Service Honors Slain Yale Student

One week after Yale senior Suzanne N. Jovin was murdered, her friends at Yale and around the world are gathering together in their grief.

A memorial service for Jovin was held yesterday in Yale's Battell Chapel. Although closed to the media, friends, family and the Yale community were invited to the service.

On Wednesday night, hundreds of students and faculty remembered Jovin in a half-hour candlelight vigil on Yale's Cross campus.

Her friends and classmates also remembered Jovin in open letters published in Monday in the Yale Daily News, the daily student newspaper.

In the letters, which filled two pages of the paper, people remembered Jovin as kind and caring, optimistic and full of life.

The paper decided to print the two pages of letter because "during a tragic time like this, we bear the responsibility of not only informing our student body but also understanding their needs and being here with them," said the newspaper's Editor-in-Chief, Isaiah Wilner.

"We're giving fair and objective coverage as the paper of record at Yale but we also realize that we provide a service to our readership," Wilner said.

The open letters appeared in addition to an article on the homicide and a feature on Jovin.

Jovin was the third of four daughters of American scientists Donna and Thomas Jovin. She was raised in Goettingen, Germany and was a political science and international relations major at Yale University. She was fluent in Germany, English, French and Spanish and was going to become a citizen of Germany in a year.

Her former classmates at the German Gymnasium in Goettingen have created a Web site in her memory.

John D. Lee, a classmate of Jovin's, got the permission of Yale's Department of Political Science to plant yellow roses in her honor on the department building grounds.

He said the yellow peace rose "epitomized Suzanne, understated but sophisticated and lovely."

"I really only knew Suzanne through class but nevertheless she had one of those radiant personalities, a class of her own," he said. "She was in a lot of ways an oxymoron in the best sense of the word: warmth, but cool, brilliant and outstanding, critical in a friendly way. She always had a straight up answer."

He plans to plant the roses in the early spring and commemorate the site with a plaque. He invites friends to take part.

At Harvard, Winthrop House, the sister house to Davenport College, Jovin's residence, is creating a book to give to her family and to the masters and students of Davenport. The book will be at the checker's desk in the dining hall until Sunday. Students are encouraged to sign their condolences.

Yale has also made many services available to the community to deal with her death and fears about campus safety.

Yale's student counseling group, Mental Hygiene, held open hours for counseling Wednesday and Thursday nights. They also held informal discussions in the residential colleges.