The campus of Northern Illinois was just about empty Friday afternoon.

According to a Grant Hall Tower front desk manager Chonty Hunter, many students, at least in the residence halls, have decided to leave campus for the weekend.

“There’s like a total of 1,200 students in each tower of Grant. But there’s a total of about 20 left in each tower,” said the senior sociology criminology major. “[Community Advisors] are able to leave, but a lot of them are choosing to stay to help out. Although a lot of them in Neptune have left also.”

Hunter said she choose to stay on campus today because she felt safe and was not afraid of anything. She plans to stay on campus for the whole weekend to cope with Thursday’s incident. The senior feels that others should have also stayed on campus to help begin the healing process.

“Probably a lot of people should have stayed because they have to cope with it while you’re here – because when you come back you still have to deal with it,” Hunter said. “So it’s better off to deal with it here than leave.”

Junior biology major Rebeca Manjarres, who lives off campus, attended NIU President John Peters and Gov. Rod Blagojavich afternoon press conference. However, she does not know if she will still be in town during the weekend, as her decision depends on when school will resume.

“I feel like I really should be here on campus. I feel like I don’t see any reason to leave. I need to be here and go through this with everyone,” Manjarres said. “This weekend I might just be going home if there’s no school next week. I want to be home with my family.”

As of Friday NIU had made no decision about when classes would resume.