Trigger warning: Murder, death

I didn’t know Tess Majors, but we had a lot in common.

Four years ago, I was an 18-year-old freshman at Barnard College, like Tess was when she died. Like me, Tess was a journalist and a musician, interning at newspapers and playing shows around the city. At some point during our first semester, we both dyed our hair green.

On Wednesday night around 5:30 PM, Tess was murdered in Morningside Park, a place I used to walk by every day. Her death shook my school to the core. It chilled and sobered the city, perhaps due to the violent and random nature of the crime, or perhaps due to its many implications. It highlighted a wound that exists between Columbia and its surrounding community.

There is a time and place to analyze her death’s social and political implications, and to pull meaning from this fundamentally meaningless act. For now I don’t want to add to the media circus that is already surrounding this tragedy. Instead of politicizing Tess’s death here and now, I want to talk about her life.

From what it sounds like, her life was full of music.

Tess was part of two bands, and she played bass, wrote songs, and sang. She had been active in the music community back in Charlottesville, and she took that spirit to New York City, throwing herself into Columbia’s DIY music community and playing shows on campus and off.

In September, her band Patient 0 released a full-length album called Girl Problems. The album pulls together the best of riot grrl, indie rock, and punk, and it proves that Tess was a formidable talent, a magnetic force of nature who would have had incredible success performing around New York during her time at Barnard and beyond.

The album “focuses on the trials and tribulations of coming of age while simultaneously tackling first relationships, identity issues, and mixed emotions about growing up,” according to its liner notes. “No one can control the fact / that life won’t ever go your way,” she sings on the album’s first song, “Paper Cut.” Like that lyric, all the songs are full of incisive old-soul observations about life and youth and love. They blend wisdom and rawness, youthful emotion and perspective, humor and lightness and rage.

You can immediately hear a swirl of influences, ranging from modern indie bands like Snail Mail and Cherry Glazerr, as well as feminist punk foremothers like Hole and Sleater-Kinney. The punk influence is particularly visible on songs like “Fold,” a song that sounds designed to fill huge venues, no doubt getting crowds to scream and jump along to the infectious beat. One of the highlights is “4 Chord Song,” which builds on the classic 4-chord pop structure to create something that borrows from early Green Day but ultimately is something wholly original and full of passion.

“Clinging to my innocence like an old friend,” she sings on “Inhibitions.” On “Not the First One” she riffs on loneliness and vulnerability, layering harmonies and time-changes together into something reminiscent of The Strokes’ early work and which, like many of the other songs, could easily bring a crowd to its feet.

“Remember the night she rose from the sea,” she sings on “Prom Queen,” the album’s final track, slow-burning requiem to unrequited love. “The freckles on her face / the stars in the sky… You’re walking right into a hurricane / but luckily I don’t mind the rain.” It’s a beautiful tribute to longing for someone across a great distance. “Prom Queen, staring at the moon / Cause earth has its limitations,” she concludes. Certainly the earth has limits, but that never stopped Tess from singing out and reaching out across gaps and spaces.

Overall, Girl Problems is understated and unpretentious but buoyed by internal energy. It’s part serious and part full of lighthearted abandon, but always luminous. It’s the best of indie rock and pop-punk: a thrilling, grainy, and vibrant tribute to girlhood and love and life.

Majors’ other band, called The Company, also just released their first single, entitled “Distant.” The song is sweet and more subdued than her Patient 0 work, with a funky soft-rock feel. You can hear Tess singing backup, her voice building up to a choir near the end of the tune. From the sound of things, she was working on many more collaborations. All of Tess’s music sounds like it was made by someone with a true passion for the craft, for the collaboration and energy it entails.

Her death is a senseless tragedy that’s unfortunate for everyone involved, but we should remember her through her passions and legacy, through the light and compassion and bravery she offered. She deserves to be remembered by the values she lived.

A friend of mine who knew her tweeted that Tess was “dedicated to dismantling systemic oppression.” On her last Instagram story, Tess posted a celebration of Merriam-Webster Dictionary’s decision to make “they/them” their word of the year. Clearly, I can’t know for sure but I think she would have hated the thought that her legacy was being used in service of hatred, suffering, and racism. I think she would’ve wanted us to do what is right in her honor. I think she would’ve wanted us to keep speaking out and to fiercely treasure every moment, as broken as things may seem.

I also imagine—though all of this is conjecture, the words of someone struggling to find a way to conceptualize this—that she probably would’ve kept playing music. And she would’ve graduated and maybe moved to Brooklyn and started writing for some publication or other, and she would’ve toured and shared her music and light with so many. She probably would’ve been full of pain about the state of the world, but she would’ve also been full of love and inspiration and energy and song. It sounds like she wouldn’t have ever considered giving up hope in others or in music or in the city she loved. And I think all we can do to remember her is love each other, continue to create and sing out, and fight for what we believe in and know is right.

No matter how we try to spin it, this grief will be ongoing. I want to send love to anyone and everyone affected by this tragedy—to Tess’s family and friends, to all my Barnard sisters, and to New York at large. I hope we ignore false news and lies and continue to honor Tess’s life, values, and each other during this time.

One of Tessa’s bandmates may have put it best in an Instagram post. “I wish I could jam one more time with you,” it read. “The way for us to honor her is to never quit. Never stop playing. From now on, no matter who’s on stage with me, Tess will be right next [to] me jamming with me.”

These numbers are available for Barnard students in need of assistance:

Furman Counseling Center: 100 Hewitt Hall, 212-854-2092

Dean of Studies Office: 105 Milbank Hall, 212-854-2024

After-hours psychological emergency line: 855-622-1903

International SOS for students who are abroad: +1-215-942-8478

Public Safety non-emergency line: 212-854-3362

Public Safety emergency line: 212-854-6666