Lofty Aspirations, Bitter Fate: Two Lives Cross

They seemed, on the surface, like they could have been perfectly compatible roommates.

Both Sinedu Tadesse '96 and Trang Phoung Ho '96 were two of Dunster House's quietest residents, foreign-born students and biology concentrators.

And both wanted to become doctors. Tadasse dreamed of returning to Ethiopia to provide medical assistance, and Ho hoped to become a pediatrician helping the Vietnamese American community.

Friends and neighbors yesterday described both women as calm and studious, stressing how shocked they were that Tadesse could brutally murder the woman she reportedly considered her closest friend at Harvard.

On Sunday morning Tadesse stabbed Ho 45 times with a hunting knife, wounding Ho's visiting friend who tried to intervene, and then hung herself from the shower curtain pole in the bathroom she and Ho shared.

"It would come as less of a surprise to me if [Tadesse] just committed suicide, because since she was always so quiet I could see how she could be depressed," said Nan Zheng '96, who met Tadesse during first-year orientation week and occasionally ate lunch and dinner with her throughout the last three years.

"But to hurt somebody else is what I cannot imagine her doing. I guess she just couldn't take it anymore."

Zheng, who is a Crimson editor, described Tadesse as a loner, "the kind of person who would internalize her feelings."

If Tadesse were depressed, Zheng said, "I don't think she would take the initiative to actually go get help."

Tadesse, who was 20 years old when she died, attended the International Community School (ICS), formerly the American School, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia before coming to Harvard.

There, Tadesse was already known as an exceptional student.

Of the roughly 450 students in the school, which runs from pre-kindergarten to the 12th grade, roughly a third are Ethiopian, Robert F. Ehrenheim, a history teacher at the school said in a telephone interview.

Tadesse was one of six scholarship students admitted annually of a pool of 60 to 70 Ethiopian nationals to attend ICS, according to Maura McMillin, her senior-level English teacher in the school's International Baccalaureate program.

Tadesse was a student leader, serving as president of the student government and on the staff of the yearbook.

She was very much a product of traditional Ethiopian culture, said McMillin in a telephone interview with The Crimson today from Addis Ababa. "Traditionally, women are more quiet, respectful, submissive, the workers in the family," McMillin said. Tadesse "was a prototype, certainly, but outspoken in what she believed in."

McMillin said Tadesse was highly patriotic, dressing up in national dress on United Nations Day.

Of her senior class of about 24 students, she was the second ranked, after Nebiyeleul Tilahun '96, now an Adams House resident concentrating in economics.

She and Tilahun were the only two students accepted to Harvard from their class, and Tadesse won a full scholarship based on her academic record and financial need.

"It was certainly the goal of our students here and she was so successful in being accepted to Harvard," McMillin said. "It was quite an honor."

Tilahun and Tadesse worked closely on schoolwork, McMillin said, but "their personalities were quite different. Neb is more gregarious and social and humorous."

Friends here said Tadasse built a closer friendship with Tilahun after arriving at Harvard.

Zheng said that when she saw Tadesse she wasalmost always either alone or with Tilahun, whoarrived at Dunster House almost immediately afterword of the stabbings began to spread acrosscampus just after 8 a.m. on Sunday.

Tilahun could not be reached for comment. Hereturned to Addis Ababa yesterday.

Few other students who described Tadesseclaimed to know her well. Many simply said thatshe was reserved but seemed otherwise unremarkablefor a Harvard student.

Tadasse first lived in an apartment inCambridge before starting her first year atHarvard. "She was alone in an apartment beforeschool started," said McMillin, who spends hersummers in Centerville, Mass. and kept in touchwith Tadasse. She was "a stranger in a strangeland."

One junior who lived in Thayer South withTadesse during their first years called her"typical," but "neat" and "interesting."

The junior said that "Sini," as she was knownto her friends and acquaintances, was hard toknow, but that the effort was worthwhile.

The junior expressed shock at the killings."She was never violent. She was always rationaland calm."

"She was by far the quietest person in ourentryway," said J. Kurt Schumacher '96, who alsoshared an entry with Tadesse during their firstyear. "I was friends with a lot of the otherpeople in the dorm, but I didn't know her well."

Tadesse was not involved in manyextracurricular activities--but she did join theHarvard African Students Association during herfirst year.

She spent last summer working at ananimal-biology laboratory affiliated with theHarvard Medical School. During that time she livedin the DeWolfe apartments.

"She was a very quiet person, very academic,very concentrated in her work," said a student whowas Tadesse's lab partner in an introductorybiology course. "She was always with her nose inthe books, very conscientious."

Two of Tadesse's relatives, who live in thegreater Boston area, were on the scene after themurder-suicide on Sunday but refused to speak withreporters.

McMillin believes that stress and lack ofsupportive friends and family at Harvard may havecontributed to the tragedy.

"You have a cultural difference, as well as alevel of economy that's quite different:capitalist, democratic society versus a societyand a culture that's just come out of a horriblecivil war," she said. Many Ethiopian families weredisplaced in the civil strife that drove outdictator Mengistu Haile Mariam in 1991.

Tadasse had not returned to Ethiopia since sheleft for college.

"I always advocate a well-roundededucation...networks of support of friends, secureplaces, vocations where you're accepted and feelsafe, and I'm not sure that was fulfilled,"McMillin said. "Maybe [there was] too muchacademics."

Roommates

Perhaps because of their quiet natures, Tadesseand Ho appeared to keep to themselves in DunsterHouse, joining few house activities and largelykeeping to themselves.

"I live across the hall, but I didn't see themthat much. We said hi a few times," said a juniorin the Dunster H-entryway who asked not to beidentified. She said the pair were very quiet andthat she had never heard Tadesse or Ho raise theirvoices.

"They were both very nice. They were bothpre-meds so they were mainly studying. Both workedin the library," said a close friend of bothwomen, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "Theystudied all the time. I don't think they had muchspare time."

When they were not in the library, I got theimpression they were studying," said the friend,who estimated that the pair spent as much as 50hours a week each studying.

The friend estimated that on any given Fridaynight during the academic year, there was about an80 percent chance that either Ho or Tadesse couldbe found in the house library.

But even though they occasionally saw bothwomen, few Dunster residents knew of the tensionsthat reportedly existed between them.

Ho and Tadesse both "floated" into DunsterHouse and were assigned to room together sophomoreyear.

The two seemed to be compatible roommates,according to the student who lived in closecontact with Tadesse in the same first-yearentryway.

"I think probably Trang was a little moreoutgoing that Sinedu but they were both nice, calmwomen, gentle in nature," the student said.

But although Ho and Tadesse were roommates fortwo years, few house residents interviewed wereable to recall seeing the pair together often,whether in the house library--where they bothworked as checkers--or in the dining hall.

"I got to know that this morning, that theywere roommates," said the friend. "I never heardabout relations between them, whether they weregood or not."

Ho "had mentioned off-hand they weren'trespectful of her privacy, and they hadn't beenconsiderate," said the sophomore who knew Ho. "Shesaid her roommates played music too loud and wereinconsiderate." The sophomore added that Horeferred to her roommates in the plural form,although Ho's suite was only a double.

In addition, several friends said Ho hadattempted for over a month to find anotherroommates, and had finally agreed to live withJennifer A. Tracy '97 and Malikah J. Sherman '96.Neither Tracy nor Sherman would comment.

Ho's sister, Thao, told The Boston Globe Sundaythat her sister feared returning to her room andher querulous roommate. Thao Ho is a student atTufts University in Medford.

"She just stopped being in her room," Thao Hosaid. "My sister isn't the type to fight; she[Tadesse] would say things but my sister wouldignore her."

For others, the tragedy transcended a troubledrelationship between two young women.

"I think it's just college life," said thestudent who lived close to Tadesse in theirfirst-year entryway. "It's the age at which we allhave family pressure, personal pressure, desire toexcel. Harvard just exacerbates the pressure."

"Everyone is so good and you need to be notbetter but equally as good," the student said."It's kind of hard."

'Always Cheerful'

Ho's friends say the killing is particularlytragic because it ended the hopes of a young womanwho rose from being a refugee from Vietnam to awell-liked student at Harvard. They painted animage of a young woman determined to succeed inthe face of daunting odds, a perfectionist drivenby awareness of a tough past.

Ho was a boat refugee from Vietnam 10 years agowith her father and older sister, settling inDorchester, The Boston Globe reported today. Shewas reunited with her mother and younger sisteronly two years ago.

Ho attended the Boston Technical High School,where she became the valedictorian of her seniorclass and was voted most likely to succeed. Shewas the only graduate in her public high schoolclass to attend Harvard, according to friends.

The 20-year-old junior, now a resident ofMedford, Mass., served as vice president of theHarvard Vietnamese Association (HVA) in 1994,during the second semester of her sophomore yearand the first semester of her junior year.

"I was in the Harvard Vietnamese Associationwhen she was a freshman," recalled a friend whospoke on condition of anonymity.

Ho, who was 20 years old at the time of herdeath, was always willing to assumeresponsibilities and tasks for the small clubwithout complaint, according to the friend.

"She was always very forgiving andunderstanding," said the friend, who said Hocontinued to call her to attend meetings evenafter she had stopped coming to some HVA events.

"She organized everything," the friend said."She did most of the gruntwork."

The second friend said Ho was sometimesself-sacrificing to a fault, missing much neededsleep to do work for the club, her majorextracurricular time commitment.

"Sometimes when they were organizing events,she would not sleep. She would be so self-deprivedjust for the events," the friend recollected. "Shewas so worn down, but she continued doing it forthe club."

The first friend described Ho as "alwayscheerful," and the second friend described Ho as"very sweet."

Although Ho rarely mentioned her experience asan immigrant, she became heavily involved with theVietnamese community in the Boston area,volunteering as a tutor for the Refugee Youth TermEnrichment (RYTE) program at Phillips Brooks Houseand teaching English one summer to Vietnameseimmigrants in Dorchester.

She also served as a Dunster House mentor lastfall to incoming sophomores, Braxton J.V. Robbason'97 said.

Ho worked many hours a week at the DunsterHouse library, where her roommate Tadesse alsoserved as a checker, examining students' bags asthey left. Occasionally, the two roommates' shiftswould overlap.

"I had seen them around in the library,"recalled Kusumarn "Kuku" Thammongkol '95, aresident of Dunster F-entryway. "They seemed nice,especially Trang."

Ho's extracurricular commitment carried overinto her academics as well. At first abiochemistry concentrator, Ho switched and becamea biology concentrator her junior year.

The second friend recalled that Ho occasionallyseemed overwhelmed by the magnitude of herschoolwork as a science concentrator, with weeklyproblem sets due and required lab time.

"She was very, very studious...she was a littlebit discouraged, but she was still persistent andshe was taking it easily," the friend said. "Wewere always commiserating with each other."

Ho's goal was to eventually become apediatrician. "She really wanted to be a doctor,that's her dream. She was always a little bitscared she might not get into med school," thefriend said.

A Dunster House sophomore who knew Ho said thejunior was a neat and quiet person, and seemed toher to be an ideal roommate. "She is a girl whoseemed to me to like to have everything in order,"the sophomore said.

Ho seemed unassuming and kind, she added. Onlyabout 5 feet tall, Ho was "very slight, [and] inher demeanor very Asian, in the sense of [being]very retiring, very demure," the sophomore said.

"She was neat, she studied a lot, she keptpictures of her family in her room, she went homeevery weekend" to Medford, the sophomore recalled.

Ho's family in Medford declined to speak withreporters yesterday afternoon, but left theirhouse to make funeral arrangements.

One friend said she is "angry and shocked."

"The girl who killed herself, she draggedsomeone along with her," she said. "[Ho] couldhave gone home in just a few days."CrimsonGabriel B. EberNEBIYELEUL TILAHUN '96

Zheng said that when she saw Tadesse she wasalmost always either alone or with Tilahun, whoarrived at Dunster House almost immediately afterword of the stabbings began to spread acrosscampus just after 8 a.m. on Sunday.

Tilahun could not be reached for comment. Hereturned to Addis Ababa yesterday.

Few other students who described Tadesseclaimed to know her well. Many simply said thatshe was reserved but seemed otherwise unremarkablefor a Harvard student.

Tadasse first lived in an apartment inCambridge before starting her first year atHarvard. "She was alone in an apartment beforeschool started," said McMillin, who spends hersummers in Centerville, Mass. and kept in touchwith Tadasse. She was "a stranger in a strangeland."

One junior who lived in Thayer South withTadesse during their first years called her"typical," but "neat" and "interesting."

The junior said that "Sini," as she was knownto her friends and acquaintances, was hard toknow, but that the effort was worthwhile.

The junior expressed shock at the killings."She was never violent. She was always rationaland calm."

"She was by far the quietest person in ourentryway," said J. Kurt Schumacher '96, who alsoshared an entry with Tadesse during their firstyear. "I was friends with a lot of the otherpeople in the dorm, but I didn't know her well."

Tadesse was not involved in manyextracurricular activities--but she did join theHarvard African Students Association during herfirst year.

She spent last summer working at ananimal-biology laboratory affiliated with theHarvard Medical School. During that time she livedin the DeWolfe apartments.

"She was a very quiet person, very academic,very concentrated in her work," said a student whowas Tadesse's lab partner in an introductorybiology course. "She was always with her nose inthe books, very conscientious."

Two of Tadesse's relatives, who live in thegreater Boston area, were on the scene after themurder-suicide on Sunday but refused to speak withreporters.

McMillin believes that stress and lack ofsupportive friends and family at Harvard may havecontributed to the tragedy.

"You have a cultural difference, as well as alevel of economy that's quite different:capitalist, democratic society versus a societyand a culture that's just come out of a horriblecivil war," she said. Many Ethiopian families weredisplaced in the civil strife that drove outdictator Mengistu Haile Mariam in 1991.

Tadasse had not returned to Ethiopia since sheleft for college.

"I always advocate a well-roundededucation...networks of support of friends, secureplaces, vocations where you're accepted and feelsafe, and I'm not sure that was fulfilled,"McMillin said. "Maybe [there was] too muchacademics."

Roommates

Perhaps because of their quiet natures, Tadesseand Ho appeared to keep to themselves in DunsterHouse, joining few house activities and largelykeeping to themselves.

"I live across the hall, but I didn't see themthat much. We said hi a few times," said a juniorin the Dunster H-entryway who asked not to beidentified. She said the pair were very quiet andthat she had never heard Tadesse or Ho raise theirvoices.

"They were both very nice. They were bothpre-meds so they were mainly studying. Both workedin the library," said a close friend of bothwomen, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "Theystudied all the time. I don't think they had muchspare time."

When they were not in the library, I got theimpression they were studying," said the friend,who estimated that the pair spent as much as 50hours a week each studying.

The friend estimated that on any given Fridaynight during the academic year, there was about an80 percent chance that either Ho or Tadesse couldbe found in the house library.

But even though they occasionally saw bothwomen, few Dunster residents knew of the tensionsthat reportedly existed between them.

Ho and Tadesse both "floated" into DunsterHouse and were assigned to room together sophomoreyear.

The two seemed to be compatible roommates,according to the student who lived in closecontact with Tadesse in the same first-yearentryway.

"I think probably Trang was a little moreoutgoing that Sinedu but they were both nice, calmwomen, gentle in nature," the student said.

But although Ho and Tadesse were roommates fortwo years, few house residents interviewed wereable to recall seeing the pair together often,whether in the house library--where they bothworked as checkers--or in the dining hall.

"I got to know that this morning, that theywere roommates," said the friend. "I never heardabout relations between them, whether they weregood or not."

Ho "had mentioned off-hand they weren'trespectful of her privacy, and they hadn't beenconsiderate," said the sophomore who knew Ho. "Shesaid her roommates played music too loud and wereinconsiderate." The sophomore added that Horeferred to her roommates in the plural form,although Ho's suite was only a double.

In addition, several friends said Ho hadattempted for over a month to find anotherroommates, and had finally agreed to live withJennifer A. Tracy '97 and Malikah J. Sherman '96.Neither Tracy nor Sherman would comment.

Ho's sister, Thao, told The Boston Globe Sundaythat her sister feared returning to her room andher querulous roommate. Thao Ho is a student atTufts University in Medford.

"She just stopped being in her room," Thao Hosaid. "My sister isn't the type to fight; she[Tadesse] would say things but my sister wouldignore her."

For others, the tragedy transcended a troubledrelationship between two young women.

"I think it's just college life," said thestudent who lived close to Tadesse in theirfirst-year entryway. "It's the age at which we allhave family pressure, personal pressure, desire toexcel. Harvard just exacerbates the pressure."

"Everyone is so good and you need to be notbetter but equally as good," the student said."It's kind of hard."

'Always Cheerful'

Ho's friends say the killing is particularlytragic because it ended the hopes of a young womanwho rose from being a refugee from Vietnam to awell-liked student at Harvard. They painted animage of a young woman determined to succeed inthe face of daunting odds, a perfectionist drivenby awareness of a tough past.

Ho was a boat refugee from Vietnam 10 years agowith her father and older sister, settling inDorchester, The Boston Globe reported today. Shewas reunited with her mother and younger sisteronly two years ago.

Ho attended the Boston Technical High School,where she became the valedictorian of her seniorclass and was voted most likely to succeed. Shewas the only graduate in her public high schoolclass to attend Harvard, according to friends.

The 20-year-old junior, now a resident ofMedford, Mass., served as vice president of theHarvard Vietnamese Association (HVA) in 1994,during the second semester of her sophomore yearand the first semester of her junior year.

"I was in the Harvard Vietnamese Associationwhen she was a freshman," recalled a friend whospoke on condition of anonymity.

Ho, who was 20 years old at the time of herdeath, was always willing to assumeresponsibilities and tasks for the small clubwithout complaint, according to the friend.

"She was always very forgiving andunderstanding," said the friend, who said Hocontinued to call her to attend meetings evenafter she had stopped coming to some HVA events.

"She organized everything," the friend said."She did most of the gruntwork."

The second friend said Ho was sometimesself-sacrificing to a fault, missing much neededsleep to do work for the club, her majorextracurricular time commitment.

"Sometimes when they were organizing events,she would not sleep. She would be so self-deprivedjust for the events," the friend recollected. "Shewas so worn down, but she continued doing it forthe club."

The first friend described Ho as "alwayscheerful," and the second friend described Ho as"very sweet."

Although Ho rarely mentioned her experience asan immigrant, she became heavily involved with theVietnamese community in the Boston area,volunteering as a tutor for the Refugee Youth TermEnrichment (RYTE) program at Phillips Brooks Houseand teaching English one summer to Vietnameseimmigrants in Dorchester.

She also served as a Dunster House mentor lastfall to incoming sophomores, Braxton J.V. Robbason'97 said.

Ho worked many hours a week at the DunsterHouse library, where her roommate Tadesse alsoserved as a checker, examining students' bags asthey left. Occasionally, the two roommates' shiftswould overlap.

"I had seen them around in the library,"recalled Kusumarn "Kuku" Thammongkol '95, aresident of Dunster F-entryway. "They seemed nice,especially Trang."

Ho's extracurricular commitment carried overinto her academics as well. At first abiochemistry concentrator, Ho switched and becamea biology concentrator her junior year.

The second friend recalled that Ho occasionallyseemed overwhelmed by the magnitude of herschoolwork as a science concentrator, with weeklyproblem sets due and required lab time.

"She was very, very studious...she was a littlebit discouraged, but she was still persistent andshe was taking it easily," the friend said. "Wewere always commiserating with each other."

Ho's goal was to eventually become apediatrician. "She really wanted to be a doctor,that's her dream. She was always a little bitscared she might not get into med school," thefriend said.

A Dunster House sophomore who knew Ho said thejunior was a neat and quiet person, and seemed toher to be an ideal roommate. "She is a girl whoseemed to me to like to have everything in order,"the sophomore said.

Ho seemed unassuming and kind, she added. Onlyabout 5 feet tall, Ho was "very slight, [and] inher demeanor very Asian, in the sense of [being]very retiring, very demure," the sophomore said.

"She was neat, she studied a lot, she keptpictures of her family in her room, she went homeevery weekend" to Medford, the sophomore recalled.

Ho's family in Medford declined to speak withreporters yesterday afternoon, but left theirhouse to make funeral arrangements.

One friend said she is "angry and shocked."

"The girl who killed herself, she draggedsomeone along with her," she said. "[Ho] couldhave gone home in just a few days."CrimsonGabriel B. EberNEBIYELEUL TILAHUN '96