$560,000 raised for memorial scholarship

It took only 10 minutes on Wednesday for the Campaign for Boston University Board of Trustees to raise $560,000 for a scholarship in memory of Lu Lingzi, the Chinese graduate student from Shenyang, capital city of Liaoning province, who was killed in the Boston Marathon bombings.

"We are grieving and at a loss for words to describe the pain and sadness we are experiencing following the sudden passing of our dear daughter, Lingzi," Lu's family said in a statement given to Boston University.

"She was the joy of our lives."

University trustee Kenneth Feld spearheaded the Lu Lingzi Scholarship Fund, which was raised in response to thousands of offers of help from alumni, friends and others around the world.

The seven-member committee created the scholarship in accordance with the preferences of the Lu family, who will travel to Boston this week from their home in Shenyang.

Lu grew up in an intellectual family. She was admitted to a highly selective experimental public facility, where she studied from seventh through 12th grade.

Local media say Lu scored the second highest in her class to go to Beijing Institute of Technology.

Lu started at Boston University last fall to study statistics. Friends and teachers remember the 23-year-old for her smile, piano playing and love of food, which she enjoyed posting photos of on Facebook.

Monday's tragedy sparked a huge outflow of grief among students of the class of 2014, the year Lu would have graduated.

More than 6,000 members of the BU Alumni Association used social media to express their condolences, according to a report in the university newspaper, BU Today, and more than 100,000 Weibo micro-bloggers mourned her death, according to the New Yorker magazine's website.

"We are humbled by the compassion, caring and love we have received from people all over the world," Lu's family told the university. "We wish to extend our thoughts, prayers and sympathy to the other victims of this tragedy and to their families."

Lu's family also expressed gratitude for the assistance it has received from the Chinese government, the US State Department, the Boston Police Department and Boston University.

US Secretary of State John Kerry said in a statement on Thursday that the State Department has been in contact with Lu's family.

"We stand ready to provide whatever appropriate assistance we can to the family members of foreign nationals in the aftermath of this despicable act of terror," Kerry said.

The marathon explosions also killed Martin Richard, 8, of Dorchester, Massachusetts, and Krystle Campbell, 29, of Arlington, Massachusetts.

Members of the university's extended community asked through Facebook, Twitter and several US consulates in China what they can do to honor students who were injured by the blasts and to memorialize Monday's tragic events, according to Feld.

"A scholarship fund in her name will be there forever," Feld said in a story in BU Today. "People can contribute to something that is ongoing."

The scholarship recognizes that everyone leaves his or her own legacy, and it also honors the university's connection to China, which increasingly sends its students to study there. It welcomed 2,065 of these students this year, Feld said.

An impromptu memorial of flowers and other gifts for Lu took shape at the base of the Free at Last sculpture on the campus.

carolineberg@chinadailyusa.com

(China Daily 04/20/2013 page12)