NIU Board of Trustees Chair Cherilyn Murer offered more details Thursday on the formation of a new task force that will evaluate the university’s response to the Feb. 14 shootings.

Speaking at the board’s first meeting since the tragedy, Murer asked that the review include an examination of the planning processes that were in place that allowed the university to react as quickly as it did.

The panel will also address how NIU has handled the situation since the shootings, including issues such as victim recovery and advocacy, classroom space allocation, communications, information technology and mental health issues.

“This campus and the community are beginning to heal, but our work is by no means finished,” Murer said. “In fact, we’re just beginning.”

NIU President John Peters will determine the composition of members of the committee and it will present its findings to the trustees no later than their September meeting.

The committee will first be able to review findings from the Illinois Campus Security Task Force, created last year by Gov. Rod Blagojevich. That group, created in the wake of the shootings at Virginia Tech University, has been studying security on Illinois campuses for about a year.

As part of its report, the state task force also examined the situation at NIU and will release its findings early next month.

“We are obliged to add our findings to this very unfortunate body of knowledge,” Murer said, referring to knowledge gained from the incidents at Virginia Tech and NIU. “We cannot let others dictate our timeframe. We need to do what we know how to do: teach and learn. Any reports that will be forthcoming should be for the primary purpose of learning from the experience. Not blaming, but learning.”

In his first public comments regarding the tragedy in about three weeks, Peters sought to put the magnitude of the situation in perspective.

“We are just now beginning to understand how significantly changed we are, and how that change affects everything we do. There was one NIU before Feb. 14, and another NIU after it,” Peters said. “We’ve been given the bittersweet gift of perspective. We know what is important and what is not.”

Mallory Simpson, president of the NIU Foundation, also said 975 donors have given $219,000 toward the Feb. 14 Scholarship Fund since its creation.

At times still becoming emotional about the tragedy’s impact, Peters expressed his hopes that a situation like the one that occurred at NIU never happens again.

“We will be the next repositors of the 9/11 quilt,” he said. “And I hope we keep it forever.”