Grief Doesn’t Stop at the Classroom Door
A personal account of loss during college and how it led to research and advocacy for bereavement leave and compassionate support in higher education.
By Red Douglas, Evermore’s Manager of Higher Education Initiatives
“Oh, you’re that grief guy!”
“I am,” I answered politely with a smile as I scanned the rolodex of familiar faces in my mind to find a match. I couldn’t quite place her. Sensing my hesitation, she filled the void. You gave a presentation on grief at our neuroscience club meeting last year. As we walked through the door I was holding, she wished me a good day and headed right, while I went left.
The grief guy, I laughed to myself – what a way to be known around campus! But almost as quickly as the thought came to me, it evaporated. It actually made perfect sense and I wasn’t in the slightest offended. Grief has touched so many parts of my life and is so entwined with my personal story; it is indeed an indelible aspect of my identity.
Becoming “The Grief Guy” on Campus
Did I think I’d make a career out of studying grief? No. Although I’d venture to say most of us who do study death and related phenomena like grief, bereavement, and mourning do not necessarily aspire to become experts in them. Instead, death has a funny way of finding us. And often, it introduces itself to us in poorly timed and unexpected ways; my story is no exception.
About a month out from being the first in my family to graduate from college, my dad choked on his food and died in his car while he was leaving a fast-food drive-through. My mom panicked when he didn’t come home, but, as is protocol in most jurisdictions, being gone for a couple of hours wasn’t long enough to warrant serious concern from the police. When a neighborhood teen found him in the parking lot of the fast-food restaurant he’d been leaving, there was one bite out of his sandwich and a full, melted milkshake in the cup holder. The police and coroner estimated he’d been there over twelve hours.
In the days that followed, an overwhelming checklist took priority as my siblings and I scrambled to help my mom make phone calls to family members and friends, visits to bankers and government offices, and put together photo boards and funeral arrangements. Suffice to say, at 22 years young, there was a lot on my mind. But do you know what was not on my mind? School.
Trying to Be a Student While Grieving
The more I learned about death, the more I realized it was crazy complicated. Not only was dying wildly expensive, it was time intensive on one’s family. How on earth, I wondered, would a college student handle all of the complexities inherent of parental death AND still successfully be a college student? It seemed impossible. I was grateful my dad had died at the end of my last semester in college – if one can be grateful for such a thing – but what about students who weren’t so fortunate, I pondered? I couldn’t imagine juggling the task list while also writing essays, attending classes, and taking exams. Even in the remaining classes I did have to sit through as a senior with one foot out the door, information retention was understandably at an all-time low. How could someone focus on a lecture with so many emotions and distractions flooding their mind?
The Hidden Complexity of Death and Bereavement
As it turns out, several others had wondered the same. In fact, I quickly learned there was an entire field of study dedicated to these very questions, among others. Little did I know at the time that a simple Google Scholar query, “college students and bereavement,” would introduce me to a phenomenon I’d go on to spend over 2,500 hours studying as a doctoral student.
After that initial Google Scholar search, I became immersed in a newfound passion, consuming as much as I could on the topic. Familiar names I cited in my doctoral research became newfound icons whose studies inspired me, shaping my empirical understanding of college student grief and bereavement.
Do Colleges Support Bereaved Students?
My appreciation for the hardships bereaved students endure is grounded in the understanding that, in many ways, the notion of death and final endings is at odds with the college campus, which centers on our futures (and some fun). More often than not, this makes the death experience inherently isolating for students — it shouldn’t be so.
When my dad died, I truly felt no one my age would understand or appreciate the grief that followed such a monumental loss. During those early years of my doctoral studies, I began reading decades of studies that suggested roughly 25–30% of college students experience the death of a loved one within a year, and 40–50% within two years. To say I was shocked would be an understatement.
Even more shocking was the fact that despite the fact that a large number of students experience death loss, there were very few formal supports available to bereaved students on campuses, regardless of size, geographic location, or affiliation. Public or private, large or small, a robust infrastructure for meeting the needs of grieving students simply did not seem to exist.
For instance, staggeringly few institutions of higher education have even the bare-bones minimum: a simple bereavement leave policy in place for students who may need to miss class due to the death of a loved one. Given that such policies are routinely extended to higher education faculty, as well as to K–12 students, the absence of comparable policies in higher education contexts is particularly striking, according to Dr. Heather Servaty-Seib, a leading expert on college student bereavement at Purdue University.
From Research to Advocacy: Finding Evermore
A cold call to Dr. Servaty-Seib, whose work I routinely cited in my own research, graciously led to a connection with Evermore. I soon found myself in the company of many others who shared similar experiences, values, and the desire to advocate for this vulnerable student population. Within the year, we’d launched a nationwide initiative — the Higher Education Leave Plan (HELP) campaign — to promote a higher education environment that is more attuned and responsive to the needs of bereaved students and their families.
The campaign is led by the HELP Committee, an interdisciplinary team of students and professionals who have experience, whether personal or professional, in the phenomenon of college student bereavement.
Our main objectives are to educate the academic community about how grief affects students’ well-being and academic success, advocate for bereavement policies that address the unique challenges of grieving students, and strengthen connections between students, families, faculty, administrators, and resources to provide accessible and compassionate support for bereaved students.
Through a variety of projects, the HELP Committee is dedicated to improving awareness of and support for bereaved students across all higher education settings, including vocational and trade schools, community colleges, colleges, and universities nationwide.
Why Bereavement Support Matters for Student Success
I acknowledge that my journey may be characterized as a meaning-making endeavor by some. Yet, beyond making sense of and navigating my own profound grief, my personal experience has turned me into a fierce advocate for bereaved college students. While I felt my loss isolated me from my peers, I now know it is far more common than many of us realize. I often remind myself that in a classroom of 20 students, five or more of them could have experienced the death of a friend or loved one within the past 12 months.
This reality has serious implications for campus communities — staff, students, faculty, and administrators alike — not only in terms of academic performance, retention, and completion rates, but also with regard to students’ overall well-being and socioemotional development.
Right now, we face a critical moment: scores of college students are grieving in silence, without adequate support, policies, or communities on their campuses. As someone whose life was personally touched by this phenomenon, I feel a strong urgency to change how higher education responds to bereavement, fearing that if we don’t, many will continue to fall through the cracks academically, emotionally, and financially.
If you’ve been impacted by the death of someone you hold dear while affiliated with an institution of higher education, we would love to hear from you. To keep the conversation going and to listen directly to those advocating for and supporting grieving students, our HELP team will host two virtual interest sessions on Tuesday, February 10th, and Tuesday, March 24th. We invite campus leaders, students, and anyone passionate about this work to join us and share their perspectives as we continue to use lived experiences to shape our work.