I just wanted to contribute and to answer kind of the question of where I was when I got the news about the violence that happened at MSU. So I was at home when I got the text message warning from the MSU police, and I could tell pretty quick that it wasn't one of the typical warnings. Usually they're a little... I'd say passive I guess. But I noticed pretty quickly that this one included like the instructions to "run, hide, fight" which MSU pretty much only breaks out in active violence situations. And that's when I started getting a lot of messages from people, which kind of made me realize the severity of what was going on, and I live pretty close to the hospital, so for that whole night I just kept hearing the sirens of, like, ambulances leaving, and it's also - the hospital's not too far away from the police station, so it was essentially just hearing sirens going down the street all night. The only times that I've heard, like, just that many sirens going continuously is when I've been in big cities like New York or Chicago. So that was already disconcerting, to just be listening to those sirens going all night and kinda knowing that it was bad on campus, but not necessarily having the full picture of what was going on. And I'm in a pretty big online group with other MSU students, and in it people kept getting updates on stuff that was being said on the police scanner. So I would check in on that 'cause it was easier than listening to the police scanner myself, and I know that, like, people were getting kicked off the police scanner because there were upwards of 50,000 people, like, trying to access it online, and the whatever servers they have aren't built for that level of traffic. But I just spent the whole night routinely checking in on that, not knowing what to do. Like, I knew I was far enough away from campus that I was safe, but I was still worried and feeling just ultimately powerless. I would check in to see updates that people were giving from the police scanner, and there was a lot of misinformation going around. Maybe not misinformation, but just that the police scanner was reporting on anything that was getting called in, and…

The next morning, I had a meeting first thing in the morning, and that's - I mean, I was thinking all of my connections to MSU are like second order, right? I mean, I know people who know somebody at MSU. One - two of the people at work that started in the last year used to work at MSU, one of their spouses still does. You know, a friend in my book club went to MSU, her daughter has friends there. So it's all that kind of connection. But I have found anytime there's this kind of violence on a college campus, it does feel a little bit more... I dunno, a little more concrete, a little - it hits a little closer to home. And anyway, when I got to campus, I think that's when it really became clear to me, you know, how many connections people at U of M have to MSU. People are alums, people have family members that attended or are currently attending, or they work there or used to work there. You know, and really that's true across the whole state because, you know, MSU is a big institution, it's got students who attend from, you know, every county. So I was really struck by how many people at U of M were really grieving and how many people across the state had to be grieving, and everybody who was on the agenda spoke about it a little bit, and we had a moment of silence and it was very... You could hear their voices wavering and, you know, it was just clearly hard to talk about, and one of the people, [NAME], reminded everybody on the call, "You know, you may have staff members who have kids who want to go home, you know, they're gonna be leaving to go pick them up." And I dunno. There were all these... I keep saying the same thing over and over again, but I guess I just - I was just struck by the connections. How much this story touched people, really really close to them, and then I guess I later found out that someone in our building, their niece or nephew was one of the people who were critically injured. And then later this week, I had met a bunch of people for brunch, and one of them was from Lansing and…

Yeah. I just, yeah, I can't - I didn't - first off, can't imagine the fear of being in a situation like that, but then the fear of another person potentially being the cause of a life or death situation, like while you are trying to protect yourself. It did appear that they were able to get him to refrain from opening the door. But yeah, and it's interesting to me to think about like, okay. I honestly can't remember if I received any sort of shooter training while I was in school. We definitely got like sexual assault training and things like that. I'm not sure if we had gotten anything about shooter training at that point. But I have had it at my current workplace. It just got me thinking about, how effective something like that is, especially when you're like actually put into the moment and your adrenaline is pumping, and it did make me curious if these students had received any sort of information about how to respond to an active shooter, and how that particular situation of the student going to the dorm might've been different if they did, but again if they did and, you know, when your adrenaline is pumping, that just kind of all goes out the window because we're seeing - I mean, we're taught to see the police as on our side and as, you know, not just for our own safety, but in that moment that easily could've been a shooter who was pretending to be the police who had a flashlight and was using it to manipulate the people inside to open the door, so that yeah, he could finish his business. It's really unfortunate these people feel like they have to do this to be able to make a name for themselves whenever they're gone. There's so many more other alternative routes that you could go that don't harm other people, or yourself whenever you're... when you're feeling like that and yeah. Definitely a really unfortunate situation. I feel for my friends and family who live down state in that community, in the Lansing community. I do have a friend that works there who I know is heavily impacted by the event, as they should be, and their partner as well.

Note: There is language that is excluded in the transcript but not excluded in the audio. But yeah, hearing about that. It's like oh s***. It's in my community, at large. It's, you know, it's not here here. It's not NMU. Yet. But it's here. It's getting closer. It feels inevitable. I'm waiting for it to happen here. I'm waiting for it to be NMU next. And I hate that. So, when I heard about it, my thoughts were, “Is this real life? Of course it's real life. God d*****." Well, I suppose it's just a matter of time now until it's here. The only - I don't - I wouldn't call it a good thing obviously, but the the only - I don't even if you'd call it a silver lining of something like that happening, is I guess at least I'll have the empathy to understand what people at the center of these things feel like, what the smaller community surrounding the shooting at MSU feels like. I guess at least I'll be able to understand people's feelings and be better support for them, because it's just a helpless feeling. I'm not the one with the guns. I'm not the one with the magic pen that signs laws into existence. I can call my representatives, email them as much as I want, which I do do, and nothing changes. So it's just helplessness. It's bracing myself, waiting for this to happen in my local community because it's gonna, until we do something about it. Until the people who can do something about it, do something about it. And like I mentioned, I think Michigan is gonna end up stepping up and doing something about it, but it just sucks that the catalyst has to be people dying, because those are people's friends and kids and siblings, and those people were some people in the world. They're future spouses or best friends or the inventors of crazy awesome things or just people that make other people feel happy to be alive, and now they are gone. Just because. Just because. I hate it. So here's to hoping Michigan does something about it that the federal government keeps not doing about it.

I think you know what happened last night, and I can't get my mind off that in the slightest. Here I was... I was lucky. I was in my apartment when the shelter in place order went out. So, I mean I wasn't really planning on leaving, I was in the apartment that night anyway. I was planning to get some homework done, and just, you know, maybe watch some Netflix or something. What ended up happening is I ended up not being able to do anything but watch the news in terror, because some of the people that I love most were barricading themselves in classrooms as an active shooter killed three people, injured five more, and was on the loose for four - over four hours. It wasn't my own safety that I was worried about. I was, you know, in an apartment off campus, about a mile away from everything that was going on, and I thought it was a possibility here. He could have ended up over in my area because, you know, it took four hours to at least for the police to confirm they found him, about what ended up happening. But you know, I didn't think. Even if he did, you know, come over to my apartment complex, I was on the fifth floor. Shades drawn, locked door, locked from the - you know, the building's locked down too. It wasn't me I was worried about. But I knew people who were across the street when the shooting started. I knew people who were at club events, who, as I said before, barricaded themselves in classrooms, but unfortunately, one of them was in a room which the door swung out and couldn't lock, so that barricade wouldn't have done a whole awful lot. One of my friends, I mean, he wasn't home at the time, but apparently he sent us a video that his roommate sent him of the shooter waiting outside on their lawn for a few minutes. It was definitely... It was definitely that guy too. He was wearing the same outfit as the official suspect photos. And I sat there and I waited, terrified for the safety of everyone I knew in Michigan. Then I was afraid to even check in with my friends, because I was worried that, you know, the ding went off or if, you know, their…

I don’t know, I just... I think that in times that I've felt distressed, it's those small acknowledgments, it's a kind word. It's someone who recognizes maybe you don't have the energy to cook a meal, so they're gonna bring you out or get you something. Those are the things that seem to really matter the most. And I think something I've heard from a lot of people who have gone through the grieving process. It's really hard, as there's always a big response right after something happens. I'm thinking particularly about my uncle. His wife passed away, and I remember we went over to his house for the funeral and there was a stack of letters that was like a foot high, I think, and they were all condolence letters. My uncle and my aunt were pretty well known in their community. It was just a huge outpouring of love. But there’s sort of, like, arbitrary boundaries people set in their brains, and we all do it, of like, "This is a horrible thing that happened, you know, my aunt passing away. My, you know, my uncle must be feeling really bad." So when they're thinking about him that might be the first thing they think about and it could be the thing they think about, you know, years down the road of like, “Oh he lost his wife and she was a lovely person,” and but also like there comes a time sort of where that's not the first thing people think about or they intentionally want to - not move past it exactly, but just like they don't want that to always be the topic of conversation. Sometimes, I think people think it's a gift to the person that's grieving, not to bring certain things up and sometimes it probably is. But I guess, I just I think about what happened at MSU and I think about - I heard a news story and somebody was talking about I think their child had been at Sandy Hook in like sixth grade and they were also at MSU, and so they sort of knew what was coming after immediately after the shooting all of the vigils and news, you know, reporters and all these things, and they also know what happens beyond that, when sort of that dies down and you're just left with what happened. And eventually,…

I woke up the next morning on Tuesday, February the 14th. I turned on the television set at 7am. And there was the big story. The lead story on The Today Show was about the shooting that occurred on MSU campus. I was just absolutely horrified as I heard all of the details. At that point, there were three students who had died, and five others were at Sparrow Hospital in critical condition. It broke my heart. I also took the shooting very personally. It was a form of survivor's guilt. I felt very personally involved. I will tell you the story of why. I am profoundly deaf, and in 2007 I took a six-month medical leave of absence from my job as a full professor in [Michigan State building] to have bilateral cochlear implant surgery. I returned to campus in time for the fall semester 2007. Most of my classes I taught in [Michigan State building]. And when I went back into the classroom in fall of 2007, I was assigned a room on the second floor of [Michigan State building]. It was in the north-south hallway. As you face north, it was the last classroom on the right. It was near a stairwell. I was assigned a real-time captioner to help me interpret voices when my students ask questions. Yes, I had had bilateral cochlear implant surgery, but the process of learning to hear with cochlear implants is a learning process that does not occur overnight. In fact, one’s hearing is so dynamic, changing monthly, that one is considered a disabled person, the equivalent of a deaf person, for the first year after cochlear implantation. And I was in that category. So I was lecturing my class - oh, I'm sorry. I was giving an examination to my class. It was the end of September 2007. I was giving a written examination to my class of about 35 students because it was before the last date by which they could drop the class and get a full refund on tuition, and I wanted to give them that chance if they were disappointed in their performance on my exam. So I was standing there watching my class, monitoring my written exam. We were actually about three quarters of the way through the class period, and suddenly I saw about a dozen of my students jump up from their desks…

My girlfriend teaches first grade. And I think on Wednesday she told me about a co-worker, a fellow first grade teacher, who got an email from a parent of a first grade child. The parent was not upset, nothing really, it was a very matter-of-fact email. And she just wanted the first grade teacher to know that she'd sent her child to school with a backpack that had a bulletproof plate inserted in the backpack. And she wrote to the teacher to the tell her that she had spoken with the child, that it's not something you're supposed to talk about much and it's no big deal. It's just like the shield that Captain America uses, and you know, she just wanted the teacher to be aware that's - that it existed. And I just can't piece together and verbalize how many wrong turns we had to have taken as a society to end up in a place where parents are feeling compelled to send their kids to school with - their first grade children to school with bulletproof backpack plates and casually telling their teacher about it as though it's normal, you know, to protect her child in case of the next mass shooting. I don't know.

Note: There is language that is excluded in the transcript but not excluded in the audio. Last night was the - last night was the active shooter at MSU campus. I remember last night getting the alert on my phone at 8:30. My boyfriend turned on the police scanner, and we were listening to that until past midnight, so for close to four hours. Three dead, five critically injured. I haven't even, like, processed it, really. I live just down the road from MSU. All night, I could just hear the sirens, and I could hear the helicopters flying overhead. The shooter - I went to work today and the road that I take to work brought me down exactly the road that the shooter took to get away from MSU. I saw where he walked. I can't even imagine what those students are going through. I was so scared that the shooter would come to my apartment. I can't imagine what the students are going through. And obviously every school shooting is bad, but I've never been this close to one. You know, if I probably had my windows open last night, I probably would've been able to hear the shots and some screaming. I was literally on MSU campus like three hours before this happened. When my boyfriend got home from work, he wanted to take a walk, what if we had walked onto MSU campus? My boss's daughter was waiting at the bus station when it all happened. She's okay, but s***'s f***ing scary. And, you know, nothing's gonna happen of this. It's just gonna be another shooting in the books. "Thoughts and prayers, thoughts and prayers. Everybody needs thoughts and prayers." Well f*** that. We need f***ing change. We need to protect people. I - my family - I have always grown up around guns. You know, whether it was pellet guns or hunting rifles. My dad really likes to shoot skeet, so we shoot skeet every Easter. We go out in the field across from our house that we own and we just shoot skeet for the whole Easter celebration. So I'm not a stranger to guns. I have my CPL. But nobody in this country or any country should be able to buy an assault rifle, AK-47, whatever, nothing that could cause mass death. It should not be allowed to be for sale. They…

One of my friends teaches at Oxford. Apparently my minion's brother's friend, little brother, survived both Oxford and now Michigan State. There's not enough therapy to fix that. I was in Virginia when Virginia Tech happened. I worked for the commission that overhauled the mental health laws afterwards. Got mental health parity, all that good stuff. I did that. That got into the ACA because of the work that I helped do. I'm tired. Tired of this. Tired of the insanity. Oxford was just barely a year ago. And I'm sure I have an entry for that somewhere buried in here. Where I remember when someone put into one of the work chats that there was a shooting at Oxford. The first thing I did was text him. And in that - it was the longest three minutes of my life, just waiting for a response, 'cause I just didn't know. And, you know, in those three minutes, I'm looking at the news, I'm looking for what happened. That was a very long three minutes. I don't know how much worse this could've been if it wasn't a handgun. But as the saying goes about gun control in this country, if 26 dead white kindergartners can't get people to do something, nothing will. And that's where we're at. That was the building where the majority of my classes were in. That's the school I graduated from. And that's not something - this is not something that it should be in the spotlight for. Not because of a tragedy. You know, another - more tragedies anyway. This should have never happened. Yet here we are, again. That was three days ago and that was the 63rd mass shooting this country has had this year. We're not even 63 days into the year, and for no reason. Absolutely no reason. And it just keeps happening over and over again, for absolutely no reason. And I don't know what to do. I don't know. What more can we do? After Sandy Hook, after Uvalde, after Columbine, Monterey Park, after all of these. After Virginia Tech, after San Bernardino, Parkland, just nothing. Nothing has changed. It's not getting better.