Since the tragic death of Cody Lavender '10 during his term abroad in Scotland last year, close friends and mentors have mourned the loss of an honest and caring student whom they described as truly passionate about social activism and his studies at the College.
Early the morning of December 14, 2008, Lavender fell from the fourth-floor balcony of one of the residence halls at the University of Edinburgh, where he had been studying on the College's religion foreign study program. He died from his injuries at the scene. Students on the FSP reacted to his death, which was deemed an accident, with shock and initial confusion.
"He was one of the most effervescent and loving people that I've ever known," Jordan Osserman '11, a close friend of Lavender said. "He really cared a lot about his friends at Dartmouth."
Lavender, a 20-year-old native of Tucson, Ariz., was known for his social activism on campus and involvement with the gay community. As co-chair of Gender Sexuality XYZ, formerly the Gay-Straight Alliance, he worked to identify issues and raise awareness concerning gay rights, according to his friends.
"He was the driving force behind a lot of what GSX did," Ben Solomon '10, a friend of Lavender's, said. "He could identify a process that was repeating itself and really pushed people to look at their position and forced us to see how in some ways we were being exactly like the people who hated us so much."
In Spring 2008, Lavender took Professor Ivy Schweitzer's course on Contemporary Issues in Feminism. Schweitzer, who teaches English and Women and Gender Studies, said that Lavender's passion for social activism was evident in her class.
"He had a special concern with power and empowerment," Schweitzer said. "Cody was an interrogative student he did not want to take the general consensus and was not content with the way things were on the surface. He wanted to understand things from a practical activist's perspective. He wanted to close that circle of theory and practice."
Professor of Women and Gender Studies Michael Bronski agreed that Lavender was passionate about his academic work at the College.
"He really had an enormous amount of enthusiasm about his life and his studies," Bronski said. "He did not have a blas attitude about anything."
Schweitzer chose Lavender as her presidential scholar and worked with him throughout the summer of 2008 on their research project, which entailed digitizing the letters and documents by or about Samson Occom, an important 18th century Native American writer.
"Cody's death was a loss for Dartmouth," Schweitzer said. "He was a public intellectual and a public spokesperson and I think he would have been an outspoken leader of his class."
In addition to his studies and work with GSX, Lavender served on the staff of Aporia, the College's undergraduate philosophy journal.
Osserman, a regular columnist for The Dartmouth, wrote a column expressing his reaction to Lavender's death one month after the tragedy. In the opinion piece, Osserman reflected on Lavender as an individual who changed Osserman's life and experiences at Dartmouth.
Osserman noted that while in Scotland, Lavender organized a congregation at the U.S. Consulate to protest the passages of California's Proposition 8, a referendum to eliminate same-sex marriage. This event, Osserman explained, exemplified Lavender's unique desire to effect social change.
"A friend of mine who was studying with Cody told me that he stood up to a class of near strangers to recruit supporters, championing his cause without any hesitation or fear of homophobic backlash," Osserman wrote. "It was the type of fearlessness in Cody that I both admired and envied. Cody didn't just talk about liberation he strived to live it everyday."
Osserman said it was initially difficult for him to come to terms with his death.
"Writing the piece [for The Dartmouth] was cathartic for me especially since I was on a [language study abroad program] the term after he died," Osserman said. "It helped to talk a lot about him with our friends."
Solomon described Lavender as someone he could always trust to be supportive and listen to issues of a personal or sensitive nature.
"He used to say don't be so Protestant,' which meant that I needed to relax because I had a Protestant work ethic," Solomon said. "He taught me that work for the sake of work is pointless you need to have a goal."
Solomon noted that he had been talking on Skype with Lavender about three hours before his death.
"We were talking about getting an apartment above Murphy's," Solomon said. "He was the one organizing it all. He was always the doer."
Solomon said that if Lavender were still alive, Solomon's life would probably be very different due to the continuing advice he would have received from his friend. At the same time, Lavender's death has caused him to be more intimately involved in GSX and issues of gay activism than he would have otherwise.
"Before he died I didn't really realize that he was the only one doing that," Solomon said. "He was a leader in life. And in death he was inspired people to do great things, to take responsibility."
Both Solomon and Osserman stressed Lavender's compassion and his ambitious and optimistic spirit.
"He would know when someone felt alone he was very perceptive in that way," Solomon said about Lavender. "He always knew where to direct empathy."
