CNN
—
For the second time in less than a year, four University of Idaho students who were fatally stabbed in their off-campus home in late 2022 will be remembered at a commencement ceremony.
Kaylee Goncalves, 21, Xana Kernodle, 20, Madison Mogen, 21, and Ethan Chapin, 20, will be awarded posthumous degrees on Saturday, exactly six months after they were killed.
Goncalves will be awarded a bachelor’s of general studies; Kernodle, a certificate in marketing; Mogen, a bachelor’s in marketing; and Chapin, a certificate in recreation, sport, and tourism management.
The university’s president spoke about the victims at winter graduation last December, shortly after the killings led many students to leave campus as a wave of fear and anxiety swept across the small college town of Moscow, Idaho.
“It’s been a tough few weeks for our community,” President Scott Green said at the ceremony.
The four students were found dead November 13. They had spent the night out. Chapin and Kernodle had attended a party on campus earlier that night, according to police. Mogen and Goncalves went to a downtown bar before ordering food at a late-night food truck.
“I want to acknowledge an enormous loss in our Vandal family recently,” said Green, using the nickname for the university.
“Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle, Maddie Mogen and Kaylee Goncalves were taken from us far too soon by a senseless act of violence.”
The man accused of killing the students, Bryan Christopher Kohberger, 28, was arrested seven weeks after they were found dead.
Kohberger was a graduate student at Washington State University’s Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology and lived in Pullman, Washington, at the time of his arrest at his parents’ Pennsylvania home last December.
Pullman, home to WSU, is less than 10 miles west of the University of Idaho.
At the time of the winter graduation on December 10, there hadn’t been an arrest and the nerves of students and residents were still frayed. Green took a moment to focus on the victims and the meaning of their loss.
“They were bright lights on our campus and cherished members of our community.” the university president said before asking the more than 550 graduates, their families and faculty to honor the memory of the victims with a moment of silence.
On Saturday, nearly 800 winter graduates will join more than 1,500 other graduates at two ceremonies.
“Our students have endured and persevered in their time at the university and are ready to go out into the world and make a difference,” Green said in a statement.
The families of Mogen and Goncalves are expected to attend and accept the posthumous degrees, CNN affiliate KXLY reported. Relatives of Chapin and Kernodle will accept their certificates at another time at the request of their families.
The university will also award a posthumous bachelor’s in criminology to Guadalupe Ruiz, who was killed in a car crash in August.
