WE ALL LOST A PIECE OF OUR YOUTH.

Associated Press photo linked from Northern Star

The memorial service has ended and we return to classes Monday.

It happened here.

Communiversity means something more today, and it must continue. The community must continue to reach out to the university, and the university must embrace all the community has to offer. The price paid for this coming together was much too steep, but an ongoing partnership, an enduring friendship between community and university, is the least we can do to honor our neighbors who have become victims.

It happened here.

Dennis Barsema, a member of the NIU Foundation Board, flew in from Mexico to attend the memorial service and, earlier, two students' funerals. Barsema, certainly, is no ordinary alumnus; his philanthropy placed his name on the school's new Business building. But he undoubtedly spoke for many when he said: "Somebody came into our family and killed five of our children. It was important for my wife and I to be here to honor not only the students who were slain, but all the students who were wounded as well. And to show our support to the university - just to be a part of the Huskie family."

It happened here.

On Tuesday, a pair of enormous boxes arrived in the Office of Public Affairs, filled with 120 spools of red and black ribbon. The sender: Berwick Offray, the world’s largest manufacturer and distributor of decorative ribbons and bows.

The package included neither a letter of explanation – though none was needed, of course – nor a bill.

Ribbons, crosses, cookies, concerts, no doubt other acts of kindness that haven't come to my attention.

And people in a much more dangerous place could be with us in spirit.

Camp Victory in Baghdad plans to broadcast the campus memorial service in DeKalb.

"One of our alumni said he'd be happy to organize something in Baghdad for people wanting to show support," said Joseph Matty, executive director of the NIU Alumni Association. "We have a good number of our alumni overseas, and they wanted to still be a part of what's going on."

Alumni nationwide have undertaken similar efforts to bring the NIU family together.

Groups will gather today in Chicago, central Illinois, Arizona, California, Georgia, Texas and Virginia to view the memorial service held at the NIU Convocation Center.

The article reports Virginia Tech and George Mason friends cooperating on a viewing in Arlington, Virginia. The university has made video available, although the photo gallery is not available as I post and turn in. Spare a few moments' thought for the Media Services people who, despite having to deal with the shock and the sadness, have been making it possible for the working press to cover the story.

Hail to thee our Alma Mater,
Ever shall we praise your name.
Here we proudly lift our voices,
Thousands strong we sing your fame.
Free, steadfast, devoted, true.
We will always stand by you.
Let our tears fall one by one and heal NIU.

QUOTE OF THE DAY. Northern Illinois police chief Donald Grady.

Grady's mood was perhaps best reflected when a reporter asked about the most frustrating part of his investigation.

"Dealing with the media," he said.

REGROUPING.


We've been back to our offices, and talked, and taken stock, and learned who among us will be facing empty seats or the memories of students from classes past. Several among the economics faculty were passing between buildings at the time of the shootings, or in class and locked down. (My insistence on breaking general education classes into smaller chunks is what turned Thursday afternoon into a research day where little progress occurred.) This first-person account from a colleague in the theater department is representative of what I've heard from others.

It was less than a year ago that our students stood in support of their contemporaries in Blacksburg.

Northern Star photo by Ben Woloszyn,

On Monday evening, the people of Virginia Tech stood for Northern Illinois.

Virginia Tech University photograph by Kim Peterson.

My first image reveals the theme for our resumption of the semester. FORWARD, TOGETHER FORWARD (from the Huskie Fight Song) is on the message boards of businesses everywhere in Greater DeKalb and Sycamore, and on street banners, including the new ones on the recently-boulevarded Annie Glidden Road south of the tracks. The image is available in a variety of formats, including displays for technologies that I'm learning about for the first time. The Chicago White Sox will wear black Northern Illinois caps for their first Cactus League game. The caps will be auctioned to raise money for our memorial fund.

Many of my colleagues have mentioned e-mails and phone calls from people long gone other ways, or from total strangers wishing to be helpful. Your efforts have been a great help. I also appreciate the calls and e-mails, and welcome the visitors to this site, and the links that have brought people here.

Selig sind, die da Leid tragen, denn sie sollen getröstet werden.

THE CHURCH BELLS CHIMED.


A week after Cruel February began, we paused for a tribute, during which bells both metal and electronic of DeKalb and Sycamore tolled for five minutes.


Our neighbors in Chicago were here, with video.

SAYING GOODBYE.

Catalina Garcia.

Dan Parmenter.

Gayle Dubowski.

Julianna Gehant.

Ryanne Mace.

Sie ruhen von ihrer Arbeit; denn ihre Werke folgen ihnen nach.

OUR NEIGHBORS AT WAR. Ilona Meagher of Rockford, author of Moving a Nation to Care, is a veteran and journalism major at Northern Illinois. Her website focuses on combat-related post-traumatic stress disorder, with observations on the Northern Illinois shootings. She was taking a break at a student organization bake sale at the time. She has also provided a photoset from campus on Saturday.

OUR NEIGHBORS STAND WITH US.

DeKalb Chronicle photo.

The support we have received from the people of DeKalb and Sycamore and Malta and Cortland has been outstanding.

BAYESIAN UPDATING.

Otherwise known as a mugging by reality.

Two years ago, I wrote an essay expressing skepticism about arming school personnel. But that was before the mass murders at Virginia Tech, Louisiana Technical College and Northern Illinois University, among others.

My perspective has changed because the country is changing cataclysmically. The rash of cold-blooded serial killings on campuses is now less an anomaly than a wave of terror. It demands new initiatives to safeguard the lives of people seeking a college education.

I remain adamantly opposed to permitting students to carry concealed weapons. The prospect of thousands of teenage and 20-something students carrying guns on college campuses is only asking for trouble.

But training and equipping seasoned adults, who also happen to be select and exhaustively screened college professors, is a hopeful solution.

I am not suggesting arming all teachers. I have had many brilliant colleagues, who are my betters when it comes to teaching, who, nonetheless, do not inspire trust when they use the office paper cutter, let alone a 9 mm Glock.My suggestion, rather, is for the institution of a voluntary program for willing, able and properly trained school personnel to carry weapons.

I'm not without sympathy to this suggestion (and I love the echoes of my "couldn't carry water for a patternmaker" meme), although the skill of getting into a bad guy's O-O-D-A loop requires a different cast of mind from that developed through the patient sifting of evidence and winnowing of argument. Perhaps, though, it's a less bad solution than forting up. There's at least one weblogger who would close campuses in the manner of a maximum security prison. That's ironic. We had the Disney organization offering training on guest relations last summer; perhaps they could come back and consult on security for our theme park. Commerceland over here, Laboratory Land over there, and Readers' Row in the middle?

BE PREPARED. Newsweek provides the stories of student Harold Ng, who was injured in the Cole Hall shooting, and Jeff Merkel, Northern Star reporter and Marine medic.

A cop was there and this is when I stepped out of the reporter's role obviously and said, "Look, I'm a Corpsman, maybe I can help. Give me some gloves." He gave me some gloves and I swiped his first-aid bag and I took off through the building. I've been working at the paper for two semesters, but I've got five years of real life programming. It definitely overrode anything in those two semesters.

There was a lot of tension. There wasn't a lot of screaming, it wasn't running around. The people that were there were more than willing to listen to [what] the police had to say. The first responders did a great job. All I had to do was put gauze on [victims' wounds] in place of T-shirts and paper towels.

A couple of other students, one who was an Eagle Scout and one who was a lifeguard, said they were willing to help. I said, "This is what we need to do. Get on line and talk to every single person you see. If they are not hurt, they go to this side. If they are hurt, my name is Jeff and they should come this way and call my name." They did a wonderful job. They made it as easy as possible.

He also notes,

I've been telling my wife the only thing that DeKalb has on the other places we have been is that no one has shot at me yet. I know that I wasn't shot at in this case, but this is too close to home.

Elsewhere, the university and law enforcement are putting together information on the shooter. He left a laptop behind, but removed the hard drive first. There's a sitemeter hit I received a week or two ago that I'm going to let the authorities know about.

The sociology department, out of which the shooter won a dean's award and subsequently coauthored a publication, is having a rough time.

Students and faculty at NIU's sociology department were coming to terms with the realization that the man they knew as a warm, charming and high achieving student carried secrets they may never unravel.

"He was gracious, he was generous with his time and he engaged the other students," department chairwoman Kay Forest said.

Kazmierczak confided in a few people at the department that he had spent time in a "halfway house" before college. No one pushed him for more information, and he didn't provide details.

"It's the kind of thing where later you look back and think, 'Why didn't I ask more about that,'" Forest said.

The department is receiving extra counseling, beyond the briefings being offered to each department later this week. I would advise outsiders, however, not to second-guess. Yes, perhaps a parasuicidal doing research on parasuicidal behavior is a warning signal. On the other hand, good social science work requires the researcher to suspend judgement in order better to elicit information from the population he is observing. (The press corps doesn't get this: questions that effectively accuse a person of a misdeed get the fighting spirit up. Or visualize the Church Lady investigating the coming of age of Samoans.) In addition, a university in the United States is a place of second chances. We work with former prisoners and GED recipients and Harvard dropouts for a reason.

That noted, the nonjudgemental stance of the observer is not a proper moral code for a society. There's a long Sigmund, Carl, and Alfred post on Northern Illinois and the parallels to Virginia Tech that includes the obligation to judge and set standards and marginalize.

What makes us human and distinguishes us from the animal kingdom is the singular truth that we can consciously choose to control our self centered desires and urges. We can make moral decisions and choose ethical behavior notwithstanding those urges and desires- a very unanimal-like condition. The healthy human being is one who is aware of these attributes and chooses to live ethically and morally.

No matter how much the media and ’science’ try to tell us otherwise, we are not simply ‘more evolved animals.’

Man is responsible for his behavior, no matter how hard media and pop culture desperately want it to be otherwise. We are all accountable, ‘root causes’ notwithstanding and we all charged with elevating ourselves.

Put another way, the burden on my colleagues upstairs -- nay, on higher education generally, will be lighter once the common culture recognizes that judging "judgemental" behavior harshly is not evolutionarily stable.

MUST WE FORT UP AGAIN? At one time, the residential college was a self-contained unit, in which living, dining, worshiping, teaching, and study facilities were contained in a compound that could be gated against intruders. Oxford University, for example, is a collection of thirty-some colleges, many of which have all of these facilities. I offer a look at Oxford's Christ Church College, where the dining hall is the prototype for the Hogwarts refectory.


Early college administrators recognized the possibility of forting up with an open space to allow more sunlight in. Hence the quadrangle, as pioneered at Oxford's Merton College.


Thus, the use of "Quad" to refer to the open space surrounded by free-standing buildings on the more open campuses (the martial connotations of that word played down) of today. The forted-up quadrangle design survives in some of the free-standing buildings, such as Adams and Tripp Halls among the Lakeshore Dorms of the University of Wisconsin. Note, however, that the university itself is open to visitors, whether driving or walking in from the south, or boating in from the north. That's consistent with the Wisconsin Idea that the boundaries of the university are the boundaries of the state (and there are more than a few expat Badgers carrying the idea to Siberia or DeKalb.)

Now come suggestions that universities install metal detectors, either in buildings or at the gates of campus. That is, if there are gates. (We have two sets of ceremonial gates at Northern Illinois, one establishing a formal setting on the old Normal School grounds, another attempting to class up the Lucinda Avenue entrance to the west side residential complex and the athletic fields. Both sets are for show.) I suppose one could reconfigure college campuses in the style of a theme park, with all the parking in one place and all the attractions in another. The mind boggles. Or put them in the buildings? There are five entrances to the Cole Hall concourse, as well as the rear entrance used by the shooter. At class changing time, all entrances are in use, with students coming and going, often in a hurry: our ten minutes between classes on Monday-Wednesday-Friday is insufficient to get from Cole to Barsema or Stevenson to Montgomery. They're toting cell phones and laptops and car keys and we're going to go TSA on them? Come off it.

For that matter, added security is going to have trouble identifying a threat. With the help of some Associated Press video (click the "NIU Shooting" link, be alert to some squirrely add-ons) and the interactive campus map, dear reader, imagine you are tasked with campus security. You observe a Goth-looking male removing a guitar case from a car parked in the visitor parking lot. He crosses the bridge leading toward the Watson-Zulauf-Cole-Stevens complex. The theater department is in Stevens. Do you keep observing him, or do you judge it as business as usual? Perhaps from your vantage point you're not able to observe whether he goes into Stevens or continues past Stevens to the fork in the footpath. If you continue to observe, does it matter whether he goes left or right? To the left is Watson, where a guitar player would not be out of place in the languages departments, or in forensics. But if you're wrong, and he's on his way to DuSable Hall, a maze of twisting passages, all different ... To the right is Cole. Business as usual? But also to the right is Reavis, home to the English department. Or perhaps he takes the more direct path, around the Stevens Annex and up the steps that lead directly to the back door of Cole. Threat alert, or perhaps he has a gig at the coffeehouse after class?

Now let's consider concealed carry by professors and students. The class of advocates for concealed carry includes many fans of this weblogger, who never uses ten words to describe something when a thousand will do. I'll keep it short. You Observe a stranger on stage. You Orient yourself to the presence of a shotgun in his hands. You Decide to shoot back. Did you Act fast enough? Too slow: you're down anyway. Too fast: he's down. Did you really see the gun? What if there's no gun? What weight does your loss function place on false positives?

There's more information to come. For now, think about the tradeoffs inherent in forting up.

ICE FISHING, HERE? It's a sunset view from my deck. That's a retention pond, part of the flood control cum beautification that accompanies modern developments. Across Malta Road is a cornfield. When the rains are heavy, all the runoff from that cornfield goes into the pond.


The cloud bank foreshadows the panhandle hooker to come. Most of the day we had sunshine. There were more people on campus, coming to terms, signing a second message board, leaving flowers and teddy bears. Offices open on Tuesday, February 19. Classes will resume Monday, February 25. Exam week will begin Monday, May 12.

NOW TO SLEEP. University officials moved tonight's memorial service inside, to the Duke Ellington Ballroom. University officials, our state representative and senator, our musicians, and Rev^d Jesse L. Jackson spoke. The program had a proper mix of requiem and civil rights rally. Note the candles, lighters, and cell phone screens.

Outside, a message board is available for people to leave messages.

There are many more flowers, balloons, and notes at the snowy hill.

Thanks for looking in, and good night.

HELP FROM MY FRIENDS. I want to acknowledge the kind remarks people, including some who I haven't heard from in years, have left in the comments and in electronic mails. Thanks, also, to supportive posts by Jim and Phil and John and King and Bill and Dave. (Those are the links I was able to locate on Site Meter and Technorati.)

Welcome, also, to readers from The Unofficial Stanford Blog and The Lede from the New York Times and Brickmuppet and Joanne Jacobs (who appears to be having server difficulties). Thank you for your interest. Look in again, when we might be able to think about academic culture, or economics, or public policy, or things that run on rails.

My doctoral training did not include anything on dealing with shootings.

COLD AND QUIET.


The first thing visitors to campus who approach from the northeast see is these crosses. I lost it when I saw them. It happened here.


At 1.30, it's early for the 1 pm classes to dismiss, but on a Friday, this walkway is pretty busy with students having completed long lunches or otherwise getting a head start on their weekend getaways.


Television station KSTP is in the Twin Cities.

Cole Hall is being repaired. Our able buildings and grounds people are being assisted by Aftermath,a firm specializing in crime scene repairs.


The press tent is east of Watson Creek, or the drainage ditch, if you wish. That's the library in the background.


The largest of several improvised memorials is on the west side of the King Commons, not far from the press tent. A number of satellite trucks have deployed in the bus turnaround at the Student Center.


Someone has left a wreath at the memorial flagpole that overlooks the East Lagoon.


The Chicago-area television stations used their local knowledge to secure spaces in front of Altgeld Hall.


There were very few people about. Newscasters were asking passers-by for reactions. The setting lends itself to reportage without narration: small knots of kids, on the verge of tears, family members leaving flowers on that snowy hill, a steady trickle of people using the one open entrance to the student center, where the counselors are on duty.

IT HAPPENED HERE.

The shooter is a former Northern Illinois student who earned one of the deans' awards conferred for undergraduate work. He worked with criminologist Jim Thomas, a good man who should also be in your thoughts. In the ongoing press conference, Chief Grady has characterized the shooter as "a student revered by faculty and staff." The chief mentioned something about the shooter recently discontinuing some medications, but that he did not have the criminal background that would have disqualified him from purchasing the guns, which a representative of BATF notes were lawfully purchased in Champaign, "six days ago." He transported the weapons in a guitar case. This graphic of the Jameson Auditorium in Cole Hall shows the rear access door, stage right, that the shooter used for access to the room. The Chicago Sun-Times has obtained an interview with lecturer Joseph Peterson, an aspiring vertebrate paleontologist who was teaching Introduction to Ocean Sciences and was himself wounded by the shooter.

The recriminations are likely to begin soon, if the press questions are at all predictive. The shooter's use of mood-altering drugs will keep practitioners and ethicists busy. The university's emergency-response procedures worked as they were intended to. We have excellent assistance from security and counter-terrorism professionals on campus, and none of them found any failings in the procedures. The wireless communication infrastructure in DeKalb proved not to be robust enough for the traffic.

To prevent future occurrences is unlikely to be easy. As the Chicago Tribune editorialists remind readers,

Our thoughts go to the broader NIU diaspora as well. When the setting is a university, any assault, on one person or a hundred, is a siege against a community of thousands.

A campus is like the college experience itself -- the tempo is fluid, the atmosphere unconstrained. In factories or office towers, bosses sit here and workers toil there. On a campus, anyone can materialize virtually anywhere and instantly belong. Momentary fates mix and separate people. You skipped class to finish your project? Oh. You sat in on this one because you missed the prof's same lecture to his 10 o'clock section? Oh.

Campuses draw their energy from all these freedoms they enable. Freedoms an assailant can exploit. Not every corridor is locked, not every stranger is suspicious. To the contrary: Corridors are inviting, strangers are potential lifetime friends.This day we are left to mourn just how vicious that exploitation can become. Left to mourn people who, for multitudes of serious and rollicking reasons, followed their dreams to NIU.

Dean Dad notes you can't put the city in a bubble.

The editorial team at the Northern Star realizes what a challenge we face.

Kishwaukee Hospital updated its site at 9.35. Eighteen patients, seventeen by ambulance and one walk-in; one 22 year old male, deceased; seven critical patients transferred to hospitals in Rockford or nearer suburbs; one male patient remains in good condition and one female patient in fair condition; eight patients discharged.

That will be all until after sunset.

THE GOODWILL WILL HELP US.

The radio call-in shows I listened to overnight revealed a great deal of regard for our university from residents of the northern tier counties, from university employees of all jobs, from students. Many residents of what we understand as Chicagoland have Northern Illinois connections, either as students or graduates or as friends of students or graduates. News reporters were impressed that somebody in the university made time, in the middle of the troubles, to arrange for coffee and hot chocolate for law enforcement and press people.

I regret to report that a sixth seventh person died overnight.

We know the names of four five fallen students.

Dan Parmenter, 20 of Westchester
Catalina Garcia, 20 of Cicero
Ryanne Mace, 19 of Carpentersville
Julianna Gehant, 32 of downstate Meriden.
Gayle Dubrowski, 20 of Carol Stream.

(Editorial notes, 10.34: because people were choppered to hospitals in Winnebago and Kane counties, more than one coroner was involved in confirming identities. As of this morning, the death toll is the five students named above, and the shooter. As biographical information becomes available, I will add links to the list.)

I've learned of a Facebook condolence book.

Northern Illinois University has received messages of support from several universities. The site will be updated. A service called Legacy.com has opened condolence books for each of our fallen students. There's also a general purpose condolence book.

There will be a gathering at 9 pm Friday evening on the King Commons. The university plans a more formal convocation, at a date yet to be determined.

There's extensive print media coverage from the Chicago Tribune and the DeKalb Chronicle.

The Northern Illinois University press conference will be at 9 AM (Central Standard Time). Chicago's WGN and WBBM have committed to stream it. Kishwaukee Hospital's briefing will be at 11 AM. The briefing is available at the hospital's home page, which has reverted to its standard content. At 6.30, one patient remains at Kishwaukee, in fair condition after orthopedic surgery.

There will be additional links added to this post as I receive information.

IT CAN HAPPEN HERE.

UPDATES 9.03. Here's a DeKalb Chronicle photograph of Chief Grady at the 5.30 briefing.


The chief was activated by the reserves to advise the Baghdad police, to return safely to today's events. And self-defense instructor Erin Weed, who is to visit campus in the near future, had a difficult day.

Normally on Valentine’s Day I would post something light, cute and funny. I find it hard to do that today, as shots rang out at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb. NIU is a stop on my spring tour, and my staff has been working with a member of Panhellenic Council to plan the event. I wrote her a note today, after hearing what had happened. What’s there really to do, besides tell someone you care and are keeping the entire campus community in your thoughts and prayers. I am just about to leave the office, and I heard back from her. She says her friend was killed, and her mom is coming to pick her up. It reminded me of the day of the Virginia Tech shooting. I had spoken at VA Tech just a few months before that mass murder, and I facebooked all my friends during that day to check in. It’s just heartbreaking that students have to be concerned about getting shot in the head while listening to a professor’s lecture. Sadly, I know what it feels like to lose a friend to cowardly homicide…and there really aren’t words. I just hope they don’t plaster this killer’s face and name all over the place. The best punishment is to not give any recognition at all. All of us at Girls Fight Back are sending some warm thoughts and peace to all affected by this tragedy.

I'm going to stand down for the evening. Milt Rosenberg has altered his evening programming for further discussion of the social psychology of such events. It hasn't sunk in completely for me.

UPDATES 8.49. Kishwaukee Hospital will hold a news conference at 9 am Friday. President Peters announced a Northern Illinois University news briefing for about the same time. The Huffington Post provides additional information on the fatalities.

Seventeen victims were brought to Kishwaukee Community Hospital in DeKalb, according to spokeswoman Theresa Komitas. One died, two were admitted and three were discharged; five are being evaluated and six others were transferred to other hospitals in critical condition. At least one male died at OSF St. Anthony Medical Center in Rockford, an official said.

The article also notes,

The school was closed for one day during final exam week in December after campus police found threats, including racial slurs and references to shootings earlier in the year at Virginia Tech, scrawled on a bathroom wall in a dormitory. Police determined after an investigation that there was no imminent threat and the campus was reopened. Peters said he knew of no connection between that incident and Thursday's attack.

The shooting was the fourth at a U.S. school within a week.

On Feb. 8, a woman shot two fellow students to death before committing suicide at Louisiana Technical College in Baton Rouge. In Memphis, Tenn., a 17-year-old is accused of shooting and critically wounding a fellow student Monday during a high school gym class, and the 15-year-old victim of a shooting at an Oxnard, Calif., junior high school has been declared brain dead.

A weblogger is contemplating the possibility of copycat crimes. In my exploration of websites, I've discovered a number of less scientifically sound recriminatory posts on a variety of topics, and expect that there will be more, although they won't figure in my coverage.

UPDATE 8.14. A student files a report.

I am OK, but this is bad. Very surreal. Nobody should have the experience that I am having right now. The shooter is confirmed dead which is good, probable suicide. Keep the 15+ victims in your prayers. For those that don't know, the shooting was inside Cole Hall, which is located almost at the center of campus. Keep the university students in your prayers.

Luckily my class was located in Barsema at the time, as farthest away as I could be. Walking up to the building, all I heard were people talking on their cell phones about seeing ambulances and the shooting. I couldn't believe my ears. The building was properly locked down for an hour or so and we were let out and finally got cell phone service so we could call our families.

Cole Hall. I remember taking one of my finals in that place, thinking to myself and saying to my friends that this would be the place a shooting would maybe happen. Truly unbelievable. The biggest auditorium on campus. I have friends in critical condition and wish for their recoveries.

UPDATE 8.08. President Peters reports six fatalities, four females and two males, four people dead at the scene and two at hospitals. Twenty-two people were injured or killed. All casualties, to use President Peters's expression, are students, including the lecturer, a graduate assistant in the geography department. The shooter is a former sociology graduate student, last enrolled in the Spring 2007 semester. All university functions are closed until further notice.

UPDATE 8.01. Good evening, visitors from University Diaries and Instapundit. Thanks for your concern.

UPDATES 6.06. Summary of news conference from WMAQ broadcast. President Peters reports the shooter dead, "apparently of a self-inflicted gunshot wound." Chief Grady reports that the shooter has been identified, although his identity cannot yet be released. The shooter is not a Northern Illinois student. The chief strikes the right balance of professionalism and impatience with the newsies. "I don't know" means "I don't know." University Police were at Cole Hall two minutes after the first emergency call. The shooting appears to have ended by then. Kishwaukee Hospital continues to report the 5.26 situation: no reported fatalities other than the shooter. A caller to WMAQ claims some cell-phone video will be available.

UPDATES 5.30. News sources agree the shooter is dead, but whether by his own hand or by law enforcement is not settled. The university is providing a press briefing at this hour in the Altgeld auditorium (see it here in a happier setting). The university is encouraging all students to ring their parents. WMAQ is reporting several students airlifted to Rockford and at Kishwaukee Hospital: two to five critical, eight serious.

UPDATES 4.42. Campus is closed Friday. Several sources confirm the shooter is dead. Some students interviewed by WMAQ are still reporting people hurt in DuSable Hall although the university reports the situation is confined to Cole Hall. (This interactive map provides the location of buildings. Cole is a lecture hall with four or five large classrooms just west of the central commons. DuSable is a large classroom building to the southwest.)

I only know what's on the news. Streaming video from Rockford here.

Several people have been shot at Northern Illinois University, according to information heard Thursday afternoon over a police scanner and from eyewitness reports.

Kishwaukee Community Hospital said they were treating at least 15 people from the shooting.Reports have said the shooter is down but that has not been confirmed by law enforcement officials. Police have established a perimeter around Cole Hall, and 15-20 emergency vehicles were in the area.

Students are praying and many students are on cell phones or crying.

Shortly before 3 p.m., one shooter went into Northern Illinois University's Cole Hall auditorium armed with a shotgun and opened fire at random, according to witnesses at the scene. There reportedly were as many as five possible victims.

Early reports can be misleading.

As of 3:45 p.m., two shooting victims were being tended to at nearby Neptune Hall, a student residence hall. Shortly before 4 p.m., another victim was pulled out of Cole Hall, according to eyewitness reports. The northern door to Cole Hall was smashed, according to eyewitness reports.

A Daily Chronicle photographer on the scene reported five people going by on stretchers. Blood was apparent and obvious, the photographer said.

At least two people are reported down in DuSable Hall, and one person was shot in the head, according to eyewitness reports. It could not be confirmed if it was from a gunshot.

On scene information as of later in the afternoon confines the shooting site to Cole Hall, with ambulances using the bus turnaround near DuSable Hall.

At 4.17 this afternoon, I received the following message from the college office.

CAMPUS ALERT
2/14/08
4:10 p.m.

Campus police report that the scene is secure. Only essential personnel should remain on campus.

The following hotlines are available for students & parents.
815-753-1573
815-753-6143
815-753-1574
815-753-1575
815-753-9564
815-753-6257

Counseling is also available on campus for students at the Neptune Dining Hall, Campus Life Building 100 and the Psychological Services Center in the Psychology/Computer Science Building.

Please continue to check the NIU website for further information as it becomes available.

That's all for now. This post remains on top and I will update it as new information becomes available.