Harvard students, faculty and administrators will gather at 11 a.m. today in Appleton Chapel for a service of prayer and healing after the tragic murder-suicide in Dunster House last spring.

"It's part of the healing process," University spokesperson Joe Wrinn said yesterday. "It's important to try to have, as much as you can in a tragedy like this, a sense of closure, of moving on."

The service will be open to the public. It will be moved to Memorial Church if enough people attend.

The service will include several scripture readings and musical pieces, as well as readings by Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis '68 and a representative of Dunster House, and a sermon by Rev. Peter J. Gomes, Plummer professor of Christian morals.

"I think [the service was scheduled] because so many of the students left last year before the memorial services in the spring," Wrinn said. "Harry Lewis and Peter Gomes thought it would be an appropriate thing to do."

About 8 a.m. on May 28, the last day for students to move out of their houses, Sinedu Tadesse '96 used a buck knife to stab her sleeping roommate Trang Phuong Ho '96 to death.

Ho suffered about 45 stab wounds to the face, neck, chest, arms and legs.

Tadesse also stabbed Thao Nguyen, 26, a friend of Ho's who eventually escaped, before locking herself in the adjoining bathroom and hanging herself.

The week after the deaths, members of the African Students Association, Harvard Vietnamese Association and Dean of Students Archie C. Epps III spoke at a campus-wide discussion about the incident. Harvard also paid for memorial services for both women.

But Wrinn stressed yesterday that today's event would not be dedicated solely to Tadesse and Ho.

"It's a time for the community to come together," Wrinn said. "It's more for the Harvard community in general, for those who are left behind. This is more of a moving on, a moment of healing."

Two meetings for Dunster students are scheduled for Wednesday, Sept. 27 and Monday Oct. 2 from 7 to 8:30 p.m