Thank you to everyone that talked to me on AIM, emailed me, responded here, and talked to me on IRC - everyone was so supportive to my mindless scared rambling. I was having a really hard time dealing with this yesterday - and it is still really hard to believe. I am just having trouble believing that something so horrible happened so close to home. Thankfully, the situation was resolved with minimal casualties - one death and 2 injuries - but that death and those injuries still shock me to the core.
The situation hit especially close to home for me for several reaons. First, because it was my school - and we had gone almost 3 years without something tragic happening (my sophomore year, a student jumped through a 9th floor window and I saw the ambulance pull away, the blood on the ground, and the body-shaped hole in the window
) and I'd never seen anything so tragic happen on a campus that is usually rather peaceful. I've spent the last 6 years of my life there - one in high school, 4 as an undergraduate, and 1 as a graduate student - and it sort of hits at my heart that something so horrible could happen in a place that I had always thought of as "safe."
Plus, I knew a lot of people that were potentially inside that building. My chapter advisor for my sorority is a professor whose office is in that building. My friends mom works there. Plus, a lot of my friends are business students, so there was a chance that they had been in there, too. Luckily, all of my friends either weren't there or got out safely.
Also, one of my best friends lives in an apartment building that is almost right across the street from the building that was affected. Until I talked to him on AIM and realized that he was okay, I was really worried about him, too. He actually was evacuated from his apartment for a while - and it was scary knowing that he might have been in the range of gunfire.
Also, I was on my way to Case to finish up final grades for the class that I TA with my professor when I heard it on the news. I was really scared that he and I would have to be there as the hostage situation was going on - even though the BME building is on the other side of campus. But in order for me to get to the other side of campus, I would have had to drive past the roped off area (since I would be comming from the West Side of Cleveland). Thankfully, we didn't meet because he called me and we resolved the grading situation over the phone and came up with our final grades quite quickly. But it was still quite nervewracking.
Also, even though I am not a business student, the Biomedical Engineering department used to share a building with the economics department until the business school moved into the PBL building and the rest of the business school was housed in the two adjoining buildings - so if this would have happened just a few months ago, the biomedical engineering department would have also been effected. Plus, I know a lot of the Accounting students and professors because the lab that I worked in was on the same floor as all of the accounting offices.
It turned out that the gun man was a Case Alumni who had recently lost a lawsuit with the university with someone in the business school.
CNN Story I guess he was extremely disgruntled and he decided that shooting people would be the best way to deal with his disappointment
. One MBA student died
- I did not know him, but it was still absolutely horrifying. 2 people were injured - and I think one of them is 7mo pregnant and went into early labor - I really hope she is okay - at the last newsbroadcast I heard, both of the injured were stable.
This is still really hard for me to deal with and I am having a hard time getting my nerve back up to go back to school. Thankfully, I have until Monday to try to regroup my emotions.
- Alicia
