Remembering Rob Atkinson, Part I

Southwestern student Robert Atkinson was killed a little after 8pm on Dec 4, 2008 while he was crossing University Avenue to get to his house off campus. His death shook the campus at the time, and there are still two memory places on campus devoted to him: one at the site of his death, and one inside the Kappa Sigma house. This entry is about the site of his death.

Rob Atkinson was a senior Philosophy major and peace activist who was in the process of applying to public policy grad schools when he died in 2008. He was highly involved in campus life with his fraternity, Kappa Sigma, as well as SU Native, the Theater for Social Justice group, and the Student Peace Alliance. He also was the national legislative director for Student Peace Alliance, and in that role was actively working to create a cabinet-level U.S. Department of Peace.

I was teaching Film Studies as a once-a-week night class in Olin that Thursday night, and we all heard the sirens when it happened. Hearing sirens coming from University Avenue during class is not an unusual event, but having them stay in one place near campus is.

During our scheduled discussion break, we looked outside and the whole campus seemed to be flashing red and blue, so we walked over to see what was going on. A small crowd had formed, passing information along in hushed voices as we looked on in shock at the scene. We never resumed class.

The afternoon after the accident, I joined over 200 students, faculty, and staff gathered in the McCombs Ballrooms to mourn his loss. There were also other memorial events for Atkinson on campus—a private memorial with close friends in the Howry Center later that week, multiple gatherings at the Kappa Sigma house, including “Rob Weekend” the weekend after his death, and a public memorial service held a month later in the Lois Perkins Chapel.

Because the driver of the car that hit Atkinson was another Southwestern student from another fraternity, all of the campus-wide events held in honor of Atkinson were focused not only on mourning Atkinson but also helping the driver cope with what they had done. What struck me most about those memorial events was that while many who knew Atkinson were justifiably angry towards the driver and there was certainly tension between the two fraternities, many people present at the events invoked Atkinson's commitment to peace as they advocated for empathy for both people involved in the crash.

In addition to these memorial services, two spontaneous shrines emerged on campus almost immediately. One was at the site of the accident and one was on the porch of the Kappa Sigma House. And because I study roadside car crash shrines, I felt compelled to photograph both sites on December 9, 2008.

At the shrine at the accident site, someone provided sidewalk chalk, and people wrote messages up and down the sidewalk, including Atkinson’s parents.

In addition to the shrine, the police investigation left a mark at the crash site as well: a spray-painted circle indicating the point of impact. That circle with a cross through it looked simultaneously ordinary and poignant.

It is revealing that all of the messages written on the sidewalk in chalk where written while the mourners faced South, away from campus, meaning that the people writing them did so while being fully anchored on campus. More metaphorically, it indicates that the messages to Atkinson were written from the perspective of people experiencing this trauma as members of the Southwestern community, together and alone, as they were looking out towards the point of impact where Atkinson was killed.

Both spontaneous shrines and the painted impact point are long gone, but there is a more subtle way that the place where Atkinson died continues to remember his death. Soon after his death, a crosswalk and set of streetlights was installed at the intersection. For me, those safety measures now form a kind of material afterlife for Rob Atkinson. My hope is that this set of photographs and rephotographs will help you see this memory place that way, too.

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