Shame on NIU leaders, governor

There's something seriously off in NIU's decision to raze Cole Hall less than two weeks after the shootings that took place there.

It's difficult to discuss without sounding like an insensitive clod. Which, I fear, is exactly what NIU is betting on.

Unlike locations where other horrible crimes have taken place -- Virginia Tech's Norris Hall, Lane Bryant, and Brown's Chicken, among them -- Cole Hall was slated for demolition prior to the shootings.

So what it looks like now is college officials are using these senseless murders as an excuse to get funding from an already strapped state budget.

Nice.

How many other schools could use even a fraction of that $40 million that Blagojevich is so gallantly waving around?

Certainly, the NIU college community has been traumatized, and college officials need to be sensitive to this, but three years from now, how many of those students will still be there?

As an employee of the state's pathetically funded education system, I'm angered by the school's attempts to use this horrible event to their advantage when there's so much need elsewhere.

Shame on them, and shame on Blago for going along with it.

Paula Lauer

East Dundee