Friends and professors remember Arin Adams '07.5 as a talented debater who cared about challenging fellow students' views, particularly on issues of race and gender.
"Brilliant," "opinionated," "funny" and "passionate," according to friends and professors, Adams died Oct. 16 at home in Detroit while on leave from the University.
Though biologically female, Adams began identifying as a male about a year ago, according to Jamal Shipman '07.
"He would get upset if someone close to her slipped up and called her a female," Shipman said.
Will Cunningham '07, who, like Adams, was a Minority Peer Counselor in Keeney Quadrangle during their sophomore year, remembered that Adams "was never afraid to argue." Cunningham added that Adams' strong intellectual personality always made him "an interesting person to be around."
On meeting Adams during their first year at the University, Shipman also recognized Adams as "outspoken and well-spoken." But when the two served as co-MPCs in the same unit during their sophomore year, Shipman discovered that Adams cared about more than just lively debate.
Adams "really did care about other people," Shipman said, noting that he "went out of (his) way" to help a student with an eating disorder and to resolve roommate disputes, sometimes discussing first-years' problems late into the night.
Adams always criticized "ignorance on campus" and challenged students to understand race at Brown, Shipman said. As an MPC, Adams fought hard to make bathrooms in his unit gender-neutral.
Beyond pursuing a concentration in history, Adams was a Writing Fellow, a Meiklejohn Advisor and a member of the University Disciplinary Council during his time at Brown, according to an Oct. 17 campus-wide e-mail sent by Dean of the College Katherine Bergeron and Interim Vice President for Campus Life and Student Services Russell Carey '91 MA'06. He was also a 2005 recipient of a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship, which encourages black, Latino, Native American and other students to pursue graduate degrees, according to the Web site for the Office of the Dean of the College.
Adams was taking classes at the University of Michigan and Wayne State University while on leave, Bergeron and Carey wrote.
Gail Cohee, director of the Sarah Doyle's Women's Center, taught Adams in his first semester at Brown in GN 10: "Introduction to Feminist Theory." Adams was a "determined arguer" both during and after class, Cohee said.
Rhoda Flaxman, director of college writing programs, discovered Adams' academic enthusiasm and skilled writing in his application to the Writing Fellows Program at the end of his first year at Brown in 2004.
In the application, Adams explained that, as a writer, he wanted to combine the techniques described in "Elements of Style," written by William Strunk and E.B. White, with the poetry of Adrienne Rich. "She did manage to do that in her writing," Flaxman said, adding that Adams was a "brilliant and original" writer.
Adams "had an amazing ability to fuse an argumentative structure with a very poetic style," Flaxman said.
During his time as a Writing Fellow, Adams created a booklet with advice on critiquing papers written by groups of students that Flaxman still gives to Writing Fellows evaluating group papers. Though Adams did not participate in the Writing Fellows Program during his junior year, Flaxman selected Adams to help read over program applications after his sophomore year, citing his strong critical reading skills.
Students and faculty interviewed by The Herald said they saw less of Adams during his junior year. Cunningham was not even aware that Adams was on a leave of absence - he assumed Adams was living off campus for senior year.
"Once a student is away from here, people are in touch more peripherally," Cohee said.
Adams' death has shaken those who knew him. "We are all just reeling from her death," Cohee said. "It's been quite a shock."
"I'm really sorry that she couldn't stay with us," Flaxman said.
Adams' father is the deputy mayor of the city of Detroit. In a statement released Oct. 16 by Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick's office, Press Secretary Matt Allen requested that Detroit residents "respect the deputy mayor and his family's privacy as they mourn the loss of his daughter."
A Detroit Police Department investigation has determined that no foul play was involved in Adams' death, according to the statement. An Oct. 17 Detroit Free Press article referred to Adams' death as an apparent suicide.
Funeral services for Adams were held at the Tabernacle Missionary Baptist Church in Detroit yesterday morning, according to an e-mail to The Herald from James Canning, Kilpatrick's deputy press secretary.
