The bond of absence

Duke and Carolina basketball fans tend not to unite on positive values--which is the best team, who is the better player--but their game tonight opened with a singular unifying moment. As the announcer declared before the game started, the teams & students were coming together not as two rival teams but as one community, honoring the memory of the UNC's student body president, murdered earlier this week.

Uniting in loss. A moment of silence. Everyone in attendance wearing a ribbon in Carolina blue, not as a mark of loyalty but as a symbol of sympathy (sum + pathos, feeling together) in loss.

Defined not by what they are but what is not.