Outside of Grant Towers, students awaiting rides discussed the campus situation in the wake of the Cole Hall shooting.

“If this had happened yesterday, I don’t know what I would have done,” said Juliann Pawlowski, freshman political science major who was waiting for her boyfriend to pick her up. “This is going to be just like Virginia Tech and Colombine.”

Pawlowski embraced her boyfriend when she saw him.

The situation even brought students back to campus.

“I was watching TV in Naperville and saw there was a shooting at Northern,” said Austin Chirico, undecided freshman. “I called everyone I knew here. No one I knew answered.”

As students and their parents received word of the shooting, text messages and cell phone calls flew at a rapid pace, hampering lines in DeKalb.

“It’s one of those things you don’t think will happen to you. Then I was in my room watching this and it was scary,” said Allison Arbizzani, freshman undecided major. She said a friend from high school was coming to pick she and her friend up from Grant Towers South.

As news reached students after the event, they fled the dorms.

Students had a variety of opinions.

“What can you say? People are crazy. They’re full of hate and they don’t know how to deal with it.” said Joe LoBue, a junior psychology major.

As students and their parents heard news of the shooting, plans were made to leave the university.

“I was at work and a friend called.” said Renee Portee, parent. “My first thought was ‘I need to get my child.'”

Renee and her husband, Cecil, drove from Chicago to pick up their daughter Jasmyne.

Some students displayed resilience in the face of the attack.

“It’s gonna take more than some shots to make me leave” said James Williams, freshman political science.

Memories of the December school closure were fresh in the minds of students and parents.

“I don’t think it’s a coincidence,” said Ben Tanaka, freshman electrical engineering.

“I feel let down by the university,” said Cecil Portee.

During finals week of fall 2007, he escorted his daughter to and from class and said he did not see increased security at NIU.

Conflicting reports and rumors of the incident spread as witnesses made their way back to the residence halls.

“I finally got up to my floor and there was a guy on the couch,” Chirico said.

He said the student was a witness to the shooting who described a “tall skinny guy with a shotgun by his leg” entering the classroom.

“I’m nervous this happened in our own backyard,” said Ben Rodriguez, parent who was picking up his daughter, Caitlin from Grant Towers South.