Eloquence From An English Professor At Northern Illinois University

I'll be going back to room 209 in Reavis Hall, right next door to Cole, where I teach creative nonfiction in the English department. I took a walk Thursday through the building. It was eerily quiet. I peeked in the window at my empty classroom. It looked the same, but somehow it looked very different.

In some ways, it will seem odd returning to the subject matter of English 303, dwelling on things like syntax and grammar, narrative voice and imagery. It will seem a bit strange to talk, as I usually do, about the absolute imperative of getting the facts straight at a time when the truth seems all wrong.

Like everyone else here, I worry about my students. Are they all going to come back? Will they be able to go back to what college life is supposed to mean, whatever that is for them?...

...It hits home. My daughter worked on the high-school paper last year with a student who was shot and wounded. Surveys at Virginia Tech after the massacre there last year found that 50 percent of students knew a victim.

Teachers will make sure students know about places to find counseling services. But they are not trained as counselors, and the experts tell us not to try to fill the role. "The classroom is not the place for group therapy," Dr. Flynn [Director of Counseling at Virginia Tech] said. "I had an organic chemistry teacher ask me, 'I don't know what to talk about?" And I told him, 'Talk about organic chemistry'."

Dr. Flynn reminded us that, contrary to the popular notion, targeted shootings on American campuses have been declining in the last 10 years. That's little comfort, of course, if you were sitting in the lecture at Cole Hall a week ago Thursday, or if your son or daughter, your sibling or your friend, was sitting there.

Steven Kazmierczak Sent Baty A Good-Bye Package on Valentine's Day

"The person I knew was not the one who went into Cole Hall and did that," Baty told CNN. "He was anything but a monster. He was probably the ... nicest, (most) caring person ever."

The day of the shooting or the day after, Baty received a package from Kazmierczak containing two textbooks, a cell phone and what she characterized as a "goodbye note."

"You've done so much for me," the note said, according to Baty. "You will make an excellent psychologist and social worker someday."

Another package contained a gun holster and ammunition. She confirmed that he had stopped taking an antidepressant about three weeks ago because "it made him feel like a zombie," but she denied that his recent behavior was unusual.

Anything But Erratic, Says Jessica Baty of Her Boyfriend, Steven Kazmierczak

CNN reports:

The girlfriend of the gunman who killed five people and then himself at Northern Illinois University last Thursday told CNN that there was "no indication he was planning something."

Jessica Baty said her boyfriend, Steve Kazmierczak, gave no warning of the terror he planned to unleash at NIU.

"He wasn't erratic. He wasn't delusional. He was Steve; he was normal," Jessica Baty tearfully said in an exclusive interview Sunday.

Baty, 28, had been dating and living with Steven Kazmierczak for two years.

"He was a worrier," she said. He once told her he had "obsessive-compulsive tendencies" and that his parents committed him as a teen to a group home because he was "unruly" and used to cut himself.

He had been seeing a psychiatrist, Baty said, and was taking an anti-depressant to treat depression. But Kazmierczak had stopped taking the medication three weeks ago, "because it made him feel like a zombie," she said.

"He wasn't acting erratic," she said. "He was just a little quicker to get annoyed."

She knew he had purchased at least two guns. He told her they were for home protection.

On Valentine's Day, Baty was in class at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign where she and Kazmierczak were graduate students studying criminal justice. The students began to talk about a mass shooting taking place at Baty and Kazmierczak's alma mater, NIU in DeKalb.

She didn't think much of it, and her mind drifted to where her boyfriend told her he would be that day -- with his godfather in another town in Illinois.

Contradictory Views of Steve Kazmierczak

What people initially told police about the Northern Illinois University shooter — a portrait of a happy, stable young man who was a bright, helpful scholar — didn't add up.

Now investigators searching for what triggered Thursday's bloody attack, in which five students were killed and several injured before Steven Phillip Kazmierczak committed suicide, are finding some disturbing details.

He had spent time in a mental health center, had disturbing tattoos covering his arms and had developed a recent interest in guns.

Harold Ng, NIU Student, Writes Of His Ordeal During Campus Shooting

A first person account of being shot in the classroom at Northern Illinois University by gunman.

Ordering Guns Via Internet

Web site used to buy gun accessories by Steven Kazmierczak is owned by the same company that operates a site patronized by Seung-Hui Cho, the company said.

Kazmierczak ordered two 9 mm Glock magazines and a holster for a Glock handgun from the Web site February 4, said a statement released by TGSCOM Inc.

He received them February 12, two days before the NIU shootings, it said.

"TGSCOM Inc. also operates the Web site used by Seung-Hui [Cho] to purchase a firearm used in the Virginia Tech shootings last April," the statement said.

Cho killed 32 people before turning a gun on himself in that incident.

Once more, I am amazed that anyone can order a firearm over the internet! How stupid can we get? Anonymity is the name of the game when you have decided to end your own life and take as many others with you as you can in a few minutes. What easier way is there than to order a weapon via online shopping? Once more, you've got to be kidding.

Quick Response From Authorities at NIU Shooting: Only 90 Seconds

MSNBC reports,

Steven Kazmierczak, a 27-year-old NIU (Northern Illinois University) graduate, opened fire Thursday afternoon in a lecture hall, killing five students and injuring more than a dozen others in a rapid-fire assault that lasted just a few minutes. He committed suicide on the stage.

Authorities responded quickly; the first 10 police officers were on the scene in 90 seconds. NIU launched its emergency alert system — a carefully rehearsed plan developed after Virginia Tech — sending out e-mails and messages on Web sites to notify students that a possible gunman was on campus and they needed to find a safe area.

We should be proud that our police officers responded in such a timely manner, in only 90 seconds. If Mr. Kazmierczak had not committed suicide immediately, he may have tried to go into other buildings on campus to shoot other students and professors. The police response would have prevented this additional tragedy. We should be relieved that authorities responded so quickly.