here.""
Provost Patrick Farrell, Mayor Dave Cieslewicz, Alders Mike Verveer and Eli Judge, as well as many other campus officials paid their respects at the vigil.
""This is a time for us to come together to honor a young woman who was only starting,"" Berquam said. ""We don't know what she could have done in her life, we have no idea, but the world was robbed of someone who could have been an amazing leader, a gifted woman, a gifted community member.""
Associated Students of Madison Chair Gestina Sewell stressed the importance of recognizing the unifying power of UW-Madison.
""It is important that in the wake of such a tragic loss of one of our own that we come together as one to help one another,"" Sewell said. ""We say countless times we are Badgers, but what it means is we're a family.
