On Black Friday, Nadia Ezaldein, a University of Chicago student, was working at a Chicago Nordstrom when her ex-boyfriend entered the store, found her in the accessories department, and shot her to death. It was her 22nd birthday.
A day earlier, on Thanksgiving, Shannon Jones, a student at Cornell University, was allegedly strangled to death by her boyfriend during an argument. Police described the murder as a "domestic incident."
The two cases are not the only abusive relationships to end in the death of a college student in recent months. In October, Cecilia Lam, a San Francisco State University student and advocate for the prevention of domestic violence, was shot and killed by her ex-boyfriend. Last month, Diamoney Greene, a student at the University of South Carolina, waskilled by another South Carolina student during a domestic dispute. Both killings were murder-suicides.
While not currently at the forefront of a national conversation, domestic violence remains as prevalent an issue among college students as sexual assault. One in five students have experienced domestic violence with a current partner -- a statistic that directly mirrors the U.S. Department of Justice's findings on student victims of sexual assault (though some have contested those findings). More than 30 percent of students say they have experienced domestic violence with a previous partner.
Read more at Inside Higher Ed: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/12/02/domestic-abuse-prevalent-sexual-assault-college-campuses