HVA member Diep N. Nguyen '95 said the University's system for informing students about emergencies like last Sunday's is deficient.

"The University never held a general meeting to inform students on Sunday when the incident occurred," Nguyen said, to sustained applause.

"It's a point well-taken," Epps said.

Responding to a male Divinity School student's concerns about counseling for students who had already left campus before the Sunday tragedy, Epps agreed that the College would schedule memorial services in September.

Epps also said it would be necessary to take some steps to assure parents of incoming first-years that their children will be safe on Harvard's campus. We've had a number of telephone calls from anxious parents," he said.

Anh Ryan of the Asian American Civil Association in Boston criticized the College's housing decisions.

"They come here; they get culture shock; they have to adjust to language barriers," Ryan said. "Why is the administration trying to place two student from two totally different cultures in a room together?"

Ho immigrated to the U.S. from Vietnam in 1985; Tadesse grew up and went to high school in Ethiopia.

"We try to place students based on their interests not on their culture or race," Epps said.

Assistant to the Master of Dunster House Carol A. Finn responded to criticisms of the administrators for placing the two women together as roommates.

Finn said she did not remember placing the two women together but said she would have been likely to match them because of their similarities. Both were pre-meds and biology concentrators. "The fact that they chose to room together the second year, I would have considered that to be a successful placement," Finn said.

One male undergraduate said he was concerned by the high number of suicides: Tadesse's death was the third suicide of an undergraduate this year.

In response to queries about the three suicides, Epps noted that Harvard's mental health case load has increased in recent years because of advances in medicines to treat mental illness.

"We have many more in the College [now] who are living with illness," Epps said. "Having more people in care carries a risk."

"I have yet to come to suicide which does not have a very, very long history...going back well before college," he added.