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Sophia Crestani’s parents are committed to moving forward to help create a safer environment for students in North Dunedin.
They have a five-year vision of what they want the Sophia Letter to accomplish, named after their daughter who died at a party in a Dunedin flat last year.
“The charter parties have accomplished more than we could have imagined,” said Miss Crestani’s father, Bede Crestani.
But the signing of the letter in July, which is a multi-agency effort to promote a circle of support for community responsibility and well-being, is far from the end of the process.
“It has to be a living document,” Crestani said.
He and his wife Elspeth McMillan plan to participate in annual reviews.
His efforts to fully understand the circumstances of his daughter’s death are also not over yet. More responses should be received in a coroner’s investigation, which is expected to take place in late 2021.
Miss Crestani (19) attended a flat party on October 5 last year. It got packed with people and a lot of stairs resulted in her death.
“The world is over for us,” Crestani said.
A year later, the family shock hasn’t really faded.
“I look at his photo every day and I can’t believe he’s not here,” McMillan said.
“It’s very difficult to rationalize how you can go to a party and hang out with other students and lose your life under such insane circumstances.”
After learning of her death, Mr. Crestani and Ms. McMillan took the first available flight from Wellington to Dunedin.
They felt they needed to be there for their daughter’s friends and other University of Otago students, as well as for their daughter.
“We couldn’t think of her alone in a hospital morgue,” McMillan said.
The last time her family saw her alive was at the funeral of Ms. McMillan’s mother in September 2019.
Miss Crestani was a sophomore in college, studying math and statistics. Her parents were determined that the story did not end there.
When they arrived in Dunedin, a cleanup was organized in North Dunedin.
The Vice Chancellor of the University of Otago, Harlene Hayne, described the event as “tremendously healing.”
A $ 50,000 scholarship was established in the name of Sophia Crestani.
The scholarship is for community-minded sophomores studying math or math with statistics. Each scholarship will normally be worth $ 4,500 for the cost of living.
A second scholarship, for which about $ 35,000 has been raised so far, will have more general criteria. Crestani said he expected the remaining $ 15,000 to be donated before Christmas.
The couple have been involved in the details of what became Sophia’s Letter.
Ms. McMillan said they were not angry and felt they had been heard. She didn’t want her daughter’s death to “count for nothing.”
Crestani said that heavy drinking remains a major problem.
You would like to see regulatory changes.
“We would really like to see politicians step up and do something.”
Professor Hayne described Mr. Crestani and Ms. McMillan as “the most emotionally strong people I have ever met in my life.”
“They have not lost momentum or enthusiasm to make a significant change.”
Professor Hayne said she met them when they were “in the heat of their grief over the loss of their beautiful daughter,” but they did not blame anyone.
“They were 100% committed to the fact that Sophia’s death would lead to change, and they were firm in that opinion.”
The couple said they were initially shocked by the condition of the Dunedin homes and the extent to which the students “would get away with outrageous behavior.”
They learned that individual agencies were working hard to promote improvement, but there was no collective way to do it.
They were astonished by the participation of some 500 students who came to hear them when they visited Dunedin to sign the letter.
Miss Crestani’s twin sister Frances is a student at Victoria University in Wellington and her older brother James works in the information technology industry.
The family plans to celebrate the first anniversary by visiting Miss Crestani’s Wellington grave.
The tombstone will be revealed next month, when Miss Crestani’s friends can be there.
