To some college students, a late homework assignment is a major tragedy. For others it might take as much as a bad grade on a test.

Maybe these things aren’t tragedies in the real world, but making the grade is a college student’s life, right? Well, for those who are absorbed in their tragic world of late homework and lousy tests, we welcome you to a whole new realm of tragedy.

The morning of Feb. 16 saw a house at 355 Augusta Ave., the home of 24 NIU students, destroyed by a fire reportedly caused by bad electrical wiring.

“Everybody lost everything,” said one of the buildings tenants, who had the extreme displeasure of watching his home burn.

Now, that’s a tragedy.

Most students probably have not had to experience a fire and it can’t be something that any student could possibly be prepared for.

All we know is that it is just a very unwelcome experience, and we say that we’re glad it didn’t happen to us. Then we go on with our days.

For this reason, it’s nice to see that this college community did what it could to help 24 people who had their lives turned upside down by tragedy instead of just going on with it’s day.

In a college community that sometimes seems turbulent, it’s nice to see everyone from city administrators to fellow students helping a few of their own.