Reflecting a month after the NIU tragedy

Add comment March 14th, 2008

Today—a month to the day that Steven Kazmierczak stopped time on my campus—a press release from NIU’s public affairs department filtered into my inbox.

I opened it eagerly, hoping to find the answers there.

I didn’t.

I knew even before I read it that the report wouldn’t give me a feeling of closure, having been told as much from people whose advice I sought on the topic in the past few weeks, but that didn’t change how much I wanted closure.

It troubles me that sense cannot be made of senselessness, but we can demand no answers from the dead. For that reason—and in so many ways—I will always wonder why.

The other students who were touched by the tragedy on campus that day share my unsettled sense of perception and the mental awareness that we’ve moved beyond the naivety of youth.

We are forever changed, and the world will never look the same to us.

We can only be thankful for every day we are given, for being alive and feeling the sun’s warmth each morning. In succumbing to the fear that violence causes, we only allow it to taint us. Our best defense is a refusal to allow it to control us.

This devastating event has been recorded as a part of history, but history cannot dictate what comes out of it.