I entered NIU in August of 2009. All I knew about the violence at NIU was that there was a shooting the year before in Cole hall, where six students died (yes, I acknowledge the shooter). As my freshman year started, I quickly immersed myself within the Huskie lifestyle: going to class and going to parties. My freshman year brought light on the Feb. 14 shootings as I mourned with my fellow NIU’ians during the candlelight vigil-as well as the shooting outside of Stevenson North (which I could see from my room in Grant) where a guy shot another guy over a girl. Also, I ran at full sprint out of a party because someone pulled out a gun during a fight. My sophomore year brought more of the violence. There was a shooting on 10th street in early September, as well as the known “drug deal gone bad” where two students shot Devon Butler in April of this year. Finally, this school year started off with a shooting by VCB. Then most recently, Steven Agee died at a party last Wednesday morning due to a gunshot wound to the chest.

How can we have so much violence involving guns within our NIU community? Within three years of me being here, I can recall five acts of horrible violence that left one Huskie dead. Truthfully, there is little that we can do about it. Police are already doing as much as they can (noted by their under-one-minute response time last Wednesday), but there is little preventing power that they can enforce. So this falls into the hands of us. The number of crimes committed by non-students is ten-fold.

We must rise up and not invite or host anyone that you might think commit such an atrocious act of violence. I, for one, am sick of the violence and of NIU getting a bad rap about being a “ghetto school.” This is a small city with a small town feel. We are all family. We are all Huskies. And we shall persevere “Forward, Together Forward”

Spencer Labunski

Junior, political science major