February 15, 2009

Northern Illinois U. Unveils Memorial to 5 Killed in Cole Hall Shootings

A new garden will serve as a memorial to five people killed by a gunman at Northern Illinois U. a year ago. (Northern Illinois U. images)

On the one-year anniversary of the shootings in Cole Hall that took the lives of five people, Northern Illinois University unveiled a design for a memorial garden that will be constructed just east of the building.

In the garden, which will be surrounded by dawn-redwood, white-oak, and evergreen trees, a walkway will lead past a curved, 40-foot-long wall with five illuminated red-granite panels, each bearing the name of one of the victims. The panels will also quote a line from the university’s fight song — “Forward, together forward” — that students and others sang to rally their spirits in the aftermath of the February 14, 2008, tragedy.

The plan was unveiled Saturday on a day of solemn events marking the anniversary. The university’s president, John G. Peters, led a ceremony in the morning that honored not only the five people who were killed but also the emergency crews that responded to the shootings and volunteers who came to the university to help, the Chicago Tribune reported. Mr. Peters and the new Illinois governor, Pat Quinn, a Democrat, then led a procession to the site of the memorial garden, where families of the victims laid wreaths at the spot where the wall panels will be erected. Mr. Peters later welcomed the families and other university guests to a private lunch.

The idea for a garden emerged as the favorite among more than 200 suggestions contributed to a university committee created to choose a memorial design. The university’s facilities director, Jeff Daurer, worked on the design with HKM Architects + Planners, which donated its time to the project. —Lawrence Biemiller

March 5, 2008

Northern Illinois U. Retreats on Plan to Raze Site of Fatal Shootings

Northern Illinois University has backed away from a plan to demolish the building where five students were shot to death last month, less than a week after announcing it would tear down the structure and build a new one in its place, the Chicago Tribune reported.

The university’s president, John G. Peters, sent an e-mail message on Tuesday to students and members of the faculty and staff saying that the future of Cole Hall, a 40-year-old brick building in the center of the university’s DeKalb campus, should be determined by a “consensus opinion” of people connected with the university.

The retreat followed last week’s announcement by Mr. Peters and Illinois’s governor, Rod R. Blagojevich, that they would seek state funds to raze Cole Hall and erect a new, state-of-the-art classroom building in its place. The new building, they had said, would be called Memorial Hall.

But Mr. Peters has since faced criticism from some students and faculty members who said they wanted a voice in the final decision on Cole Hall’s fate. And state lawmakers, mindful of Illinois’s recent budget woes, balked at the $40-million Mr. Blagojevich requested last week for the plan. —Libby Sander

February 27, 2008

Northern Illinois U. Will Tear Down Building Where Students Were Shot

The classroom building at Northern Illinois University where this month a gunman fatally shot five students before killing himself will be torn down, state and university officials announced today.

In its place, the university will use state funds to construct a “state of the art” classroom building, to be named Memorial Hall, said Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich of Illinois and Northern Illinois’s president, John G. Peters.

The two officials were scheduled to hold an afternoon news conference with state lawmakers in front of the building, Cole Hall, where Steven P. Kazmierczak, a former student, shot 22 students on February 14 before turning the gun on himself.

Though students resumed classes this week after a 10-day closure, Cole Hall, which sits in the center of the university’s DeKalb campus, has remained shuttered since the shooting. —Libby Sander

February 21, 2008

Jittery Campuses Are on Hair-Trigger Alert in Wake of Illinois Shootings

Just as happened last year after the shooting spree at Virginia Tech, the days since last week’s massacre at Northern Illinois University have put colleges and universities across the country on edge. Many campuses have braced themselves as would-be copycats have tried to draw attention, and as what might otherwise be considered minor threats or routine events have prompted campuswide alerts.

Yesterday morning, for instance, St. Peter’s College, in Jersey City, was evacuated and locked down after security officers found a handwritten note threatening mass death with bombs. After the campus was searched by dogs, and no explosives were found, the campus was reopened by mid-afternoon, according to The Jersey Journal.

And this morning, an ROTC student practicing with a drill rifle at California State University-Dominguez Hills was taken to be a gunman armed with an assault weapon at loose on the campus. The university outside Los Angeles shut down until the alarm was proved to be false, the Associated Press reported. —Andrew Mytelka

February 20, 2008

Northern Illinois U. Gunman Took Steps to Thwart Investigation

Investigators trying to figure out why Steven P. Kazmierczak killed five students and wounded 16 others at Northern Illinois University last week have been frustrated by the gunman’s apparent zeal to cover his tracks.

According to today’s Chicago Tribune, Mr. Kazmierczak, an NIU alumnus and former graduate student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, removed and disposed of the hard drive from his laptop computer and an equally important component of his cellphone. Both steps are making it much harder for the police to establish a motive behind the shootings.

Nearly a week after the attack, “we don’t have anything to know or even begin to assume a motive yet,” the university’s police chief, Donald Grady, told the Tribune.

Meanwhile, faculty and staff members are getting trained this week by counselors on how to prepare for the return of students and the resumption of classes on Monday. —Andrew Mytelka

February 18, 2008

Tale of Campus Violence Will Make Delayed Big-Screen Debut This Spring

A movie about a disgruntled graduate student who turns violent at an American university will be released in April, its distributor told the Associated Press on Friday, a day after a former student killed five and wounded 16 in a shooting spree at Northern Illinois University.

The film, titled Dark Matter and starring Meryl Streep, was put on hold last year, “out of respect” for the Virginia Tech shootings, said the official, Gary Rubin of First Independent Pictures. According to the AP, the movie depicts a Chinese graduate student in science who becomes violent in dealing with academic politics at an American university. Ms. Streep plays a university benefactor who befriends him. —Andrew Mytelka

February 16, 2008

Classes to Resume on Feb. 25 at Northern Illinois

DeKalb, Ill. — Faculty and staff members at Northern Illinois University will return to work on Tuesday to receive several days of training on how to help students in the aftermath of Thursday’s shooting spree, which left five students dead. Students will return to the campus a week later, on February 25.

A memorial service for the students who died will be held on the DeKalb, Ill., campus on Sunday, February 24, the university’s president, John G. Peters, said in an e-mail message sent on Saturday afternoon to students and members of the faculty and staff.

An extra week of classes will be added to the end of the spring semester to make up for the lost time, pushing back the university’s commencement from May 10 to May 17, Mr. Peters said.

The building where the shootings occurred, Cole Hall, will remain closed for the rest of the academic year.

The campus of 25,000 students was thrust into turmoil late Thursday, when a former student burst into a crowded lecture hall and shot 22 students, five of whom died, before turning the gun on himself. By late Saturday afternoon, police had removed the yellow tape that had surrounded the lecture hall, and clusters of onlookers stood nearby, looking quietly at the brick building. Dozens more roamed the snow-covered campus, visiting memorials to the dead.

Mr. Peters emphasized that the healing process would take many forms, one of which was “the return to teaching and learning.” He acknowledged that the normally quiet, unassuming university tucked amid the cornfields 65 miles west of Chicago had become the focus of worldwide attention in recent days.

But, he said, despite the “roller coaster of emotions” that is likely in coming weeks and months, he urged students and faculty members not to be overwhelmed: “Let us continue to show the world that a single act of violence does not define us.” —Libby Sander

February 15, 2008

Extra Equipment Boosts Cellphone Service at Northern Illinois U. After Shooting

Verizon worked with officials at Northern Illinois University yesterday to bring in two trucks full of equipment to try to handle a burst of cellphone calls on and around the campus. Many circuits were busy yesterday as students called home to say they were safe after a gunman opened fire in a classroom.

The cellphone trucks are known as COWs, for Cellular antennas on Wheels. Walter L. Czerniak, associate vice president for information-technology services at Northern Illinois, said the trucks were to arrive on the campus this morning. The plan was for one to be used immediately, and for the second to be activated if necessary.

Each truck can support an additional 250 to 500 simultaneous cellphone calls, Mr. Czerniak said. He did not know whether other cellphone companies had added equipment as well, but he said that Verizon had a close relationship with Northern Illinois because it has a contract with the state university system to provide telephone service to the campus.

Even though the immediate danger has passed, Mr. Czerniak said, the campus is still seeing an increase in cellphone call volume today. —Jeffrey R. Young

Mental-Health Professionals Rally Behind Colleagues at Northern Illinois U.

Following the shooting at Northern Illinois University on Thursday, mental-health professionals from other colleges were quick to offer emotional and logistical support to their colleagues in DeKalb, Ill.

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Northwestern University, and other institutions in the area volunteered to send grief counselors to Northern Illinois to help its mental-health staff provide counseling services at seven locations on the campus today. Some even arrived on the campus Thursday night to counsel students in dormitories.

Chris Flynn, director of the Thomas E. Cook Counseling Center at Virginia Tech, also stepped in to help, offering insight and advice based on his own experience handling the aftermath of the fatal shootings at Virginia Tech 10 months ago.

“In a situation like this, the needs can become overwhelming for a counseling center,” said Mr. Flynn. “We had over 300 volunteers on our campus in the days following the incident … It’s important that students know that counseling is readily available.”

Mr. Flynn sent Micky M. Sharma, director of Northern Illinois’s Counseling and Student Development Center, materials he had distributed to faculty members on leading discussions about the tragedy, how to recognize symptoms of traumatized students, and handling post-traumatic-stress disorder.

“We discovered after the shooting here that there were 286 classes that had a student or faculty member who died or was injured in the shooting,” said Mr. Flynn. “Even large campuses like ours and NIU are really small when it comes down to being connected to individuals who were personally affected.”

Virginia Tech’s counseling services will be available over the weekend to students, Mr. Flynn said, because his office is concerned that news of the Northern Illinois shooting will bring back traumatic memories for students in Blacksburg, Va.

In addition to messages of emotional support, counseling professionals across the country took up collections for takeout-food gift cards, according to Gregory T. Eells, president of the Association of University and College Counseling Center Directors.

Mr. Eells said such efforts were helpful because counselors working around the clock often do not have much time to eat.

“Unfortunately, people have a real sense of how to respond to this type of situation because of what happened at Virginia Tech,” said Mr. Eells. “We know that helping out with basic needs like food are essential right now, when they are so busy.”

In a mass e-mail, Lesley Sacher, president of the American College Health Association, urged her members to offer “special care to assist our NIU colleagues.”

The incident “should strengthen our collective resolve to do whatever we can to foster a safe environment in which college students can learn and grow,” Ms. Sacher wrote. —Elizabeth F. Farrell

Online Gun Dealer Sold to Both Northern Illinois and Virginia Tech Killers

An Internet weapons dealer who sold a gun to the Virginia Tech shooter also sold handgun accessories to Steven P. Kazmierczak, who killed five people and himself yesterday at Northern Illinois University, the Associated Press reported.

The company, TGSCOM Inc., is a major Web-based gun retailer in Green Bay, Wis. On one of its two Web sites, Topglock.com, it sold two empty handgun magazines and a holster to Mr. Kazmierczak for $105.62 on February 4. Both items were for a Glock, a type of gun that he carried during the shootings. The accessories were shipped on Monday, said Eric Thompson, a company official.

The Virginia Tech gunman, Seung-Hui Cho, used a handgun he purchased from TGSCOM’s other Web site in the massacre last April, in which he killed 32 people and himself.

Mr. Thompson said his dealership is well known among Internet gun shoppers, so it was not surprising that someone looking for Glock items would find it. But he said he was shocked to be tied to both shootings.

“I’m shaking,” Mr. Thompson told the AP. “I can’t believe somebody would order from us again and do this.” —Paul Fain