It was a typical Thursday afternoon for Merrick Doll, a sophomore German and history major at Notre Dame. He was on Facebook when he saw a friend’s status mentioning something about a shooting.

Intrigued, he went to the NIU home page and saw all of the crisis reports.

“I was in shock, then I was worried because I know a lot of people who go to NIU,” Doll said.

Paige Kulie, sophomore community health major at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, was talking to her friend, an NIU student, when news of the Feb. 14 shootings broke on the NIU Web site.

Getting no answers from television news, Kulie was resigned to go to class with little information about the safety of her friends.

“I was freaking out about everyone that I knew that went there, so I was calling all of you guys and trying to get a hold of you, but I couldn’t get a hold of everyone,” Kulie said.

When she went to her 4 p.m. Spanish class, Kulie was the only one who knew what had happened. But with the cell phone towers overloaded by the number of users in the initial aftermath of the shootings, Kulie said she could understand if people did not know right away.

Neighboring university reactions ranged from shock to disbelief that such a tragedy could happen so close to home.

So when NIU reached out for support, other schools gave back.

At the U of I, Kulie said students wrote messages of love and support on a giant poster in the student union that was given to NIU. Brad Rathe, a sophomore music theory and history major who also attends Notre Dame, said a vigil and prayer service were held in remembrance.

There was online support too. Matt Miller, sophomore political science majorat Elmhurst College, remembered seeing numerous groups on Facebook expressing solidarity for the victims and pledges to wear red and black on particular days.

But remembrance does not stop with material objects. Miller, Doll and Kulie described how the shootings forced them to reflect on their own vulnerability.

“It made me more aware, at least to some degree, that it could happen anytime, anywhere, but while I’d like to say that it’s something I think about possibly happening everyday, I don’t, and I think that’s true for most people,” Miller said. “We’re naive, and most of us don’t think anything bad can happen to us, but it is events like this that make you pause and think that maybe it is possible.”

Rathe, however, said despite the horrific tragedy, it’s events such as these that bring out the best in people.

“Well, I suppose it just shows our ability, as Virginia Tech did, to pull together as a nation in a time like that. I suppose if I had to choose anything positive, it would be the way that people really do care about other people, and times of crisis show that,” Rathe said. “Again, I can’t really imagine what it was like that day, but I hope it helped in some small way afterward to know that the prayers and good thoughts of the rest of the country were with you.”