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NewslettersThe Thursday Northern Illinois shootings
Submitted by sblust on Fri, 2008-02-15 08:25.
This one hit too close to home for me. NIU was where I went to college in the early '70s, and Cole Hall, where a gunman killed six students and himself Thursday, is a lecture hall where I took several classes, including one we affectionately called "Monday Night at the Movies," a theater class where we watched and discussed classics such as "Citizen Kane" and "The Birth of a Nation."
I remember the sick feeling I had watching the Virginia Tech shootings unfold last April. The last thing I thought I would see would be a similar situation develop on a campus I called home for four years.
Take nothing for granted in life. Hug those you love a little longer today.
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Steve - I was present in your offices on the day of the VT shootings last April and recall the shock among the professionals there.
I understand how, when this hits home, places where you have been and worked daily, you do not think it is real.
It was like the day in early October, 2001, when I traveled on Amtrak from my home in CT into New York, the train coming in through Queens and the skyline of NYC coming into view as the train curves over the Hell Gate Bridge, and to see the Empty Place. I started crying.
Growing up in northern NJ in the early 1970's - I saw the WTC towers being built. I traveled into their bowels often when I was came into lower Manhattan as a young adult to party or take out of town visitors on a tour. I ate in Windows on the World, my uncle worked at Merrill Lynch across the Plaza in the Black Rock - 1 Liberty Plaza. The Empty Sky seems wrong to me.
..I too cried the first time I saw the skyline changed in person. It still seems wrong.
I was a young teen in the neighborhood where one of the earliest gun massacres occured in a post office - hence the phrase "going postal" now commonly used.
I grew up in New York and Connecticut - and my memories of the Manhattan skyline will never jibe with the current reality.
I survived a gun massacre while in college that took place at a shopping center where I worked. A fellow student was killed and many co-workers and shoppers were either killed or seriously injured. For years the sound of a car backfiring would send me hurtling to the pavement.
When I came to Beaufort a shooting spree had recently occured at a school in Greenville. Most of the locals at the time weren't too aware of it - that's when I realized I was hypersensitive to these kinds of events.
Ever since then I've been keeping a sort of unofficial tally. The frequency of these shooting massacres has become alarming to me. Yet, none of these incidents seemed commonplace. Until now.
Last spring, the massacre at VT set me into a tailspin - crying jags, flashbacks to memories I'd long suppressed, bone-aching sadness, and recall of things and people I'd never realized I'd witnessed in the past. I finally reread my grand jury testimony and pulled out my "hero" plaque.
Now I'm jaded. It's finally like "yeah... so... five this week, and..." - this is the norm anymore. All I can feel is get over it because its going to be a regular thing and you'd better handle it.
That's sad.
Either way, my heart goes out to all that were traumatized by another random act of senseless violence.
Your friend enginuity
Romo attended Eastern Illinois, not Northern.
Where he went to school almost doesn't matter, there is a problem with people understanding that mental illness frequently "pops" starts up when there is a bodily change in around 17 to 22 yrs of age. this hits the military and colleges right between the eyes and it needs to be paid attention to. The military does pay close attention to this and still has problems, colleges on the other hand do little to monitor this genetic problem and have sad results to show for it. Add in street drugs and alcohol and the problem can only magnify. There is no way someone on meds should have been allowed to purchase a firearm. He may have gotten a weapon anyhow or used a different method but there could have been a reduced chance of this happening. I don't favor taking away peoples right to own firearms but some are qiute simply incapable of making rational decisions.
Tony Romo is the quarterback of the Dallas Cowboys, not the shooter at NIU. Or is there something you know that the rest of us don't? :)
Mr Romo has the number one dart board pin up in Texas for a girlfriend, Jessica Simpson............
Did anyone famous go to NIU?
This doesn't necessarily say anything about the academic prowess of the school, but one of the most famous alumni is Dan Castellenetta, better known as the voice of Homer Simpson.
This doesn't necessarily say anything about the academic prowess of the school, but one of the most famous alumni is Dan Castellenetta, better known as the voice of Homer Simpson.
I think that trumps USCB. I don't know anyone famous that went there. I didn't mean to come accross as insulting NIU. That may be a great school. I do however have a question concerning the news media in thease cases. Couldn't the story be told without any pictures of the killer(s) and also hold their name(s). There may acyually be a degree of copycat mentality and most likely a high degree of "look at me i'm inportant" ,sort of grandiose mental disorder. At any rate if there is any of these killers that can
be deterred by not giving them their moment of fame........take it away from them.
That's a fair question, v8, which leads to another question: If the shooter wanted to have his moment of fame, why did he kill himself?
After the initial shock of the shootings, the questions I think that most people wanted answered concerned the shooter: what was his background, what were his possible motives, what was his mental state? It's a part of the story that had to be covered, and I don't think failing to cover that part of the story would deter future murderers from committing a violent crime. We'll never know that for sure, but as horrified as I was by what happened in DeKalb, I wanted to find out more about this guy.
Very common - not only do we have a family member whose schizophrenia arose when she was in her early 20's [which is common] we also see Britney Spears having her bipolar disorder becoming much more severe suddenly in her early 20's.
There are lots of things, both mental and physical, that arrive in your 20's = make it to 28 or 29 and you are generally OK until you hit 45 - which when the cancers and diseases of aging start!
I hate it when I hear people try to talk about teens being bipolar, I remember beaufort comp help telling a friend of mine that her son was bipolar at 5... Thank god she took him somewhere else and got a proper diagnosis.