'Let's do something': WMU campus community mourns those lost in MSU shooting
KALAMAZOO - Cheng Kidd Sun didn't mince words at Western Michigan University's Bernhard Center Wednesday morning.
Stepping to the podium inside the north ballroom, the Western Student Association president called for action in the wake of Monday's mass shooting at Michigan State University.
"Let’s do something," Sun said. "If we look around at each other, today we show that if we stand together and if we unite together, we as a campus can move forward."
Sun was among the hundreds of WMU students, faculty and staff who gathered for a vigil inside the Bernhard Center, mourning the loss of the three MSU students while also offering hope and prayers to the five students who remain critically injured.
"These students are in the same position that I’m in. They’re the same age as me, like that easily could’ve happened here. We could’ve been in the same situation," junior Logan Miller said. "There was no reason for them to have to go through that. There’s no reason for us to have to go through that.
"You have to watch out now. You just have to pay attention to your surroundings."
Michigan State University police have said 43-year-old Lansing resident Anthony McRae fired shots at MSU's Berkley Hall and Union, killing three students and critically injuring five others, just before 8:30 p.m. Monday before trying to escape campus. He was found by police and died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in North Lansing, about 5 miles from campus.
"Our hearts are heavy," WMU President Edward Montgomery said. "It’ll take time to process these events and to come to terms with them. But let each do what we can to support each other during that time."
Montgomery encouraged those attending Wednesday's vigil to allow themselves grace "to feel whatever you may be feeling" in the immediate aftermath of this tragedy.
"I hope, after we’ve digested this, we do something about it," Montgomery said. "We don’t want to be here again. So I ask you to think about what you could do to help change this condition, so we don’t have events like this at any other campus or any other arena in the future."
The Rev. Kathleen Robertson King had been chatting with her oldest daughter Monday night when a text from her youngest daughter, an 18-year-old freshman at MSU, flashed across her phone screen.
"There’s an active shooter. We have to go to the basement," the text read.
"My stomach dropped and I immediately tried calling but the reception was terrible," King said Wednesday. "So for the next four-plus hours I communicated by text with my 18-year-old daughter ... while she was locked inside a hair salon with her hair halfway cut, along with the entire staff and customers, all of them strangers to her.
"Every time I feel really terrified about my own kid being stuck in a basement with no one she knew, I remember the terror of the students running for their lives and worse yet, the ones who were not able to get away, whose families were left only with memories and grief big enough to swallow them whole," King continued. "What we can learn from the tragedy at MSU and others like it is the importance of thoughts and prayers that aren’t mere words, but compassionate actions that make a community better for us all.
"… Acts of inclusion, friendliness, support and active listening that don’t just react to a nightmare of fear and violence, but acts that create an environment steeped in loving kindness."
Contact reporter Greyson Steele at gsteele@battlecreekenquirer.com
This article originally appeared on Battle Creek Enquirer: Michigan State Mass Shooting WMU campus mourns those lost in MSU mass shooting
