Dear Students,

One of the greatest joys of my position as the president of NIU is the opportunity to meet some of the bright young people who come here for their higher education.

Such encounters strengthen my spirit and reaffirm my confidence in the future of our people. I always am intrigued by your curiosity, impressed by your ambition, empowered by your potential and, if you’ll allow me to confess, just a bit envious of your location in life. You all stand where I once stood in the 1960s, at the doorstep of a life yet to unfold. This is a different world than college graduates of my generation were given, a dynamic place of amazing new technologies, new careers and new challenges.

Unfortunately, I never met Catalina. Or Dan. Or Gayle or Julianna or Ryanne. I never shook their hands or shared a few moments’ conversation to hear their plans to teach, to research, to counsel or to enter the business world. I never spoke with them about their curiosity, their ambition and their potential.

Yet in the solemn days of the last week, my wife, Barbara, and I attended all of their funerals. We drove along the roads to their hometowns. We sat in their places of worship. We reached out to their families, to their friends, to their clergy, and they reached back. We learned so much about these five vibrant lives we have lost. Please believe me that these occasions were perhaps the most difficult hours of these grim and trying times. NIU, and even our world, had such great expectations for Catalina, Dan, Gayle, Julianna and Ryanne.

The funerals also helped me to feel as though I had known these five, and I believe it’s accurate to say that they all want us to move on and live our lives. They want us to continue to teach and research. They want us to continue to learn, explore, discover and grow. They want you, especially, to continue to dream as they had. They want you to succeed, as they would have.

As we resume classes today, please join me in this important time of grieving and healing. We all have experienced something profound, something extraordinary, something heartbreaking, and we have experienced it together. We all are hurting. We all are longing for normalcy. We all will take care of each other.

You will see signs and banners all across our campus and community that support us as we move forward, together forward. You will witness, and I have witnessed in the last 10 days, incredible expressions of love. If you have not visited the Martin Luther King Memorial Commons to view the crosses, or to read the hundreds of messages and tributes printed on the murals, I urge you to do so. I have discovered great strength there.

Please know also that you are safe here. We have enhanced security in ways you will notice and in ways you will not notice.

We also are bringing hundreds of counselors from across the nation this week and placing them in every classroom, in every residence hall and in the Campus Life Building. Seek them out. Tell them about your feelings. Ask them questions. The simple act of talking and sharing will enable your personal healing. Call 815-753-1206 for more information.

Finally, as we return to our roles of students, faculty and staff – to lectures and labs, to homework and exams, to basketball games and Saturday night parties – please realize that we will never forget. I’ve made it clear to the world that an act of violence does not define NIU, but that does not mean the names and faces of this event are not inscribed forever on our hearts.

We all have tremendous work ahead of us, not only in our books and our classrooms but in our everyday encounters on campus, in our classrooms, in our residence halls and in our fraternity and sorority houses.

Reach out to those in pain. Greet strangers. Call your parents. Hug your friends. Be kind to one another. Communicate your love. Make these days count. Make these days ones of vital learning and personal growth. Make these days your best yet. Resolve to move forward.

Catalina, Dan, Gayle, Julianna and Ryanne would expect no less.

Thank you, and forward, together forward.

John G. Peters

President, NIU