NIU tribute
1 comment February 16th, 2008 09:48pm Jeniece Smith
I found this touching tribute video on YouTube.
Memorial fund
Add comment February 16th, 2008 05:18pm Jeniece Smith
The DeKalb and Sycamore chambers of commerce have established an NIU memorial fund through the DeKalb County Community Foundation. To donate, go here and click on the NIU ribbon.
Following a discussion on the NIU Dog Pound forum, students are submitting designs for a T-shirt that will commemorate the NIU tragedy. Click here for the thread. If you’re on Facebook, join the group “NIU T-shirts to Support NIU Memorial Fund.”
An act of courage
Add comment February 16th, 2008 03:53pm Jeniece Smith
Jeff Merkel, whose story appeared in the Register Star and on rrstar.com today, is an acquaintance of mine. I met him last semester in a media class.
I didn’t know about Jeff’s brave actions following the shooting until Friday, when I saw his photo pop into the newsroom publishing system.
His staunchness in the face of fear is an inspiration and an example that all NIU students should follow. Jeff offered help tending to the physical wounds of this tragedy, but we can all help heal the emotional wounds. We must stand strong and support one another. As NIU President John Peters said, “We will get through this together.”
Keeping friends close
Add comment February 16th, 2008 01:59pm Jeniece Smith
Following the tragedy at NIU, I received more than 60 phone calls, text messages and e-mails from friends, family and fellow students. Because of the gridlocked cell phone towers in DeKalb on Thursday, more than half of the calls I received went to voicemail.
The calls stopped briefly around 11:30 Thursday night, then began flooding in again around 6 a.m. on Friday. On Friday, my battery became nearly drained, and I carried a cell phone charger around with me, plugging my phone in whenever I was near an outlet.
Many of the first calls Thursday afternoon were from panicked relatives or friends asking if I was safe. My mother was distraught — her call the first to reach me as I hid in a locked classroom — when I couldn’t tell her if I knew that I was out of danger. My best friend sobbed with relief when she heard my voice on the other line.
A member of my roller derby league called me about 4:45 p.m. on Thursday, saying that she and my other teammates had been trying to reach me for over an hour. I recruited her to call the others to relay the message that I was unhurt and that I loved them all.
Since Friday morning, the calls have been to inquire about my well being. None of my friends have asked me to talk about what happened. They’ve simply said, “I am here for you.” It doesn’t seem like much, but that’s the best thing a friend can offer another friend.
My friends have heard me break down as I try to make sense of the chaos of the situation. They have grieved with me for the victims and prayed with me for their friends and families. They have hugged me and have sat in silence with me when words were insufficient for expression.
Now, more than ever before, I want to be near the ones I love.
Dealing with a delicate situation
Add comment February 15th, 2008 04:22pm Tim Scordato
Early this morning, I watched the father of the NIU gunman on TV wave off a crowd of reporters saying, “Please leave me alone. This is a very hard time for me.” He declined any further comment about his son and told reporters he was a diabetic.
There is a very thin line reporters must walk when questioning victims and their families. And yes, I consider Stephen a victim. All too often, we become victims of our own doing. Anyways, I believe it is the job of the media to know when and what questions to ask. It must be very hard for Stephen’s father to speak to the media during this time. I’m sure he’s already been questioned by the police and FBI all morning.
This past summer, I was playing tennis with a photographer friend of mine. While we were playing, a huge butterfly landed in the middle of the court. He had at least a five inch wing span. My friend instinctively whipped out his camera and started taking pictures. The butterfly eventually started to fly away, but my friend hit him back to the ground with his tennis racket, so he could take more pictures of him. The butterfly slammed into the gound breaking one of his wings. It was at this point my friend realized the photo wasn’t worth tormenting this bug.
Sometimes, we just need to let these delicate creatures fly away until they are ready to have their photo taken again.
We waited for an unknown fate
Add comment February 15th, 2008 02:48pm Jeniece Smith
I’m a junior at NIU. Yesterday, I was attending classes in Reavis Hall, a classroom building adjacent to Cole Hall. Now, a day later, it’s still difficult to comprehend what happened. Less than 24 hours ago, I was crouched behind a desk in the corner of a locked computer lab, fearing for my life. I was alone in the room, other students having fled a few minutes before.
From the hallway, there came, at first, sounds of shouting and the beat of rapid footfalls. After that, things fell disturbingly quiet inside the building. I could hear only the mournful howls of the sirens and the incessant whop-whopping of the chopper blades outside.
I didn’t know what had happened or what was still happening. Furtive glances out the window told me nothing. I knelt in silence on the floor until I heard the rasp of a key being inserted into the lock of the door. I stood up and came face to face with a campus employee, who was startled to see me appear from behind a desk.
To my dismay, he had no more idea than I of what was going on. He took me to the computer lab next door, where a roomful of anxious students were sitting in stifling quiet, speaking only in hushed voices. I took a seat and listened to the conversations around me.
From every student, I heard a different possibility. One said they heard the shooter was still at large. Another jumped in, reporting they had heard there was not one shooter, but three, and that they were making their way from building to building. This remark prompted a few moments of silence, before someone said, “I heard that at least five people got shot.”
Students said their friends in other buildings had professors barricading the doors of their classrooms and waiting with their students for an unknown fate.
None of us knew that the shooting had already ended, lasting a few brief moments, before word of it could reach us. We didn’t know that the shooter had turned the gun on himself after his horrifying rampage, ending his own life.
From what other students told me later, police response was massive and swift. If the shooter had decided to continue his onslaught — or had there been more shooters — the attacks would have been effectively quelled by police action.
This knowledge is comforting, but it in no way dulls the sting of lives lost yesterday. This event has troubled me deeply, and my heart is burdened for my fellow students and their families.
Coping
Add comment February 15th, 2008 01:28pm Collin Quick
I graduated from NIU in December 2006. I’ve had a good amount of people here ask me if I’m OK, how am I doing, etc. It’s weird because I haven’t been in DeKalb since August. While I still have friends there, there isn’t much bringing me back to the ‘ole campus.
And now I feel like if I go back - when I go back - that it’s going to be out of pity or grief. I’ve watched friend after friend on their Facebook or MySpace page change from a photo of themselves to a black and red ribbon with an NIU Huskie on it. I’ve talked to people and they are basically numb. No emotions, no reactions. Just a sense of “wow, it happened here.” You can hear it in their voices.
I think the headline on our 1A today said it all.
No. Not here.
They can’t take that away from me
Add comment February 15th, 2008 12:47pm Tim Scordato
As soon as I heard the news of the shooting, I called a friend and previous classmate at NIU. She cried while she walked past a man lying on the ground in front of the Student Center. His shirt was covered in blood and he was breathing heavily. She asked me why somebody would do this. Why would they do this on Valentine’s Day?
The truth is that these incidents can happen anywhere and anytime. Many people share a blissful ignorance of violence, which is a very good thing. I wish more people shared such bliss. However, people drastically lose their confidence in themselves and their safety when such incidents happen.
I hope the victims and their families can once again regain their confidence. I’m not talking about confidence in NIU or the police force, for they have handled the situation to the best of their powers. I’m talking about confidence in the future.
No incident, no matter how tragic, should take away the confidence in a brighter tomorrow. I hope no bullets, blood and tears take away the confidence of the victims of yesterday or else there won’t be any heroes of tomorrow.
Relating national to local
Add comment February 15th, 2008 11:35am Collin Quick
I remember reading stories about VA Tech last year and the aftermath of what school officials had to deal with.
One of the big issues was what to do with the building; more so, the classroom where the shootings on their campus took place.
It’s easy to close down a single classroom. It’s not as easy to do to an auditorium. The auditoriums in Cole Hall – there are two of them – seat about 300 to 350 students. Easily.
After having been in every building on the NIU campus, the school just can’t close down this auditorium. Students would be left without a classroom. And we’re talking a lot of students.
Those auditoriums held classes Monday through Friday, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., plus night classes on certain nights. They were used for everything. Classes. Film screenings. Guest lectures. IHSA tournaments. Greek Row meetings. Everything. It was an easily accessible, easily locatable place on campus. I think it’s fair to say everyone, throughout their college career, had a class in one of those two auditoriums.
Cole Hall isn’t a building that the campus can just hide away and close off. It’s in the middle of campus. Literally. Three main sidewalks converge in front of Cole; thousands of students walk past it, around it, through it on any given day.
So to move these classrooms – if the administration chooses to do so – will be a difficult task. While there are other large areas on the campus – the Altgeld Hall auditorium, the Holmes Student Center ballrooms – they are not “learning areas.” The halls and ballrooms I listed are for large gatherings that see multiple uses throughout the year.
It’s the middle of February and these 25,000 students still have another 12 weeks of classes to get through. That’s 12 weeks of walking past Cole Hall. Twelve weeks of daily reminders of what happened. One horrific day and 12 somber weeks of memories before students can get away for awhile.
Couldn’t sleep …
Add comment February 15th, 2008 08:46am Collin Quick
In the everyday hustle and bustle of a college campus, Cole Hall easily got lost as a building at Northern Illinois University.
It was the type of building that you walked past, ever going in unless you had a lecture in one of the two large auditoriums or needed to do something in the computer lab in the basement of the building.
During my three years at NIU, I had three classes in Cole.
One was a math class that met in one of the auditoriums two days a week; the second, a photojournalism class that met once a week in the basement; and a third, an English class that met in the viewing room behind the auditorium.
The more I think about it, I’m pretty sure I know how the gunman got on the stage. It was the back staircase.
Cole Hall is an old building. It smelled like an old building, it was concrete everything and it was built around the same time as other surrounding buildings – Reavis Hall, DuSable Hall, Zulof Hall.
Even if I didn’t have a class in the building, I cut through it all the time on my way to class. It was easier to walking through a sea of bodies waiting to enter the auditoriums than going around the buildings on the broken-down dirt paths.
In the cold winter months, my friends and I would use as many “warm cuts” as possible – a way to cut through as many buildings on your way to class. Cole was perfect for that.
I can only imagine students running for those doors to get out of class. Cole is set up that you enter and exit from the same location. When you came in, you walked down a gradual slope and found where you wanted to sit. To leave, you got up, turned around and walked out the same way you came in.
I always sat in the back of the class, towards the doors, for my math course (that’s probably why I did so bad in retrospect) so that I wouldn’t have to wait and trudge up incline to get out of class at the end.
Sitting under the auditorium for my photojournalism class, you could hear collapsible desk arms falling to the side of seats and people walking above and the big, black metal doors slamming shut.
To sit under those sounds on Feb. 14, coupled with the gunfire and screaming … that’s a sound I never want to imagine.
