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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.

Whitewater connects to shooting

By: Sarah Millard

Posted: 2/20/08

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.

"We saw we were surrounded by armed police," Cassidy said. "We actually saw them carry several people out on stretchers ... It was all very surreal. I was not afraid but I left. There were the police and then there were a lot of people just standing around, looking around. I think people were still trying to figure things out because this was less than an hour after had happened.I don't think it had really sunk in yet."

Cassidy said his office window could be seen on some of the media footage. He also said he could throw a rock out his window and hit Cole Hall.

"When I taught class in [Cole Hall], I would leave two minutes before class started and I would get there in time," he said. "It was much shorter than the walk from my office in the library ... to [Heide Hall], probably about after the satellite dishes [to Heide Hall]."

Even after last year's shootings at Virginia Tech, Cassidy said he knew a shooting tragedy could happen anywhere, but generally don't expect it to personally happen.

"You certainly don't expect things like that to happen to your university," Cassidy said. "It's not that kind of place, right?"

Kiederlen and Cassidy were not acquainted with any of the victims from the Valentine's Day shooting spree.