NIU- A Huskie Nation Recovering

Dekalb, Illinois.

Before February 14, 2008 no one had heard of our little town in the middle of cornfields.

Now the world knows of the little college town where tragedy struck at 3:06 pm on what started out as a normal Thursday.

As a first year college student at Northern Illinois University, I have told my story about the NIU tragedy too many times to count. I live in the dorms right across from where the tragedy took place and they actually staged victims on the first floor of my dorm until emergency services could care for them. I had gotten out of class early that day and was at Health Services. As I left at about 3:10, a guy walked by me with blood all over his neck. Someone near me asked what had happened and his response was, “I was shot in the neck.” Immediately I called my mom to tell her what had happened and that I was ok. At the same time I rushed back into Health Services to take shelter. In the waiting room many other students were on their cell phones doing exactly the same thing as me. We were all trying to contact loved ones to get information and every time we heard something new we would announce it to the room. About an hour later I left campus with my roommate to get away from everything until my parents could get to the campus to pick me up. We didn’t return until 7:30 and even then things were crazy.

I later found out that the son of a teacher at my elementary school was shot by the shot gun and had 30-40 pellets in his body and a punctured lung. When I later spoke to his mom she told me he wanted to come back to school as soon as classes started up again. He amazes me that he has the courage and strength to do that after such a horrible event happened to him.

In the days that followed I made over 300 black ribbons with the Huskie symbol on them to give out to friends, family, teachers, and anyone that would wear them. I made so many that I lost count and would sit for hours cutting pictures and ribbon and then gluing and pinning. It was the only thing I felt that I could do.

The Sunday after the tragedy I returned to campus to pick up more things from my dorm and to see the many memorials that had been erected. I returned with my roommate to place flowers at the memorial by my dorm. Being on campus was a surreal experience since it was so empty and silent.

10 days later over 10.000 people sat in our convocation center to try to cope with the tragedy as a whole. We had satellite locations around campus and around the nation. I cannot believe that so many people are behind NIU and supporting us. As we listened to speakers and sang our revised Alma Mater with only the glow of mini-flashlights to light the center I was amazed by how strong the NIU family and community has become. I know we can only become stronger.

As we returned to class today I could not believe the amount of support we as students are receiving from teachers, staff, and volunteer counselors. In every single class we had a counselor to talk to. We are all walking around in our NIU clothing with our black and red ribbons to show our support for our fallen students, knowing that we now have 5 Huskie Angels watching over us and protecting us.

I want to thank everyone that has showed their support for our Huskie Nation in the past week and for all of the people that continue and will continue to show their support in the coming weeks and months. As a student I can genuinely say that we really appreciate all of your thoughts and prayers as we try to overcome this great tragedy and move forward. I want to thank all the schools that have sent us well wishes and those that have held vigils for us on their own campuses. Seeing the support from other schools shows us that all students are connected around the nation. We can only hope that this year improves and that we can move past this tragedy. We don’t want NIU to be known for this horrible event, but for the way we recovered as a whole from it.

As we all say “Forward, Together Forward.”

We are ALL Huskies today!