Contributed
Residents of Chancellor Hall, the University of the West Indies, at a vigil held on Friday night, in honour of three students who were killed in a car accident in St Mary last week. The two male students were residents of Chancellor Hall.

Andrew Wildes, Sunday Gleaner Writer

THE ABNORMAL circumstances under which seven male students living on Chancellor Hall at the University of the West Indies have died over the last six years have left an eerie feeling among members of the hall community and have proven that 'truth is definitely stranger than fiction!'

How is it possible that every year, for the past six years, young men from Chancellor Hall, usually in pairs, a week or two before their graduation, die in a motor-vehicular accident? That is the question being asked by students and staff on Chancellor Hall and around the university campus as they deal with the most recent accident that claimed the lives of three students in St Mary, last week.

The deaths have occurred as follows: in October 2004, both Ricardo 'Jigga' Harris and Damion 'Chisel' Powell; in June 2006, Steve Bailey; in January 2007, Sadique 'Softman' Munroe, and in 2008, Jemile Fung-Chong and Andy Lopez. Lopez was an executive member of the university's guild of students. Another young man, who seems only to be known as 'Arobac', was killed in a motorbike accident in Montego Bay in 2005.

The other student who died over that period did not die as a result of a motor vehicle accident, but did not escape a tragic death. He was shot and killed in his home in December 2007.

Passionate expressions

"Mi think we need some prayer warriors over here to get the spirit of death off this campus!" was the passionate expression of an evidently disturbed Shirley Harrison-Smith, a member of the hall's administration staff. Smith, who seems to have known all the young men, was not one to mince her words when discussing the situation.

"I don't think it is natural that they die in pair as always. I don't think it is natural, I just don't think it's natural at all!" she said.

Her sentiments were echoed by others, including Deandra Butler, a second-year student at the Norman Manley Law School.

"I think it's very strange ... . I think it's a very peculiar happening that every year two Chancellorites are reported dead ... . That doesn't happen anywhere else - on no other hall!"

Drinking a problem

On the other hand, Student Services Manager Michael A. Clarke, who, while expressing his sadness at the loss of lives over the years, was careful to highlight a more pragmatic side to the story.

"It is uncanny! It's very uncanny, but from the perspective of this office, one could say that some of these things are learnt based on cultural 'misguidance' that has a mindset on the hall ... like drink-ups," he said.

"It's not particular to UWI, but a collegiate phenomenon all over the world where college students indulge in some social practices that lead to all kinds of problems.

"What transpired over the weekend is, I am told, as a result of some degree of intoxication and it is very unfortunate."

At approximately 3:30 a.m. last Monday morning, the students, who were travelling in a 2004 Mitsubishi motor car from a stage show at Richmond Estate in Runaway Bay, St Ann, lost control of the car, which then smashed into the guard rails of the Rio Nuevo Bridge before bursting into flames.