by Chris Redmond First came the week of horror, beginning with the news that David Zaharchuk had been beaten to death in one place we thought would always be safe, ending with the quiet notes of music that brought his memorial service to a close. Then came the month of wondering -- wondering who might have done such a thing, wondering how the police were carrying out their search for the killer, wondering whether we would ever feel secure in the university again. And now comes the year of waiting, during which we'll learn more than we ever wanted to know about the agonizing slow complications of the criminal justice system as it brings a young man to trial for the murder he is charged with committing on New Year's Day. "This episode is not at an end," the provost reminded faculty, staff and students in a memo last week. The story has a long time yet to run. SURPRISE: "A charge does not necessarily result in a conviction," George's memo also said. To put it more bluntly: Kris Eric Warkentin, who was due in court yesterday for a bail hearing and possibly to enter a plea, has been arrested, but that doesn't prove him guilty of a crime. The Canadian justice system presumes a person's innocence until guilt has been proven in court -- not merely the physical action, but all the other requirements, such as intent, that make the action correspond to the legal definition of a crime. To call someone a criminal, when no court has found him guilty, would be to invite legal complications that range from libel to contempt charges. But media, not just in Kitchener-Waterloo but in Toronto and nationally, wanted to know all about the accused, posing questions that verged on the ghoulish. Reporters, and probably readers too, wanted to know what sort of a man Kris Warkentin is. Or was, before New Year's Day. Most people at UW had not heard of Warkentin before his arrest last week. Some of those who did know him -- friends, classmates, the student who had sublet his apartment in Married Students -- expressed amazement when they heard who had been arrested. "I can't believe it," one friend told the Kitchener- Waterloo Record, "and I won't believe it until I see concrete evidence." "He's not a person I would ever think was a killer," a former neighbour told the Toronto Sun. "He's not mean by nature." And a friend got in touch with Imprint to say that it would be "totally out of character" for Warkentin to do what he is charged with doing. So some people clearly doubt Warkentin's guilt, and the law gives him the benefit of official doubt as well. It's now up to crown attorneys, with the support of police and witnesses, to try to prove the truth of the precisely worded charge that has been laid. The proceedings will take weeks, or months, or longer. UNOFFICIAL: Quite appropriately, police spokesmen haven't said much about the four weeks and two days of work that began with the emergency call in the dark hours of January 1 and ended with Warkentin's surrender at the Cambridge detachment of Waterloo Regional Police eight days ago. Something like twice the usual number of detectives and other officers were assigned to the case, probably because of the special grotesquerie of a violent murder in a public university, a place of knowledge and reflection and (so everyone had thought) protection from the cold world outside. The investigation was carried on chiefly by the Waterloo Regional Police, which has an experienced homicide squad. Murder is something new to UW's own police -- which, however, was actively involved in the case as well. Police officials on both sides spoke of the close cooperation between the two forces. A composite drawing was circulated, showing a man thought to have been in the engineering buildings an hour or so before the murder. Police did hint that questioning of students who were around campus on New Year's Eve led them to Warkentin. He was questioned extensively in the days before his arrest: detectives from Waterloo travelled to Hinton, Alberta, to see him. He had been working at the Gregg River Mine there, on a co-op work term. The name of his employer, like most of what the public has heard about Warkentin, comes from unofficial sources located by enterprising reporters. George, in his February 2 memo, made clear that official university records aren't to be made available. Speaking for the university, George did confirm that Warkentin is a chemical engineering student (he was in third year). Newspapers revealed that he was married; the police announcement of his address made it clear that he had lived in the Married Students complex. George, as well as officials in the engineering faculty, expressed sorrow that the accused, as well as the victim, should be one of the university's own. "It's obviously been hard," Dr. Gary Rempel, chair of chemical engineering, told the Record. SAFETY: Dr. Doug Wright, president of UW, spoke of the affair briefly at a meeting of the board of governors that was being held less than 24 hours after the arrest. "The fact that someone has been apprehended," he said, "will reduce the anxiety level." Anxiety -- edging towards panic -- was the prevailing mood on campus in January, certainly, as a predictable response to a violent murder so close to home. Parents were telephoning students to tell them to keep away from the engineering buildings, staff and students alike were locking doors that had always stood open, and everyone jumped at unexpected noises around corners. On the first workday after the murder, George sent out a reassurance about safety precautions on campus, including an increase in late-night patrols by UW police officers and by teams of students in fluorescent orange vests. At the same time, he said, individuals have to take much of the responsibility for their own safety -- being aware of what's going on around them, locking what ought to be locked, telling friends and colleagues where they're working and when. Perhaps the most important piece of advice is this one: Observe, don't confront. In other words, if you see something wrong, or hear intruders, don't interfere at the risk of your own safety. Watch what's going on, and call the police. (On campus: ext. 4911. Off campus: 911 for the city police, 888-4911 for UW's own.) And whether you're on campus, or in some less familiar location, know where to find the phone fast. In the days after the murder a constant topic of conversation, reportedly reaching as sober a level as the faculty relations committee, was the possible installation of video surveillance equipment at building entrances. Nearly everyone wondered whether buildings should be kept locked at night -- and went quiet when reminded that Engineering I was locked on the night David Zaharchuk died. "Safety audits" of the campus, planned months ago in response to fears of sexual assault rather than any nightmare of murder, are continuing, and an "ad hoc" committee on safety is about to get permanent status. It's clear that security, in that sense, is a topic now permanently on the university's agenda. But there's a difference between security, which we need, and fear, which we can hope to live without. VIOLENCE: Shortly after the news of the murder spread, people were talking wildly about an epidemic, a tide, of violent acts in Canadian engineering faculties. In 1989, a twisted young man who hated women killed 14, mostly students, at Montreal's Ecole Polytechnique. Last year, four people died at Concordia University, also in Montreal; a faculty member is charged in those deaths. And now, Waterloo. But the three incidents have little in common. There may be lessons to be drawn about gun control, or about security precautions, but the circumstances behind the Polytec killings are nothing like those at Concordia, and neither resembles the Waterloo murder even in superficial ways. At the Polytec, the victims died because they were women. At Concordia, apparently, a personal, political, academic grudge was involved. But at Waterloo, police have been suggesting, the victim was "in the wrong place, at the wrong time". Working late at night on a holiday, desperate to finish the last graphs for his PhD thesis, he somehow encountered a vandal in a rage, and paid for that misfortune with his blood. It's not the predictable, predestined, pathetic death that makes for tragedy. It's the random, ugly, meaningless death that bleak existentialism was invented to explain. David Zaharchuk's degree committee has met, looked over his work, and apparently concluded that his thesis was so nearly finished that it can be accepted for his PhD. The degree will almost certainly be granted posthumously, his diploma given to his widow, Susan Wake -- who, in a cruel coincidence, is now a faculty member at Concordia. She may find a little comfort in knowing that her husband's work was found to have academic merit, and that it was complete to the point that future researchers in universities and in the iron ore industry can make use of it. Iron endures, and David Zaharchuk's work endures. But after the arrest, there is precious little else in which anyone can find real satisfaction.