NIU moves forward
A campus heals together
By Jake Griffin | Daily Herald StaffFirst of three parts
Students passing the abandoned lecture hall crowd the outer walkway, leaving the sidewalk that runs along the front doors of the building virtually empty.
They all seem a little quieter as they walk by, stealing a few fleeting glances, but rarely stopping.
Floral memorials have withered away, sorrowful signs have been removed and the yellow crime-scene tape is long gone. Nearly all traces of the tragedy at Northern Illinois University's Cole Hall are erased, except the locked building and most of the students who lived through it.
"Every time I walk by, I see the door I ran out of," said senior Lindsay Ullmann. "It kills me." On the first day of the fall term, memories of the Valentine's Day shooting that killed five students came flooding back.
Yet, Ullmann's decision to return to NIU wasn't really hard. She came back the day after the shooting. She'll graduate on time in the spring. She has a job at the Graduate School with the administrator who found her there crying and shaking after she fled Cole Hall.
"I wanted to be with my school," said Ullmann, of Schaumburg.
Most of the 164 students taking Introduction to Ocean Science in Cole Hall 101 also came back and now face the end of the first "normal" semester with relief and a small sense of accomplishment.
They are moving forward together.
"To say we put an emphasis on getting them back would be a little misplaced," said university President John Peters. "We put emphasis on helping them."
Family reunion
Peters had no idea what was in store for the campus at the start of the school year. The five dead students - Gayle Dubowski, 20, of Carol Stream, Catalina Garcia, 20, of Cicero, Julianna Gehant, 32, of Mendota, Ryanne Mace, 19, of Carpentersville and Daniel Parmenter, 20, of Westchester - are painfully missed. Twenty-one students had been physically injured. Others who were in the classroom suffer from the trauma.
Peters is pleased to have his university family back, though. To watch them mill about the campus. To see smiles on their faces. To listen to how they are coping.
"It just reinforced in me my impression of how strong and focused our students are," he said.
Freshmen, knowing what happened, came here anyway. Applications for admission were up this fall, but enrollment is slightly down for the 2008-'09 year, 18,431 undergraduates compared to 18,917 last year. Peters attributes that to the economy more than to the shootings. He points to lower enrollment at other four-year universities statewide as proof. NIU's 2008 graduating class was unusually large, another reason slightly fewer students are on campus this school year, he said.
Most of the students who were in the Cole Hall classroom also are back.
Of the 164 students registered in the ocean science class where the shooting occurred, 14 graduated and 19 others did not return to the school this year, university officials said. Only 116 people were in class the day of the shooting. University officials wouldn't say how many of those did not return. But the vast majority are back, ranging from the seriously injured to the physically unscathed.
"In a perverse way, I was motivated by the tragedy and became eager to pursue my mission, which is finishing up college," said Edward Robinson, a junior English major from Chicago who was in the classroom.
Coming back
The thought of changing schools never really entered Jenna Broderick's mind.
"All my friends are here," the 19-year-old sophomore from Tinley Park said. "I was already here for a year, so I might as well come back."
Classes are still hard, Broderick said. She catches herself watching classroom doors, then "it will register (why) and then you'll get back to class."
Ullmann built her fall schedule to avoid large lecture halls, but that didn't lessen her trepidation at the start of this school year. The first day was rough.
"I thought if every day goes like my first day, I don't think I can make it like that," she said. But throughout the first week, Ullmann found it easier to focus and shut out bad memories.
The reminders are here, but so is a large support network. NIU's new Office of Support & Advocacy offers counseling, academic help and frequent get-togethers for those affected by the shootings. Staff members help students schedule classes to avoid lecture halls. They'll accompany students who, anxious about escape routes, want to check out classrooms before the first day.
Members of the ocean science class grew close in the months after the shooting as they met in a different building, still led by Joseph Peterson, the instructor who was among those shot.
Vickie Dehner said the support at Northern was one of the key issues during her numerous talks with her daughter Samantha about returning to campus. Samantha Dehner, a 21-year-old junior from Carol Stream, spent days in the hospital and months in physical therapy after being shot in the right arm and right leg. She still has a metal plate with 10 screws in her right arm, but overcame early predictions that she might not ever use that arm again.
"She didn't go back and finish the semester, so the start of the year was when she first went back to school this fall," Vickie Dehner said. "She's still scared. We talked about going to a different school, but you have the support at Northern. We left it up to her and basically went with her instincts."
Vickie Dehner marvels at her daughter's resilience. When the family first went back to the campus, they had to pass Cole Hall.
"I'm having all these weird feelings and here she is walking right past and worrying about me," the mother said.
Healing place
It's going to take some time for the psychological scars to heal and students need to recognize that, said Micky Sharma, director of NIU's Counseling and Student Development Center, a central resource for the returning students.
"Healing is a unique process. It's different for everyone," he said. Chris Werve skipped class that day to play saxophone with the NIU Jazz Ensemble. He would have been sitting where others were killed or injured.
"It went through my mind for months. That could have been me," the 19-year-old music major from Geneva said. "I had trouble sleeping after that. I guess some people would call it survivor's guilt."
Meanwhile, Unnum Rahman had no hesitations about returning to school after being shot in the eye and arm.
"It's been pretty good," the junior marketing major from Plainfield said. "I'm personally doing fine."
Psychiatrists said it's not uncommon for people who have suffered traumatic events to return to the location. And it's usually beneficial.
"Some people who might not come back may be at more risk to develop chronic mental health problems than those who did," said Dr. Michael Martin, a psychiatrist at Naperville's Edward Hospital. "It's natural to avoid a place like that for a while, but if you continue to avoid it any emotional problems may actually get worse."
Going back to campus is one thing, but going back inside Cole Hall is something else, said Dr. Lyle Rossiter, a forensic psychiatrist in St. Charles who specializes in treating post-traumatic stress disorder.
"There's a chance that the kid goes back in there and has some repeat episode of some kind to exacerbate the work done in treatment," he said.
Some students who were in Cole Hall the day of the shooting have been allowed into the lecture hall, accompanied by university staff.
"We have been very careful about that," Peters said. "Some do. Many don't. And they all need the support associated with an experience like that."
It's still difficult for him to go inside the lecture hall.
"For me it was personal because somebody came and did violence in my house to our students," Peters said. "I took that very personally."
After being shot in April 2007 at Virginia Tech, Chicago native Garrett Evans wanted to go back to the classroom at Norris Hall to help his mental and emotional recovery.
"The odd truth is this," he said. "I wanted to see how different it looked after seeing all the bodies and blood. I wanted to see what effect it would have on me. I believe to really get over something like this you have to go back to where a really, really horrific thing took place."
Sad brotherhood
Northern and Virginia Tech, where a gunman killed 32, are linked in perpetuity by tragedy and sorrow.
"In April, I went to Virginia Tech and I was able to meet with survivors from there," said Jillian Thomas, a sophomore from Elgin. "I felt I had a connection."
It's the same kind of connection students in the NIU ocean science class developed.
"It was really good when we all came back and had class together after the shooting," said Nicole Berns, a Schaumburg native who sprained her hip fleeing Cole Hall. "We had a chance to all talk to one another, and in the classroom setting I think it was more comfortable. It made us all feel normal about the way we responded, what we were thinking and how we experienced the event. Hearing other people talk about their own responses and their own feeling of guilt or failure or confusion was really helpful to me."
Graduate Patrick Korellis of Lindenhurst has a pea-sized scar on his left arm and two shotgun pellets under his scalp to remind him of Feb. 14, 2008. He cherished the time spent with classmates afterward.
"We all knew together what we went through and how everything has been for us emotionally and physically," he said. "Sharing our stories has helped me the most."
Peters sees campus life slowly reverting to the way things were before the shooting.
"There's a good feeling out there, a little subdued, but we had a good homecoming and we did all the things you do at homecoming," he said. "Alums came flooding back. People who hadn't been here in 20 years came just to show their support. We're getting back to a normal state."
• Daily Herald staff writers Ted Cox, Jameel Naqvi, Vince Pierri, Mike Spellman and Jamie Sotonoff contributed to this report.
