During the service, several mourners wailedopenly upon sight of the corpse. A young womanfainted, and Rudenstine, Epps and four othermourners came to her aid. The young woman wasrevived almost immediately and several mournerscarried her out of the room.

Tadesse's body was due to leave Boston Thursdayflight to Addis Ababa by way of Frankfurt,Germany, according to Nicholas G. Faggas, theowner of the funeral home.

"The body is going alone," Faggas said. "Thefamily is going to meet it in the airport" inAddis Ababa.

According to Epps, Harvard has assumed thecosts of both Tadesse's and Ho's funerals. In aninterview Friday, Rudenstine said it wasappropriate to pay the the costs.

"It seems to me clearly the right thing to do,"Rudenstine said. "The family was in Ethiopia.There was no way for them to get here. Onecertainly didn't want to have the burial of thebody here without the family."

"If it would relieve people's minds to raisethe money or contribute to it myself, I would doit," he added. Rudenstine noted that manyunrestricted gifts, endowments and his personalfund are available, saying that the expenses would"not necessarily" come from tuition payments.

'A Very Difficult Time'

Teachers at Tadesse's former high schoolcontinued to express shock last week about thefate of one of their top students and a fullscholarship winner.

Astrid C. Shiferaw, a chemistry teacher whotaught Tadesse for four years, said "she hadalways been an A-student and a very nice girl."

"Somehow, something along the way happenedthese three years," Shiferaw said in a telephoneinterview from Addis Ababa early Tuesday morning."She was one of our best," the teacher said. "Shewas kind of quite and shy, but we had manystudents like that. It's just shocking."

Shiferaw described Tadesse as industrious. "Shewas not a bouncy kind of person," she said. "Shewas quite and very, very studious. It probablywould have been better if she had gone out morefriends."

Nagash Kebede, a physics and math teacher whotaught Tadesse math for two years, said "I wasextremely surprised because I thought I knewSinedu."

"I couldn't believe that this would happen toher or [that] she would do this and I am still inshock," Kebede said in a telephone interview fromAddis Ababa early Tuesday ."She was very clam,nothing to indicate things would turn out thisway."

"She was quiet and quite personable," he added."She didn't show any sign of hostility ortensions."

Relatives and acquaintances of Tadesse'spraised the student following the wake Wednesdayevening and groped for explanations of thetragedy.