As the one-year anniversary of the Feb. 14 shootings approaches, staff members at the Northern Star reflect on how last year affected us and how that will define our coverage of the anniversary.

When tragedy struck our campus, Northern Star reporters, editors and photographers were the first members of the media on the scene. Our staff was able to get up close and personal with the events as they unfolded that haunting day.

Everyone in our newsroom wants to be the reporter or photographer to cover a breaking news event. The closest we usually get around here are local fires or internal university issues. This event was on a completely different scale.

What struck us most was the willingness to put aside selfish aims and put forth the very best journalistic effort in a time of great tragedy.

Last fall, we were awarded a Pacemaker Award in part for our coverage of the shootings. I’m sure any member of our staff would gladly give that recognition up if it meant the shootings never happened.

Many staff members felt if we only won because of our coverage, they didn’t want to receive the award. Our adviser and other members of the journalism community assured us that we deserved it and should be proud of the work that we put not only into that issue, but into every issue that we print.

Leading up to this Saturday, we’ve had some tough calls to make. Instead of making coverage mandatory, a special section was formed through volunteers.

Instead of covering the five victims, we wrote to the families asking if they wanted to submit anything. The turnout was amazing. Almost every family wrote a letter back describing their child, how much they are missed and how the family is coping.

Each firsthand account was more than we ever could have asked for or personally reported.

We’ve spent the last two months preparing for what will be one of the hardest, most important issues to produce.

We are proud of the work we have done, but it is hard to take compliments for covering such a tragic event. The emotions we went through last year have come back again, but like before, we have our NIU family to keep us together.

The theme for our anniversary coverage is “NIU Defined.” We asked the campus and local communities to send us single words that they think define this university. With these simple words as the backbone, we were able to create an issue that we hope will honor that fateful day.

We will take great solace in knowing that the work we have done over the past year has been the very best work possible. We, however, still wish the big news that day was something trivial that would have kept us from being a statistic.