By Caitlin Coyle

Seven students were soaked with rain as they took off their coats and walked inside the windowless room. They look defeated, but not just from the downpour. Every week, they come together to discuss the pain of losing a loved one. Their grief fuels the cold walk through the rain to a quiet place tucked away from the rest of campus, in the University Health and Counseling Services (UHCS) building.

For an hour, they sit in chairs angled around a box of tissues and a rose centerpiece. The students listen and watch through blurry eyes as one of their peers gets ready to tell her story.

“Whenever you’re ready,” said Diane Hansen, a grief counselor from UHCS, looking at Jenny Piccolo.

Piccolo, a middler pharmacy major, lost her father to cancer. She begins to speak, but keeps her hands tucked between her legs. Her fists are tight and her body, aside from the rapid tapping of her foot, is stiff.

“I was always the closest to my father,” she said. “He understood me more than anyone else in my family. And now I feel out of place in my own house.”

Between the cracks in Piccolo’s voice and her unfinished sentences, Liz Andrews, a sophomore photography major, reaches out to hand her a tissue.

“This is the worst pain I have ever felt, and I have no one who understands me. … I don’t even know what to do with these intense emotions,” Piccolo said, and bites the right side of her lip to fight her tears.

Piccolo is one of countless college students who have struggled through loss while dealing with a semester of college responsibilities, when waking up in the morning, attending class and completing assignments no longer seems as important as dealing with bereavement.

Throughout this challenge, grieving students have come to rely on more than their counselors for support. In the college setting, the help of professors and peer groups play a significant role in the recovery process.

In the counseling room, the rest of the group sits in near silence until Corie Scibelli, a sophomore transfer student majoring in American Sign Language, speaks up.

Last April, 18-year-old Dana Flax – one of Scibelli’s best friend from her hometown of Rochester, N.Y. – was struck by a car and killed.

This spring, she was forced to cope with the sudden death, and though she hasn’t yet recovered from the shock, she has found comfort in Andrews, who also attends meetings with Hansen’s group and who was close friends with Flax.

“I don’t know what I would have done without Liz,” Scibelli said. “And, had my professors not been understanding at Rochester Institution of Technology, I would not have been able to finish my last semester at that school.”

The challenge of course expectations can hit grieving students the hardest during the week immediately following the loss of a loved one, said Tom Frantz, a grief expert and the chair of the department of counseling and educational psychology at the University of Buffalo, N.Y.

While many students may appear to be handling their sadness appropriately, Frantz said most are operating with a different state of mind. After a traumatic experience, individuals have trouble managing course work and other daily activities as a result of their emotional and less directed mindset.

“When you’re going through grief you are operating at a different conscious level,” he said. “The emotional level of thinking pulls [students] away from a cognitive – more organized and motivated – conscious level.”

As a result, most students have a tough time prioritizing which is more important: their own mental health or schoolwork. “I can tell you that in the first week, you don’t remember anything. It is the worst time to have a final test or paper,” said Lauren Gorgol, who’s younger brother died when she was in high school.

For the freshman physical therapy major, the greatest challenge this semester has been trying to convince professors she is still struggling with the loss; though he died three years ago, her sadness hasn’t gone away, she said.

“Somehow everything relates back to him,” she said. “I try to focus, but can’t.”

Staying focused on academics and work while grieving can be one of the most daunting tasks for students, because reminiscent thoughts are often present and even the smallest things can trigger an onslaught of memories.

It has been eight months since Scibelli’s friend died, and she still feels anxious while crossing the street, she said.

“I’m thinking, where is that car going to go? I am worried about anybody who is crossing the street anywhere,” she said.

Scibelli said she feels Flax’s death – unfair and abrupt – everywhere.

“I came across letters [from her] the other day,” Scibelli said. “When I was reading them, I was like, why is this person who has touched these letters, and held these things not here?”

Immediately after Flax’s death, Scibelli told her professors about the situation and she said they offered her condolences and some time off – she would be grieving, but also attending memorial and funeral services.

It is critical that professors and universities allow students to participate in such rituals, said Jenny Davis-Berman, a social worker and professor of social work at the University of Dayton, Ohio.

When it comes to her own students, the professor is willing to make any accommodations necessary to ease the path through despair.

“You have to acknowledge the grief,” she said.

At first glance, no one can tell Corinna Lander lost her mother only a couple of months ago. Her sadness hides behind her long curly hair, black-rimmed glasses and calm expression. But Lander, an undecided major in her second year, has had to alter her course load to successfully make it through her sophomore year.

“I ended up dropping down to two classes because [anything more] was too much to handle,” she said.

The schedule change has helped Lander cope with the combined stresses of college and losing a parent, and has allowed her to manage her personal and educational priorities more easily, she said.

Other students, like Jason Tate, a middler linguistics major, have been reluctant to modify their college schedules to better suit their healing processes. Tate has experienced the death of four immediate family members in the past five years.

“I’ll always worry they won’t give me any [extension],” he said, “but then I know I’ll start abusing it if they are too nice about it.”

When Tate’s grandmother died last October, he didn’t express the severity of his loss to his professors. In retrospect, he wishes he had – then, maybe he wouldn’t have struggled as much in the last few weeks of the semester.

Chet Bowen, a residential life coordinator at Northeastern with a degree in counseling psychology, said students should speak up when they hit a rough patch that might put a strain on their academic performance.

“Unless there is something that sticks out, like multiple absences,” he said, “it may take a professor a little while to notice that there is a problem.”

In recent years, Northeastern has made a strong effort to better accommodate students who are suffering with grief. UHCS has provided students with counselors and, most recently, introduced group counseling sessions. UHCS has also established the “We Care Team,” a coalition of peer leaders that work with the university police, the housing department, counseling and faculty to establish a support system for students in crisis, said Almal Shumar, a student coordinator who represents the program.

“We are the middle person between the student and the various types of academic affairs,” Shumar said.

She said the mission of “We Care” is to help make tragic life events more manageable for students. With her open-door policy, Shumar said it’s rare that a student will go without assistance.

“If a student finds his or her grief is unyielding, and completely immobilizing, he or she needs to seek professional help,” said grief expert Julie Yingling.

Yingling, a professor emerita at Humboldt State University in Arcata, Calif., specializes in the process of grieving before and after death. Within the process of bereavement, she said, support from a university’s faculty and peers can be significantly helpful.

Northeastern’s campus is equipped with a lattice of peer leaders and residential life staff who have been trained to deal with emotional situations like death. Bowen, who is responsible for training the peer leaders, said the program’s greatest strength is its accessibility.

“Anytime they need clarification, peer leaders are a group of students who are out there in our community,” she said. “Having that on campus is invaluable.”

Coping with the loss of a loved one can seem impossible at times, but with university outreach that allows students the time they need to heal and connect with others experiencing grief, the pressures of ‘healing can start to decrease, said Paul Wink, a psychology professor at Wellesley College. He stressed the positive effect of honest and open dialogue.

“Administrators should not ignore [grief],” he said. “They must give students the opportunity to talk, but not force it.”

Making counseling sessions and other support systems available to students has had a positive impact on those struggling, and while healing doesn’t happen overnight, counselors, students and professors have the ability to help grieving students recover from their melancholy.

For Northeastern students who are coping with loss, outside support has had the most positive impact.

In the room in UHCS, the seven students prepare to end their session. They’ll meet here again next week, and for each of them, the promise of comfort and support is the light at the end of a long and often lonely tunnel.

“I will never get over Dana’s death,” Scibelli said. “But I will get through it.”