EAST LANSING, Mich. — Michigan State University professor Marco Díaz-Muñoz is still haunted by what he witnessed last Monday night when a gunman entered his classroom at Berkey Hall , killing two of his students in what he describes as “12 minutes of terror.”
“These images haunt me. The images of these two girls,” Díaz-Muñoz told The Associated Press.
Arielle Anderson and Alexandria Verner, both juniors, would die that night, February 13. The shooter allegedly shot six other students during the rampage in two buildings on campus. Brian Fraser would also die. Five others suffered serious gunshot wounds.
Classes resume Monday at the university of 50,000 students, although Berkey Hall, a university building, will not reopen. Officials said on Sunday that the rapid resumption of classes made sense for the 2.5-month balance of the spring term.
“Coming back together is something that will help us,” said Thomas Jeitschko, executive vice president for academic affairs, adding that professors will have great flexibility in how they run their classes.
“We know that everyone heals at their own pace and in their own way. It won’t be possible to do it exactly right,” Jeitschko said at a press conference on Sunday. “Coming back to familiar spaces, interacting with familiar people, is helpful in the healing and grieving process.”
Díaz-Muñoz said the university had offered another professor to teach until the end of the semester.
“On the one hand, I want to forget everything. But on the other hand, I think I have to help my students put the pieces back together,” Díaz-Muñoz said. “I think I have to help my students construct meaning. It won’t be like before, but there has to be something good that comes out of it.
However, some community members are not ready. The editorial board of The State News, the student newspaper, wrote on Thursday that they would not attend classes immediately, saying more time was needed to heal.
Student government president Jo Kovach said “students are scared” and will need “flexibility, empathy and options” from their teachers.
After the shooting, parents arrived from across the state to bring students home, at least for the rest of the past week. A petition demanding hybrid or online options for students received more than 20,000 signatures on Saturday.
Jeitschko said students will have weeks to decide whether to take a regular grade or a credit/non-credit option, which would not affect their overall grade point average.
“Let the semester roll on. To come back. Try to heal,” he said.
Díaz-Muñoz understands that some students won’t be ready to go back, saying some will always have “the fear of looking over their shoulder and looking out the window, the doors.”
“There are kids in my class graduating this semester. And they need this horrible nightmare to have a better ending than how it ended on Monday,” Díaz-Muñoz said.
Four injured students remained in critical condition and one was in stable condition at Sparrow Hospital. The university’s interim president, Teresa Woodruff, said the state of Michigan will cover funeral costs and hospitalization costs.
Dozens of people have died in mass shootings so far in 2023. In 2022, there were more than 600 mass shootings in the United States in which at least four people were killed or injured, according to Gun Violence Archive.
The gunfire erupted across Michigan State on Monday during evening classes at Berkey Hall and nearby MSU Union, a social center where students can study, eat and relax. Students on the sprawling campus were ordered to shelter in place for four hours – “run, hide, fight” if necessary – while police searched for Anthony McRae, 43, who ultimately took his own life when he was confronted by police not far from his home in Lansing.
Police say McRae’s mental health may have been a factor, based on a note found on him. He was the lone shooter and had no connection to the victims or to the state of Michigan as a student or employee, they said.
Díaz-Muñoz describes hearing “explosions” outside his classroom before a masked man appeared at the door of room 114 and opened fire. The students hid behind desks and chairs before breaking the windows to escape.
After “one to two minutes” of shooting, the shooter turned and left, leaving behind “destruction and death in my classroom,” Díaz-Muñoz said.
For Díaz-Muñoz, the terror did not end so abruptly. The carnage in his classroom was “something you’ve seen in a movie”, he said.
Díaz-Muñoz says he took prescription drugs to force himself to sleep, only coming out of his room “for a bowl of soup.”
The assistant professor said he is sharing his story in hopes of bringing about gun reform.
“If lawmakers and senators saw what I saw, instead of hearing on the news one more statistic. If they had seen these girls and the pools of blood that I saw, the horror that we experienced, they would have been forced to act,” Díaz-Muñoz said.
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