Word: niu
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...NIU's case, the issue seems to have been fast-forwarded by Illinois' flamboyant and controversial governor, Rod Blagojevich, who announced on Wednesday that he would seek $40 million in state funding to raze the building where the massacre took place. The governor, embattled by several political controversies, apparently took it upon himself to publicize plans to do so by the university. Blagojevich probably thought he would thus be soothing the feelings of students and professors distressed at the prospect of returning to Cole Hall. But the governor immediately came in for criticism...
Under the plan announced by Blagojevich, NIU's Cole Hall is to be demolished this spring, and a new building, Memorial Hall, is expected to open by 2011. It is to be about 40% larger than Cole Hall, and will include 10 classrooms, as well as three 250-seat auditoriums. But some at NIU are not sure that is the perfect way to remember the trauma. "It almost seems like they're letting fear dictate their actions. People are trying to say that what [gunman] Steven Kazmierczak did can't stop us. But by tearing down Cole Hall, it does...
Last week’s killing spree at Northern Illinois University (NIU) that left five students dead and 16 wounded is shocking in its apparent randomness and bewildering in the myriad questions it leaves unanswered. Why did Steven Kazmierczak—a kind and intelligent former graduate student at NIU—open fire on a lecture hall full of undergraduate students? What could spur anyone to senseless killing? And perhaps most importantly, what could NIU have done—and what can any other university do—to prevent future tragedies like this one? In NIU?...
Northern Illinois University Police Chief Don Grady said investigators have not determined what prompted Kazmierczak, of Champaign, Illinois, to stage the attack. Until the spring of 2007, he had been enrolled as a graduate sociology student at NIU. School officials recalled him as "respected ... a fairly normal student." In recent weeks, however, Kazmierczak had been behaving "erratically" since he allegedly stopped taking medications for a condition the authorities declined to specify. State police said he had obtained a permit to purchase a weapon in January 2007. He picked up two of the weapons used in the attack - the shotgun...
Just last December, the NIU campus was shut down after someone wrote on a dormitory bathroom wall that black students would be killed. Just last week, the university received another threat. In an interview yesterday, Grady, the police chief, declined to specify the nature of that threat, and said it was dismissed for a lack of credibility. Despite campus officials' pronouncements that they have taken significant security steps, for now, it seems little can soothe the uneasiness here...