Remembering Jigme

Jigme Nidup

Jigme Nidup '19 (front row, third from left) poses with friends after Convocation.

Dickinson community, family to join in honor of Jigme Nidup '19 

The Dickinson community will gather on Sunday, April 17, to celebrate the life of Jigme Nidup ’19, who died while swimming in the nearby Conodoguinet Creek at the start of the 2015-16 academic year. It is the fourth campuswide gathering in Jigme’s honor and the first that includes members of his family, who will attend.

Jigme was a soft-spoken and giving young man who planned to study international business at Dickinson. He found great happiness in life and in meeting new people, and in the days and weeks following his tragic loss, Dickinsonians came together to reflect and remember one of their own.

Hundreds of students, faculty and staff shared memories of Jigme during an impromptu service on Sunday, Sept. 20, and four days later many joined together for an hour of communal interfaith/no-faith meditation, contemplation and solace led by Center for Service, Spirituality & Social Justice (CSSS) staff members and by Brooke Wiley, a studio technician and Buddhist priest. In November, Buddhist monks from Drepung Monastery’s Gomang College paid tribute to Jigme. During their residency, the monks created a mandala, and after sweeping up the mandala sand, they poured it into the Conodoguinet Creek, the site of Jigme’s passing.  

Held in Allison Hall’s Great Room (3 p.m.), the April 17 memorial service will offer all members of the Dickinson community the opportunity to reconnect and to embrace Jigme’s family as members of the worldwide college community. Jigme’s parents, Lham Nidup and Sonam Choetsho, and his sister, Leksin Nidup, will present a thangka, a silk painting often used for meditation, to the college.

Two books, given by the family when Jigme first arrived on campus, will be on display in the Waidner-Spahr Library’s East Asian Studies Room throughout the weekend. Dickinson also will plant a Bhutan pine on campus in Jigme’s memory; the day and location of the planting will be announced at a later date.

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Published April 15, 2016