NIU Needs Answers

Yes, NIU needs answers, wants answers. As we continue to struggle toward answering the most clichéd of all questions, “why”, we have witnessed an outpouring of emotion from everyone in the community.

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NIUFilter will be a regular segment on this blog that attempts to sift through the reams of information one can acquire on the web surrounding this tragedy, so click away, the links are meant to enhance your knowledge.

There has been a lot of news on this topic lately, hopefully this will help you figure out the truth. Today’s subject: Kazmierczak. What do we know so far?

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Now that I can recollect memory of the day of the shooting, one memory in particular pops out from earlier in the day. This memory has me pondering campus security.

Earlier in the day, I had a class in one of the lecture halls in the Art building. As with the lecture halls in Cole, the emergency exit door is located on the right side of the stage (from the point of view of the audience).

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Most of us know about the Memorial Service at NIUs Convocation Center tonight at 7 p.m. There is much information about said service available here. Many of us might not know one of America’s more wretched and deplorable groups plans to descend on DeKalb tonight as well.

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When you think of what answers NIU needs, what answers that the Huskie community absolutely yearns for, the obvious one is “why”, in its many different forms. Sam touched on the why question in her first hand account. Sadly, the most important why question may never be fully answered. And that, is difficult for those left behind to cope with.

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School shootings are symptoms of social problems.

We have problems in this country and this year’s unprecedented election has given issues a platform they won’t likely receive for some time afterward.

People need to know what those problems are so this sort of random violence doesn’t happen again.
That struggle and fight, to establish what went wrong and why could lead to division. I hope it does not.

We hope to reduce division. So when speaking about these topics, Please respect others.
This incident has incited debates relating to Gun Control, Mental Health Care, Security and Privacy. We will be letting people vent their feelings about the necessity of calls for change.

Some goals that we have with this blog are:

To allow people that feel they have been misrepresented to share there feeling in an unfiltered way.
To shed some light on some of the things we could have done differently.
To respect others in whatever form of grieving they need.

To gain some understanding.

Please feel free to comment, send an email to mike@niuneedsanswers.com if you would like to submit a post.

I am searching for an explanation.

There’s something wrong with a disassociated world where we have the technology to have greater interconnection but no one really knows each other any more.

It seems now that Steve Kazmierczak didn’t want people searching into his phone and computer so he took steps to thwart any investigation. This makes things more difficult for some grasping to figure out why.

We may never know why this young man snapped.
We may be able to find out what societal problems we have that leads people to lash out in violent ways for attention.
We will make the best of a horrific situation.

By Sam Brunell

Could this be real? Was it a joke? A drill?

He never really stopped shooting. I couldn’t take my eyes of him. When he got closer to the aisle (which was in my direct path), reality kicked in. I dropped to my knees and laid flat on the hard, cold floor taking cover under the not-so-comfortable hard lecture seats.

It was 1:30 p.m. on February 14, 2008.

I was sitting in my dorm room with Mike and Justin. I had been religiously checking blackboard to see if my Geol 104 test grade had been posted. It was fairly cold outside and I had been in classes since 8, so I really didn’t want to go outside, to yet another class.

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This message was sent out to student’s emails on Friday afternoon. The NIU administration never thought they would have to deal with a situation like this. The community has united.

Dear Students and Colleagues,

Just one week ago, a brief but horrifying outburst of violence plunged our campus into the greatest turmoil most of us have ever experienced. Since that awful day, we have also witnessed the greatest outpouring of compassion and concern we could possibly imagine. Across campus, throughout our country and around the world, people are reaching out to NIU and to each other with support of every conceivable type.

Even as we mourn the loss of five wonderful students and the incalculable damage done to dozens more, the NIU family is working hard to prepare for our return to the business of teaching and learning. I am particularly grateful to faculty and staff who participated in sessions that prepared them to help students in the days and weeks ahead. As many of you know, we will have trained counselors in every classroom on Monday and throughout next week to provide on-site assistance for students. We know that healing takes time, and that the grieving process is different for everyone. We will continue to focus our efforts on support for all members of the NIU campus community, in whatever form is needed.
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