Royal Purple

Issue date: 2/20/08 Section: News

Media Credit: www.niu.edu Flowers and tokens of rememberance surround the memorial made for the five sudents who were killed Feb. 14 on the Northern Illinois University campus. Sixteen others were injured and the shooter also killed himself.

The UW-Whitewater campus has its own connection to last Thursday's shooting tragedy that left six dead at the Northern Illinois University through University Police Chief Matt Kiederlen and former journalism professor Bill Cassidy.

Cassidy taught journalism at UW-Whitewater until the fall 2006 semester when he started working for NIU. Kiederlen left NIU in April 2007 for the police chief job at UW-Whitewater.

Both men were affected by the tragedy, but in different ways. Kiederlen left the campus almost a year ago, but he said it still felt close to home. He has been in contact with several people he knew at the NIU campus during the past few days.

"I was as shocked as anyone else could be," he said. "It shows that it can happen anywhere. It was like it was happening to me."

The police staff at NIU were credited with a quick response time. Kiederlen was not suprised by the response and said the NIU police department was a well-staffed and professional department.

"It is as would be expected," Kiederlen said. "They are flabbergasted that it happend to them."

Meanwhile, Cassidy's experience was on the NIU campus. His office is only a short distance away from Cole Hall, where Steve Kazmierczak, a 27-year-old graduate student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, killed five students and himself while injuring 16 others. Cassidy said he was with a student when other students came running into his building.

"What they were saying at first was ... they thought they heard something or there was a rumor," Cassidy said. "It became apparent that another professor called '911' and was told, 'yes we know about it.' Someone came through saying close your doors."

Since Cassidy was with a student, he went through the advising process. When they were finished he heard a colleague in the hall talking about the shooting so they looked out Cassidy's window to see what was happening.

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