They’re calling it the next Virginia Tech or Columbine massacre. My alma mater, Northern Illinois University, has found itself among the ranks of those infamous few.
The gunman entered one of the many lecture halls at the University and began open firing at the students. At the time of this posting, five are confirmed dead and 17 injured. He assaulted the classroom with a shotgun and two hand guns and then turned the gun on himself.
At the time of this posting, his identity has not been revealed. Neither has the identities of those who have been killed or injured.
America has certainly gone mad.
UPDATE 2/15/08 11:00 am CST:
NIU President John Peters said a total of 22 people were shot, including the gunman. Four people, including the gunman, died at the scene; two others died later at area hospitals.
The gunman, Steve Kazmierczak, 27, a one-time undergraduate and award-winning sociology graduate student at NIU who campus Police Chief Donald Grady said was “revered by faculty and staff” and gave “no indication that this was the type of person who would engage in this activity.” Kazmierczak had recently stopped taking his medication, Grady told reporters.
Popularity: 6% [?]
February 15th, 2008 at 8:50 am
Reports are now stating that he was Steven Kazmierczak, the 2006 winner of the Dean’s Award from the NIU Department of Sociology. He was currently enrolled at U of I as a grad student in Sociology or Social Work. (J is a Sociology major at U of I.) I have heard two different conflicting statements: one is that from all accounts he had seemed to be a well adjusted smart guy, another is that he was referred for psychological testing by a professor.
I am still waiting for a final list of victims since both J & H have friends at NIU.
It sounds like NIU did all that they could under the circumstances. When it comes down to it, how can you stop something like this? If someone is determined enough to commit such a horrible act, they will most likely find the means to do so. It’s not feasible to have every college campus building (or every building in general) locked and equipped with metal detectors. We just have to hope that our loved ones are not the ones in the wrong place at the wrong time.
I hate to say that I am at least grateful that he did not decide to do this at U of I.
February 15th, 2008 at 10:27 am
First off, I want to apologize for any offense this may bring. I feel saddened by all the recent tragedies that have afflicted the country. Has anybody noticed the rising number of “similar” stories? It seems that this happens once every couple of weeks. My theory? The people of this country are beginning to feel the effects of an incompetent government. After years of being pushed by the government, losing their homes, working harder for less money, but having to spend more just to survive, dealing with wars that are waged so a puppet of a president can have a spot in the history books, I think the general public is tired of being screwed by a “corporate-sponsored” government who’s supposed to be there to take care of those same people. It’s like some sort of “mass hysteria”. Hell, just check the back stories here…Don’t they seem to have a sort of “escalating” feel to them? Each one a little worse than the last? Maybe it’s just me, but I think people have had enough, and they’re snappin’ like twigs. So, I don’t think America has gone mad….I think America IS PISSED!.
February 15th, 2008 at 12:24 pm
I highly doubt the shooter assaulted a class room of college kids because we have “a puppet of a president” in office or as a statement against “corporate government”.
A person who is capable of doing this is more than just pissed… they’re mentally and chemically imbalanced. I’m sure society has a little something to do with the series of school shootings our country has seen in the last 10 years, but in no way would I ever say that such atrocity’s occur because a murderer is pissed off at the way our country is being run.
February 15th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
Thank you Jami for responding to this… I was pretty upset reading those comments and started a few times to compose a rebuttal. But being as angry as I was, decided to cool off first.
When you look at previous school shootings, there are a few threads that reappear… perpetrators were disturbed, bullied, outsiders, or any combination of those. I have never once seen a school shooting linked with anger at the government or corporations.
Even shootings in corporate settings seem to be more about anger at a specific person in authority there, not the overall government or corporation.
February 16th, 2008 at 12:03 am
This is why animals eat their young and why kids need a boot up their ass on a regular basis. (I’m not supporting child abuse, but the competent reader should know what I mean)
Why aren’t parents instilling the respect and values that were beaten into most of us???
Also…Florida and Texas have carry and conceal laws…there’s quite a process, including a PSYCHOLOGICAL review. They have less gun crime as well..why??? Do you think a dumbass would be likely to pull a gun out and start shooting not knowing if the other however many people had one too??? Call me crazy, but I think those two states have something going there…
(Again…not promoting violence, quite the opposite actually.)
February 16th, 2008 at 12:04 am
oops, that wasn’t supposed to be anonymous.
February 16th, 2008 at 5:47 am
My thoughts and prayers are with the students in the hall, their families, and the shooter’s family. I attended NIU 9 years ago and had a class in that very lecture hall.
Reading some of the reader comments on other sites and listening to the radio personalities, I’ve heard many people judge the shooter without all the answers. Yes, what he did was wrong and tragic. But, it appears he had some issues of his own that we just don’t understand. Chief Grady mentioned the shooter recently stopped taking his medications. If he was on antipsychotic or anti-depressive meds, stopping cold turkey can be devastating. A person can become manic, have delusions or hallucinations, become depressed, and can lose the ability of knowing right from wrong. Obviously there was something that made this seemingly well-adjusted man decide he should fire upon a group of students and then take his own life. I have to wonder what happened to bring him to that point.
Everyone seems to be focussing on the gun control issue this has brought up. However, very few people have mentioned the struggles mental health patients face. I work for a hospital and have good health insurance. However, the coverage for mental health is limited, as is typical. Many people do not even have any mental health benefits and must find a way to obtain treatment on their own. Many times, it is just too expensive and the person doesn’t seek the help they truly need. Or, they find a psychiatrist or psychologist to talk to, but cannot afford the medications. Or there is a lack of support to deal with the side effects of the medications, which can be just as devastating as not being on the meds.
I won’t even venture down the road of gun contol. But I will say, I hope this, along with all the other shooting we have seen occur, will help our government, and society in general, know that we need improvements in our mental health community. These patients are not evil and don’t need to be feared by society. They need help. Yes, some patients need to be committed for the safety of themselves and others. But many patients simply need easier access to care, more affordable care and more follow up from the mental health workers. We also need more support and education available for their families, who often don’t know how to help them and don’t understand the importance of treatment.
February 16th, 2008 at 10:36 am
Ok, I guess I did a poor job of clarifying myself. I don’t mean to say that the government is directly the cause of all this. It just simply seems to me that that there seems to be an increasing rise in this sort of violence.
If you go back to the depression, People were jumping out of windows like it was a some sort of party. The simple pressures eventually got to them. Yes, these people most likely have some sort of imbalance, but it’s not just school shootings, its everywhere I look. In the past 6 months, I’ve had 3 good friends of mine commit suicide. There have been, i dunno…How many school shootings? Every third week there seems to be a missing wife, or mom’s killing kids…God, it just seems bad news is getting worse, or actually, more like it’s getting more extreme to “fit” with the times. My post obviously left a bad taste. That wasn’t my intent, it was simply meant to invoke a thoughtful correlation between the “governmental” problems were seeing, such as this “non-recession” were currently in. People are losing there homes left and right. As Liv said in a previous post, the cost of living is SKYROCKETING, but our wages are not…and THAT’S even if your lucky enough to even have a job! I’m not saying that ol’ “dubbya” is an orchestrator of violence (that’s Cheney’s job), but I DO think that the mistakes of our leaders do trickle down to the people…and just like in school, if you poke at the quiet kid enough, he’s eventually going to react. I’m not in any way trying to offend those involved with this tragedy, because I do see this for what it is, a tragedy. They all are.
February 16th, 2008 at 7:04 pm
Mandie. I too had classes in Cole Hall… several classes. And it’s strange to recall the memory of that stage in front of the class knowing that the image of that stage will never be the same.
As for gun control being the answer to solving the problem and mystery of (apparently) random people going bezerk, I don’t think it’s the absolute solution either. There’s a much deeper root of sociological and psychological problems underneath the carnage. I don’t condone the right to carry a fire arm but it’s true when they say “guns don’t kill people, people kill people”.