College comes to grips with student’s death
Gloria Discerni’s parents dropped her off at North Idaho College when school started in August.
The next time they saw their daughter, she was in a coma at Kootenai Medical Center, the victim of an apparent LSD overdose. The 18-year-old freshman from Cottage Grove, Ore., died Friday after she was taken off life support.
College Vice President Bruce Gifford said Discerni’s parents asked her friends and roommates for pictures, notes and anything that might tell them more about their daughter’s life at NIC. Her father visited her dorm room, Gifford said, using his camera phone to snap pictures of a stuffed Sesame Street doll and of her room, just the way she’d left it.
It was a poignant moment, Gifford told NIC employees gathered for an informational meeting Tuesday afternoon.
“Here was a person’s life,” he said.
Discerni’s father also visited the apartment just blocks from campus where his daughter last week reportedly drank a glass of orange juice mixed with LSD, Gifford said.
The informational session in the Student Union Building was designed to answer questions anyone might have about the overdose, the death, the grieving and the drugs. Another NIC student, 18-year-old Cameron Jester of Lincoln, Neb., may be facing manslaughter charges for allegedly supplying the drugs during a party at the River Avenue Apartments.
Both students lived on campus in the residence hall.
Most people who attended Tuesday’s session were members of the college’s Crisis Response Team. A couple of NIC employees came because they wanted to know the facts so they could answer questions students might ask them. A reporter for the college paper was the only student to attend.
Linda Michal of Student Health Services said the college likely had already responded to most of the students who were affected by Discerni’s death. Counselors and members of the Crisis Response Team visited Discerni’s friends and family at the hospital last week and held meetings at the dorm to tell students what was happening and that counseling was available.
Since Discerni’s death, Michal said, the response from students has varied.
“People that were close to her are pretty devastated,” Michal said. “They’re pretty sad. There are a variety of students who are pretty angry about any variety of issues.”
Discerni’s parents had poster boards at the hospital and asked friends to write about her, Michal said.
“People talked about her being happy and having a great smile and trying to help people out,” she said.
Gifford said the college community is not only dealing with Discerni’s death, but also the fact that one of her classmates is facing criminal charges in connection with her death.
“There are really two tragedies here,” he said. “There are two families feeling a great deal of sorrow.”
Students are feeling sadness for Discerni, but also are concerned about Jester, Gifford said. He’s in the Kootenai County Jail, reportedly under suicide watch.
“From what people have said, he isn’t a bad kid,” Gifford said. “He made some bad choices.”
Counselor Katie Kelso said she was concerned about the conclusions people might draw about Discerni because she died the way she did.
“I’ve asked her friends, tell me something about her,” Kelso said. The words friends used to describe Discerni were consistent, Kelso said. They told her Discerni was intelligent, smiling. Friends said she often stayed up late studying.
“Obviously, this girl was somebody who could have been something,” Kelso said.
Instructor Tim Christie said the 200 students in the residence hall felt like they lost a part of their family when Discerni died.
Christie said the campus of 4,000 lost two students in the wake of last week’s tragedy.
The loss has a ripple effect, he said, and is noticed by those who lived with Discerni, but also by those who sat next to her in class or were friends and even those who didn’t know her.
Christie said he’s lost students before.
There’s a profound silence, he said, when an instructor takes roll and skips over the name of a lost classmate.