"twenty; nineteen"

Read this "today" and got a bit upset, sad really. "How can something written so blandly envoke any sort of emotion in you, jonathan?" I don't know, maybe that's exactly why. Everything's just a newsclip with a twist. But when you break free from the impersonalization of the media towards life and death, it's more like you're stopping, keeping yourself from being pushed forward past everything that means anything towards, what turns out to be, an imagined something. Hence, the "mid-life crisis". I'm not meaning to condemn these people in this story. Just the story on a whole gave me pause. Sigh...

Student Dies Giving Birth in a Dorm

By Cathryn Conroy, CompuServe News Editor

Karen Marie Hubbard was only 19. She was a college freshman who had the highest grade-point average in her high school graduating class. She played basketball, softball, and the bassoon. She wanted to become a pharmacist. She was one of 10 children from a Wisconsin dairy farm family. She was Roman Catholic. And she was pregnant. She didn't want anyone to know that and hid it--very well. No one knows why she did this, but when her labor began, she went into a bathroom stall of her all-female dormitory at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. Although she was sprawled on the floor, other women in the dorm did nothing to help her, thinking she was ill. They just stepped over her as they came and went. Finally, a resident assistant found Hubbard, realized she wasn't breathing and had no pulse, and called the rescue squad.

Although Hubbard was pronounced dead at Eau Claire hospital Tuesday night, her infant daughter survived the ordeal. The full-term baby is in critical condition. Defending the conduct of the students, University of Wisconsin housing director Charles Major told Reuters, "None of them were aware she was pregnant. Her roommate, who was from the same hometown, she didn't know. We just wish that the girl could've cried out for help at some point in time. Maybe this could've been avoided."