It’s always tragic when any life is lost, but it’s especially tragic when that life is taken earlier than its time.

Such is true with the car accident that took three lives, two of which were NIU students’, in Chicago on March 14. Family and friends of Tommy Young Choi and Cindy Young Kim – the NIU students – as well as Purdue student Karen Chiang, will forever be affected by the untimely deaths.

For NIU President John Peters to express remorse and commit the university to assist with counseling the students’ loved ones and set up an open mic night for friends to celebrate and mourn the young lives is admirable. However, what makes one life more important than another?

In January, Amy Weber, a freshman hospitality administration major, was killed in a similar crash in Genoa. But after her death, there were no written statements of sympathy, no open mic session set up by NIU Student Affairs and no university-sponsored counseling.

When Brittnii Sutton, a general studies major, was struck and killed in a hit-and-run accident last semester, the NIU administration remained silent. Or what about Patrick Stokes? The NIU student who was studying in NIU’s school of family, consumer and nutrition sciences, was shot and killed in the fall when he went home to convince his sister and cousin to stay in school.

We can go on. Tragically, students die every semester at NIU, but rarely do they get the sort of attention Kim and Chiang are receiving from the university.

It’s unfair for the friends and family of Weber, Sutton, Stokes – who, like Choi and Chiang, were involved in their communities – and other students who have lost their lives in recent years to see the university’s preferential treatment toward Choi and Chiang simply because of prominent Chicago media coverage.

The NIU administration wants to show its compassion, but it seems disingenuous, unless Choi and Chiang’s deaths are meant to serve as precedent for future university protocol – which, given the lack of attention to past student deaths, seems unlikely.

We don’t condemn NIU for showing compassion during times of tragedy, but we do condemn the inconsistent treatment of NIU students.

All untimely deaths are tragic – not just ones NIU chooses to recognize.