Jasmine Jahanshahi

University of California, Berkeley
Science Po, Paris
Paris, France
April 2011

Twenty year old Jasmine wouldn't let herself be mediocre in anything, which led her to do well in everything she did. She was a phenomenal pianist, held a Brown Belt in martial arts and was an excellent snow skier, as well as the Co-President of her graduating class in her high school. She chose University of California, Berkeley and majored in Political Science and History. Jasmine was the Chair Woman at UC Berkeley U.N. model and also volunteered in assisting homeless and abused women with their medical needs in California.

Jasmine was later was accepted into Science Po, an elite university in Paris where she thought she would live out her dreams. She had already traveled to many places within Asia and Europe and spoke English, Persian and French very beautifully. Yet before she could continue trekking the globe, her time was unexpectedly cut short.

On April 14, 2011, Jasmine died in an apartment fire in Paris that took the lives of four others and injured another 57 people. The fire was horrifically preventable, and the condition of the apartment building surprisingly bleak for a developed country. The lack of knowledge about fire prevention in different countries clearly highlights a need to better disseminate information to all, especially to students who are studying abroad.

What made Jasmine different was not what she did, but who she was.
Megan Clement, Jasmine’s friend and roommate at Berkeley described her tenacity as such: "Jasmine never wasted time. She never stopped studying because, she told me, she could never know everything, so how was she supposed to know when to stop? Whatever she dd, it was in her nature to do it with her entire being. This is how she accomplished so much."

Reed Johnson, Jasmine’s boyfriend from college said, "She understood that life is not suppose to be easy; that you are suppose to work terribly hard at times, to become and remain someone you can be happy with. It is especially remarkable that she did this without trying."

Through her experiences, Jasmine learned to see with her heart. I salute ClearCause for passionately demanding transparency and mandated standards for study abroad programs and educating parents and lawmakers about the lack of safety standards for our students and scholars. As a father who lost his dream girl to a student abroad program, I would have suggested a different path for my daughter's adventure if I was more aware of all the facts regarding her safety.

Below is a quote that a professor extracted from one of Jasmine's
papers:









Reza Djahanshahi, father of Jasmine