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Funeral arrangements set for Arlington Heights college student

Wake and funeral services have been set for a 19-year-old college student from Arlington Heights who died Sunday while attending a fraternity event in Missouri.

Visitation for Kamil Jackowski, a freshman at the University of Iowa and 2016 graduate of Hersey High School, will be held from 3 to 9 p.m. Friday, at Matz Funeral Home, 410 E. Rand Road in Mount Prospect. On Saturday, he will lie in state beginning at 9:30 a.m. at St. Thomas Becket Church, 1321 Burning Bush Lane in Mount Prospect, followed by a funeral Mass at 10:30 a.m. Burial follows at All Saints Cemetery, 700 N. River Road in Des Plaines.

Jackowski leaves behind his parents, Piotr and Lidia, and two brothers, David and Sebastian.

On Tuesday night, Jackowski was remembered for his smile during a campus memorial and prayer service at the University of Iowa, where he was a freshman.

The Tuesday night prayer service at Iowa's Newman Catholic Student Center was "a time for friends to grieve, heal, share stories and remembrances, and celebrate the life of Kamil, together," according to the center's website.

"Within each personal tribute, they all spoke of his effortless ability to light up a room with a single smile, and what a remarkable friend he was," Josh Kilgore, a friend of the family, told the Daily Iowan. "As more people came forward about how much Kamil had touched their lives, it really resonated with how incredible of a guy he was."

Preliminary autopsy results released Tuesday show foul play is not suspected in Jackowski's death, the Iowa City Press-Citizen reported. But full toxicology tests are expected to take 6 to 8 weeks, so "no further information can be provided as to the cause of death," the Camden County, Missouri, sheriff's office release said.

While authorities have not speculated whether alcohol played a role in the death, it is being investigated as a possibility.

"Anytime there is a young death, that's always looked at," Camden County sheriff's Lt. Arlyne Page said Tuesday.

Page said detectives are interviewing other students that were there. She also said no foul played is suspected.

Jackowski, who was majoring in pre-business at Iowa, was in Missouri for a Sigma Chi fraternity formal. He was found unresponsive shortly before 7 a.m. Sunday in a room at Camden on the Lake Resort in Lake of the Ozarks.

After friends and family shared stories about Jackowski, people congregated at a reception to discuss his impact on the University of Iowa community and watch a slideshow with pictures from his life, the Iowan reported.

"The service was so heartfelt," Kilgore said. "Everyone in the room had a connection with Kamil in one way or another."

"Kamil always had a smile on his face," Peter Fassnacht, an Iowa student, posted on a Facebook page he created for the prayer service. "He never complained and always made the room he was in a better place just by his lighthearted spirit."

On Monday, fraternity and sorority leaders at the University of Iowa announced a ban of alcohol from all official events until they can work with the university to make those events safer. They also banned out-of-town formals.

Student leaders Tuesday told the Press-Citizen they had been advocating bans on out-of-town fraternity and sorority formals long before Jackowski's death.

"As to the decisions that were made yesterday - in term of banning events with alcohol and banning out-of-town formals - that was not the first time we were having those discussions," said Rachel Zuckerman, the outgoing president of UI Student Government. "We have been having those conversations for over a year, and they really started accelerating this semester."

The latest round of discussions goes back to April 2016, after two Iowa students, Hannah Van Soelen and Mackenzie Wollenzien, fell from a balcony while attending Delta Chi's spring formal at Lake of the Ozarks, the Press-Citizen reported. Wollenzien is now paralyzed from the waist down.

Zuckerman said she and other Iowa student government members have been working for months with fraternity and sorority leaders to discover where there was "room to push the community to be doing better," the Press-Citizen reported. Leaders within the Greek councils already were discussing the possibility of surveying members about the need to permanently bar Iowa students from attending out-of-town formals, Zuckerman said. News of Jackowski's death, however, sped up the timetable.

University staff members told the Press-Citizen that the individual councils - not the university - set policies about fraternity and sorority formal events.

"All four of our governing councils have a judicial process that is utilized to hold their respective council's chapters accountable," Erin McHale, coordinator for the University of Iowa's Fraternity and Sorority Life programs, said via email.

Within the past year, the council made some changes to its out-of-town event registration process, McHale told the Press-Citizen, requiring chapters to complete a crisis management flowchart and to upload bus contracts to confirm that alcohol would not be allowed on buses.

Jackowski, who played football at Hersey, was a member of the Daily Herald's 2015 All-Area team for both offense and defense.

An online petition was launched Monday calling on the school to retire his jersey No. 1, but Northwest Suburban High School District 214 spokeswoman Jen Delgado said Tuesday there has been no discussion among school or district officials about that.

A GoFundMe page established to raise money to pay for Jackowski's funeral had garnered more than $50,000 by Wednesday morning.

Kamil Jackowski
University of Iowa community members head Tuesday to the Newman Catholic Student Center for a prayer service for Kamil Jackowski, a Sigma Chi freshman who died in Missouri over the weekend. COURTESY OF THE PRESS-CITIZEN/David Scrivner
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