Time capsule captures wave of unity

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Daily Chronicle: We Remember

No one at Northern Illinois University wants to revisit the horror of Feb. 14, 2008, the day a campus shooting claimed the lives of five students.

But members of the NIU Student Association – the student governance body at the DeKalb university – believe that, 20 years from now, the school should relive the wave of unity that swept through the university and the surrounding community in the days following the tragedy.

“It was an event that really helped to define who we are,” said Matt Ventaas, a junior and members of the SA. “And it is very admirable to seek to remember how much we all came together.”

The Student Association offered the chance Saturday for NIU students and community members the chance to add their remembrances to a collection of memorabilia the group has assembled from the aftermath of the shooting.

Later this spring, the S.A. will place those artifacts and remembrances into a time capsule and bury it on campus. The time capsule will then remain in the ground, undisturbed, until 2029, when it will be retrieved and opened.

Erik Calmeyer, a sophomore and member of the SA, said the association believed that the organization should play a role in helping the school remember, even many years after subsequent waves of graduating classes have come and gone.

“We thought the time capsule would be an interesting way to go,” Calmeyer said.

For weeks, the group has collected items contributed by its members and other student groups.

A number of items that will be included among the artifacts to be placed in the time capsule were on display Saturday in the Lincoln Room in the Holmes Student Center, where a “Reflections and Expressions” event had been set up to collect more mementos.

The items displayed included a number of photographs from the memorial events in the days immediately following the shooting; T-shirts bearing the logo, “Huskies 4 Hokies,” designed to remember how the campuses of NIU and Virginia Tech came together, knitted together by the tragedy of a campus shooter; issues of the Northern Star student newspaper; memorial flashlights from the Feb. 24, 2008, campus memorial service; a program from the May 17, 2008, commencement; and handbills from the Feb. 14, 2009, memorial service.

Dozens came Saturday afternoon to add their own handwritten notes or video-recorded remembrances to the time capsule collection. Some were visibly emotionally shaken by the act of putting their memories into words.

Most, however, said they came out of a sense of duty or just to take part in the full spectrum of the campus-wide remembrance activities Saturday.

“I’m trying to do all of the activities today,” said Holly Brandenburg, a sophomore from Elgin. “I feel like we all need to do justice by the victims.”

That sentiment was shared by Elizabeth Grainger, a senior from Rock Island.

“I’m just remembering,” she said.