About NIU
When I flipped on CNN last week to learn more about the shooting at NIU, I found that I couldn't quite make the images on TV fit with my memories of Cole Hall. Everything was so familiar about the building and the campus. And, of course, that's no big surprise, since I grew up in and around DeKalb and went to NIU for my Bachelor's degree.
The building looked pretty much as I remembered it. A squat little building, barely one story tall, it only has two large lecture halls on the main floor, both with sloping concrete floors with two wide aisles and molded plastic chairs welded to utilitarian metal bars arranged into three sections. There are four doors, two small ones in front, one of which is a fire exit that leads outside, and two sets of double doors in back. The classrooms scream functionality, though the chairs were comfortable enough for me to sleep through Anthropology videos and Finite Math lectures. And outside, from helicoptor height, I saw the two flowerbeds that I helped to plant and maintain during the summers that I worked on NIU's grounds crew.
Everything fit, except for a parking lot full of ambulances and people, an otherwise blank slab of concrete with no buildings in the shot to serve as reference points. I couldn't make it work with my mental picture of the place. I knew that it had to be one of two parking lots. But whether it was because of renovations to the campus or because of the snow that erased the course of Williston Creek from view, I couldn't make up my mind which parking lot it was. Such a small and meaningless detail. But, for some reason, it caused me a lot of anxiety. Every time the news flashed back to that scene, I had a small panic attack because I couldn't pinpoint where those people were standing or where the ambulances were parked in a place that I had known my whole life.
Surely, it had to be the closer of the two parking lots, the one between Cole Hall and Founder's Library, the one right near Neptune and the Holmes Student Center. But the details didn't quite fit...
Well, it's over now, and it's good to know that my friends and family who live and work on or around the campus are all okay. But for closure's sake, I think I'll find myself, someday, standing in a parking lot reconciling my memories of the place with those TV images.
The building looked pretty much as I remembered it. A squat little building, barely one story tall, it only has two large lecture halls on the main floor, both with sloping concrete floors with two wide aisles and molded plastic chairs welded to utilitarian metal bars arranged into three sections. There are four doors, two small ones in front, one of which is a fire exit that leads outside, and two sets of double doors in back. The classrooms scream functionality, though the chairs were comfortable enough for me to sleep through Anthropology videos and Finite Math lectures. And outside, from helicoptor height, I saw the two flowerbeds that I helped to plant and maintain during the summers that I worked on NIU's grounds crew.
Everything fit, except for a parking lot full of ambulances and people, an otherwise blank slab of concrete with no buildings in the shot to serve as reference points. I couldn't make it work with my mental picture of the place. I knew that it had to be one of two parking lots. But whether it was because of renovations to the campus or because of the snow that erased the course of Williston Creek from view, I couldn't make up my mind which parking lot it was. Such a small and meaningless detail. But, for some reason, it caused me a lot of anxiety. Every time the news flashed back to that scene, I had a small panic attack because I couldn't pinpoint where those people were standing or where the ambulances were parked in a place that I had known my whole life.
Surely, it had to be the closer of the two parking lots, the one between Cole Hall and Founder's Library, the one right near Neptune and the Holmes Student Center. But the details didn't quite fit...
Well, it's over now, and it's good to know that my friends and family who live and work on or around the campus are all okay. But for closure's sake, I think I'll find myself, someday, standing in a parking lot reconciling my memories of the place with those TV images.
posted by Brad Smith at 8:48 AM
1 Comments:
That must have been distressing for you, Brad. I know I thought about you and Jen when I heard the news. Glad to hear everyone was alright that you knew.
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