Michigan State’s Independent Voice
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Vol. 114 | No. 10
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FOR MSU PROFESSOR WHO WITNESSED CAMPUS SHOOTING, JOY PAVES THE ROAD TO HEALING Marco Díaz-Muñoz walked toward the Fountain of Neptune in the Piazza della Signoria and opened his folding chair. A bowl of gelato in his hand, he sat down and looked up at the stars. He traveled from museum to museum across Italy to photograph their art, retaking each picture if the pieces were not perfectly captured. He wanted every speck of dust to be visible, and every brushstroke clear, for when he returned to the states to show his future students what he’d seen. The search for art led him into nearly every church he saw. “I found myself very
often inside churches, because you’re walking by a c hu rc h w it h incredibly beautiful architecture,” DíazMuñoz said. “How can you miss that? Don’t just walk by it, go inside.” T he seren it y he felt in those moments grounded him. DíazMuñoz described the experience as being “ r e c on ne c te d w it h something greater.” “At those moments, life is good,” DíazMuñoz said. “There’s no memory of what had happened.” It was the first time he felt peace since half a year prior, before a gunman entered his Berkey Hall classroom and opened fire, killing two of his students and
injuring others — the day that changed his life. But when his trip was over and he arrived back in East Lansing, when he saw campus and the places he associated with the shooting, the peace vanished. Feb. 13, 2023 follows him around like a shadow, he said. It lives in the back of his mind, deep in his subconscious. That’s where it’s been since m i nute s a f te r t he violence unfolded in his classroom. When he relayed his experience to mental health professionals on the scene — the sound of gunshots, hanging onto the door in case the shooter returned,
some students escaping through the windows while others tended to the wounded — he felt as though he was describing someone else’s experience. He had dissociated. It was like putting up a wall between what had happened and himself. He said it was a way for the mind to protect itself from trauma. “There was a part of me, a subconscious side of me, that had those experiences,” Díaz-Muñoz said. “My psyche put up a barrier, and that’s what allowed me to be able to talk as though I was telling a story.”
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‘SPARTANS PROTECTING SPARTANS’: FIRST RESPONDERS SHARE THEIR EXPERIENCES ON FEB. 13 EAST LANSING FIRE DEPARTMENT RESPONSE
Chief Chris Rozman. Courtesy of MSU Police Department.
By Hannah Holycross hholycross@statenews.com MSU Chief of Police Chris Rozman was at his home the night of Feb. 13 when he first got word that there was a potential active shooter on campus. He quickly went to look at his phone to track the calls that were coming into the station in live time. Once he saw the large amount coming in, he instantly knew that it wasn’t a false alarm; it was real. “I let my wife finish putting the kids to bed and I jumped in my car and started heading into work, as did so many other officers and administrators,” he said. Rozman headed to the unified command post that MSUPD had established on West Circle and Abbot where he and his colleagues could coordinate a response effort. There, he was tasked with being responsible for media relations efforts to keep the public updated on the situation at hand. “At the time it was so crucial for us to get messaging out to the community, not just that there’s been a shooting or active violence and to shelter in place, but additional information in terms of what exactly
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East Lansing Fire Department Captain James Lidiski poses next to a firetruck at the Department’s on-campus station on Friday, Feb. 2, 2023. Lidiski was a first responder on the night of the Feb. 13, 2023 shooting on MSU’s campus, and helped block roadways and search for victims. Photo by Jack Armstrong.
is occurring, is there a description of the suspect, and then additional actions that people should take,” Rozman said. Rozman said that from previous crisis communication training, he knew there would be lots of misinformation going around. He decided early on to take the approach of making sure that they made it clear that people should be going to them for accurate information on the situation. “Because we couldn’t address what the misinformation was at the time, there was just so much out there, we just really wanted to be the voice of the incident, whether that was on social media, by an issued alert, in front of the cameras, we knew that it was important to have unified messaging to our community,” he said. Rozman, who attended MSU himself, has been with MSU Police and Public Safety since 2001. He said that he didn’t anticipate spending his entire career at MSU but said that he is proud of not only the university, but the police department as well, even turning down an
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opportunity to work in federal law enforcement to continue working for the university. “Our police department has a pretty storied history protecting our community,” he said. Rozman has responded to multiple critical incidents throughout his career, both on- and off-campus, but nothing that holds the same magnitude as what happened on Feb. 13, he said. Despite this, his department has trained for years to respond to ‘low frequency, high risk events’ such as an active shooter situation. “There are things that you’re probably not going to see, you may not see, but if you do they are very critical incidents,” he said. “Those are the ones we train a lot on because we don’t get the experience in real life.” Rozman said that what happened on Feb. 13 didn’t change the way he approached or felt about his job, but that it reinforced the importance of the job he has. “In this case it really comes to light why we are experts in the area of public safety and security and why we do certain things,” he said.
East Lansing Fire Department Captain James Ladiski said that he had a similar reaction to Rozman when he first heard of a potential active shooter situation on Feb. 13. Like Rozman, Ladiski said that the volume of calls coming in was a telltale sign that this was the real deal. Typically used to getting false gunfire reports from fireworks or firecrackers, Ladiski braced himself for what was to come as he pulled out of the station and made his way to Berkey Hall. The first thing Ladiski and his team did when they arrived on scene was what they call a ‘stage’ where they will park the firetruck a small distance from the scene and block the roadway so that the police can go in and secure the scene. Ladiski said that a couple other units had already made it to the scene about a minute before his truck did and that they had already been inside, working on pulling out victims. Once they finished staging, Ladiski and his team went inside Berkey Hall with the police and coordinated a walk around to search for more victims. “At that point we had no idea if the shooter was still in the building or what was going on, so there were several roles taken by several people that night,” he said. A f ter focusing on v ictim extraction, Ladiski said that his team continued to stage until the shooter was no longer at large, remaining in their active violence incident or AVI gear which consists of bulletproof vests and helmets. Ladiski said that even though the fire department has been training for an event like this for years, the night of Feb. 13 brought a reality to that training. “In the back of our minds we
always think ‘it’s not if, it’s when, when is this going to happen’ and our ‘when’ happened last year at this time,” he said.
DOWN THE ROAD, MEDICAL PROFESSIONALS WERE READY TO HELP
E.W. Sparrow Hospital President Dr. Denny Martin was in a business meeting when he first got a message about what was happening. At first, he said that his mind went to a swatting incident that had happened a week prior at Okemos High School, casting doubts in his mind about the situation. Shortly after, he received a text from his director of public safety saying that it was verified that there had been a shooting. Martin quickly went to Sparrow, not knowing how many victims there were, but knowing that as the leader of the hospital he needed to make sure that his staff had everything they needed to take care of the incoming patients. Soon he learned that the shooter was still at large, shifting his focus towards making sure that the hospital was safe so that his staff could focus on tending to those who were injured. Martin said that following Feb. 13, he now lives in a state of constant readiness, the shooting having set in a reality that this could happen anywhere at any time. “I think we all have that fear that the next page or alert we get for a trauma is going to be, you know, multiple trauma and a potential mass casualty,” he said.
RESPONDERS CAME FROM FAR AND WIDE
MSUPD was assisted by first responders from 72 different law enforcement, fire and emergency medical service agencies on the night of Feb. 13. One of these was the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office, which had previously responded to a similar
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East Lansing Fire Department Captain James Lidiski poses next to a firetruck at the Department’s on-campus station on Friday, Feb.2, 2023. Lidiski was a first responder on the night of the Feb. 13, 2023 shooting on MSU’s campus, and helped block roadways and search for victims. Photo by Jack Armstrong.
active violence incident at Oxford High School in 2021. The Oakland County Sheriff ’s Office is one of the largest in the nation, which is why Sheriff Michael Bouchard said they were well equipped to offer support that night. “We have a lot of specialt y equipment and capabilities that many agencies don’t because we’re so big,” he said. Some of the resources include the largest drone unit in the state of Michigan, a large SWAT team and helicopters, which Bouchard said he ordered as soon as he got word that their help was needed.
The department drove over an hour to help respond, knowing that having already been through a similar situation they could offer critical advice as to what resources to use and how to secure certain locations. Most of all, Bouchard said their previous experience allowed them to help the most in the area of how to deal with the fallout for an event of this kind through peer support programs and outside experts that he ended up sending MSUPD’s way. Bouchard said that an important takeaway from that night is to always be well-trained and prepared, as well
having partnerships set up well in advance.
HEALING FROM THE TRAUMATIC EVENT
Ladiski is the lead peer support team member at East Lansing Fire Department, a team that is trained to look out for staff who might be struggling after traumatic events and to get them the resources they need. Ladiski was originally the only person trained in providing peer support but said that after Feb. 13 they have continued to develop the program and that they are focused on keeping an eye out for those who
may be struggling during the one year mark. “Being the leader of that and helping my peers has been pretty healing for me,” Ladiski said. Martin said that, at first, he and the staff at Sparrow Hospital weren’t sure at first how to approach healing and processing what had happened but recognized that it was going to take time and a safe environment to do so. “We really had to make it a priority,” he said. “Getting people to say that it was okay to not be okay because I think we all get in the habit of saying ‘oh, I’m fine’ when we really might be struggling,” he said. Martin said that in the time following, the hospital was more understanding if people needed to be late to or miss meetings to get help. “There’s no playbook for how to respond to a mass shooting but we recognize that people were not okay …there was a significant trauma that everyone went through and it took the organization a long time to heal,” he said. In the days following the tragedy, Rozma n sa id MSU PD brought in various resources to help first responders process and heal from what had happened. One of those resources were peer support teams similar to Ladiski’s, where other responders who have been through a similar incident could provide resources to those that needed it. Rozman said the department also hosted critical incident stress debr ief ings, where of f icers or responders who were there that night can get together with a critical incident therapist who will help guide
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them through a conversation where they can talk about their shared experience. He said that the biggest challenge in healing has been with how first responders ex per ience t rauma differently due to having to put themselves in harm’s way every day, often feeling numb to what has happened until later on. “Our responders may be fine for a month, three months, six months until it really kind of catches up with them and impacts them on a different timeline,” Rozman said. “Also, it’s just the stigma of mental health and when you experience an incident, especially from the perspective of a first responder, you’re experiencing it in different ways.” Because of this, Rozman said the department has also focused on longterm healing by adding an internal health and wellness coordinator as well as adding an additional social worker to their staff. Ladiski also talked about the stigma surrounding mental health in the first responder community and that while you need to be tactically prepared for critical incidents, you also need to be prepared for how you will get yourself back on your feet afterward. As time marks one-year since the Feb. 13 mass shooting, Rozman said that MSUPD’s main focus is to provide safety to the community as they continue to heal. He said that officers will be present at various events happening across campus so that students can mourn the events while feeling safe. “ We ’re Spa r t a n s pr otec t i ng Spartans,” he said.
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MSU PROFESSORS STRUGGLE WITH LACK OF UNIVERSITY GUIDANCE By Hannah Locke hlocke@statenews.com
On Aug. 1, 2023, a letter was sent out to the Michigan State University community announcing that, in honor of the one-year mark of the campus shooting that occurred on Feb. 13, classes would not be held. It was also stated that while classes would resume on Feb. 14, exams and assignments were not to be made due on this day either. Exceptions to the requirement that classes not be held on the 13th have been made for graduate and professional programs that need to meet for certification requirements. In addition to t his day of remembrance, professors must decide whether or not to make additional accommodations for their students and how to best support their wellbeing. MSU spokesperson Mark Bullion said the university has sent “some guidance” on the “best approaches (and) practices” to facult y in “handling some of the sensitivities around Feb. 13.” This guidance came from the Office for Resource and Support Coordination and additional information was sent to administrators of respective colleges, who then passed on the communication to college deans, Bullion said. Ot her t ha n u n iver sit y-w ide accommodations made for Feb. 13 and 14, however, any other changes made to courses are up to professors.
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Julie Cotton on Feb. 7, 2024. Photo by Alexis Schmidt.
Agricultural sustainability and food systems instructor Julie Cotton said she hopes to provide a safe space for students to be together. “I try to work really hard to create a space of belonging in my classroom, so that they all feel like they have a space where they can come and if they’re sad they can be sad there,” Cotton said. “But also if they need to take time, they can tell me and I’m always good with that.” Every student’s experience will be different on and around the one-year mark, Cotton said, and navigating this can be difficult. With some students being new to MSU, such as those in her introductory course, and others having experienced the shooting firsthand, such as those in her capstone course, she’s focused on accommodating her students at different levels. “I think it’s really important that we
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let our students know that whatever choice they need to make at that time for themselves is good,” Cotton said. In terms of adjustments to her course work, Cotton plans to take a tactile approach the week of Feb. 13. She hopes students will be able to engage all of their senses and process their emotions in whatever ways feel right for them. “I don’t think we give enough thought for what it takes for people to process their emotions,” Cotton said, “The way that our body lets go of trauma and stress is through all of our senses, and I think for me, it’ll be a day where I bring in something for them to eat and ... (talk) about these heavy topics, but we’re gonna do it together.” Cotton, who has experience with tackling hard truths in her courses, acknowledged there are a lot of elements to consider when considering student wellbeing through tragedy. She said she’s doing her best to make her class a safe space for students while navigating her own grief and struggles at the same time. “I don’t want to re-traumatize or overly focus on events that may disturb students,” she said. “I’m very careful about how I present anything where violence is mentioned. I’m going to give space to honor it, but I also want to be careful about those kinds of things.” This consideration is one of the guidelines the university set out for professors: to refrain from mentioning
the shooting at length or repeatedly in order to avoid triggering students. However, as Cotton navigates her courses and the upcoming anniversary, she finds herself feeling frustrated with the university’s approach to the oneyear mark, as well as the culture of approaching death in America. “I think sometimes we lack the right tools because we don’t have good common ways in the United States to deal with these events,” she said. “I think the way our work is structured, it makes it really hard to have a good way to help us with these moments.”
Dr. Tom DeWittthe on Feb. 7, 2024. Photo by Matthew Williams.
Similarly, Tom Dewitt, a professor in the Marketing Department at MSU’s Broad College of Business, said he finds it difficult to navigate the week of Feb. 13. In addition to not teaching material the day before or after Tuesday, Feb. 13, Dewitt plans to speak to his class about the tragedy and support.
“I’ll bring it up, but I’ll also bring up that each one of us is in a different place about it, and that I encourage them to spend that day off with people who they care about,” Dewitt said. While trying to be a support system for his students, Dewitt feels a strong sense of frustration towards the university at this time. There is only so much he can do for his students while knowing that the preventative measures promised by MSU have not been taken, he said. On March 1, 2023, MSU announced that they planned to install locks on all classroom doors that did not already have them by the beginning of the Fall 2023 semester. The classrooms that Dewitt teaches in have yet to receive locks. “I feel like I have a responsibility to protect my students, and I don’t feel anymore able to do that today than I was a year ago,” he said. Dewitt said the lack of safety measures in place impact him as he teaches now, and feeling unsafe is always at the forefront of his mind. “When I teach, I think about it- I think about a shooter who’s going to come through that door, and I wonder if our students feel that way too,” Dewitt said. “I care about my students ... I think about them as my own kids. When I have them, they’re my kids, and the fact that there’s very little I can do to protect them leaves me feeling very helpless and vulnerable, and it’s very frustrating.”
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THE SPARTAN STRONG FUND: WHERE THE MONEY HAS GONE SO FAR
A “Spartan Strong” sign is iced over after a winter storm came through the Michigan State University campus on Feb. 23, 2023. Photo by Jack Patton.
By Owen McCarthy omccarthy@statenews.com In the wake of the Feb. 13, 2023 mass shooting on campus, Michigan State University received calls from community members asking how they could provide monetary support to those most impacted. In response, MSU established the Spartan Strong Fund, which raised $2 million from approximately 4,200 donors. Here’s where that money has gone so far.
INDIVIDUALS MOST DIRECTLY IMPACTED
MSU announced on June 9, 2023 that $1 million of the fund would go to the families of the deceased with needs unmet by state and federal crime victim compensation funds, as well as the continued undergraduate education of the five injured students. The fund also set aside a portion to provide financial resources to 50 physically uninjured individuals who were in the two first-floor Berkey Hall classrooms or the MSU Union food court. According to an expenditure table of the $1 million set aside to support those most directly impacted provided by MSU, $990,771 has been distributed as of Jan. 12. In a statement to The State News, MSU spokesperson Mark Bullion said the “remaining funds will continue to support those most directly impacted.” According to the expenditure table,
$540,069 went toward scholarships and fellowships, $285,000 for donations, $83,465 for student support, $40,000 for staff support, $40,000 for faculty support and $2,177 for programmatic support. Bullion said the $2,177 helped fund University Health and Wellbeing’s April Connection Concert series programming.
MENTAL HEALTH REIMBURSEMENTS
W hen MSU a n nounced t he allocation of the Spartan Strong Fund in June, it said $500,000 would be set aside to reimburse or directly pay for mental health services used by community members in the wake of the shooting. On Jan. 25, the universit y announced that students, faculty, staff and first responders could now apply to receive a portion of the funds. Qualifying out-of-pocket expenses i nc lude deduc t ibles, co -pay s, or co-insurance relating to outpatient counseling and mental health care services, including telehealth, in-patient hospitalization with a mental health diagnosis and residential mental health treatment. Students, faculty, staff and first responders, including dispatch workers and telecommunicators, can visit uhw. msu.edu/spartan-strong-fund to apply. Dr. Alexis Travis, the director of University Health and Wellbeing, said her office has received 71 applications so far totaling $33,608.
Payments are expected to be made to community members within 30 days of the payment request, Travis said. Reimbursements are available for both individuals with insurance and without it. Applicants with insurance must submit an electronic version of an invoice or Explanation of Benefits and proof of payment. Individuals without insurance must submit an electronic version of an invoice from their health care provider and proof of payment. According to t he webpage, reimbursements, in full or in part, will be subject to the availability of funds. MSU is encouraging individuals to submit their reimbursement requests as soon as possible. “We’re encouraged by the early days of this rollout and encourage people to reach out if they have questions,” Travis said. Com mu n it y members a re encouraged to see the FAQ section on the website if they have questions. Additionally, they can contact the fund administrator by email at uhw. accounting@msu.edu.
RESILIENCY AND HEALING PROGRAMMING
The university also set aside $200,000 for “resiliency and healing programming.” Bullion said about $30,000 has gone toward this programming thus far. The Associated Students of MSU, MSU’s student government, received a $10,000 grant for programming during the week of Feb. 13, Bullion said.
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$20,000 was given to the East Lansing Fire Department to provide peer support training for East Lansingarea first responders who were on duty on the night of the shooting. Bullion did not provide any details at the time of publication on where the remainder of the $200,000 will go.
CAMPUS MEMORIAL
The university also set aside $300,000 for a permanent campus memorial to commemorate the victims of the shooting. A committee of students, faculty, staff and community members was established in Oct. 2023 to “guide the process of establishing a memorial in honor and remembrance of those we lost,” according to the memorial planning webpage. According to the webpage, there will be a survey open to community members on the memorial planning web page throughout February, which will give community members the opportunity to provide input on the memorial planning process. In March, two engagement sessions will be held in which feedback from the survey will be presented to the planning committee. In spring 2024, “all community input will be synthesized and used to inform a request for artist proposals, and in the fall of 2024, the committee will make a final selection of an artist proposal. In spring 2025, construction of the memorial will begin.
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CONTINUED FROM PAGE 2: JOY PAVES THE ROAD TO HEALING
Marco Díaz-Muñoz in the backyard of his home in East Lansing on Saturday, Feb. 3, 2024. “Whether you witnessed it in front of you, or you knew it was happening, we all shared that fear,” Díaz-Muñoz said. “That [fear] follows,” he said. “I’m doing everything to not let that shadow become all my life.” Photo by Audrey Richardson.
By Amalia Medina amedina@statenews.com But as much as his psyche tried to suppress the trauma, it couldn’t truly disappear. Like the Law of Conservation of Energy, he said, energy cannot be created nor destroyed. The trauma only transferred to other parts of his life: nightmares, disorientation and constant sleeping. Every time he woke up, he was in a “state of limbo.” “I just wanted to go back to the dream world,” he said. “I didn’t want to wake up, because waking up was a torture. Waking up was having to be in your conscious mind and having to accept that what happened, did happen.” Sleep was no refuge either. He had constant nightmares. Though they weren’t exact scenes of what he had witnessed, they had a common theme: fear. In one nightmare, he was in the dark surrounded by water. With sharks circling him, he clung to a wooden board to stay afloat. But even nightmares provided a sanctuary from consciousness. “Even though a lot of times I had nightmares, I sometimes found myself wishing to go back to sleep,” DíazMuñoz said. “Because as long as I was asleep, I didn’t have to face the realization that what I witnessed was real. It wasn’t something made up, and it couldn’t be undone.” Díaz-Muñoz realized the only way to heal was to resume his routine, which meant returning to class. He also felt that he needed his class, and they needed him. Like the wooden board in his dream, he clung to them to stay alive. Now in Bessey Hall, as Berkey was shut down for the remainder of the semester, Díaz-Muñoz sought to re-establish routine in his class. One way he did this was by passing around the attendance sheet at the start of each period. Though he did not grade attendance, it was the first simple step in regaining their lives. “You regain your life back,” he said. “That’s what I tried to model for them, and they modeled for me — to be able to reclaim your spaces. Your routines are things that give meaning and 8
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purpose to your life.” Over time, Díaz-Muñoz eased back into some class content. He at least wanted his students to learn and feel a sense of accomplishment in earning their grades. “They felt like they finished the semester, and they actually did learn,” Díaz-Muñoz said. “But more than just learn about my class, they learned about surviving. They learned about beginning to put their lives back together.” As the semester neared its end, his fear and restlessness grew. The list of summer plans he typically created was left blank. Summer was “a big question mark,” an “openness,” a “void.” But through therapy, Díaz-Muñoz accepted he couldn’t hold on to that class forever. “I arrived at the conclusion that I would have to let go of those kids,” Díaz-Muñoz said. “Those kids were giving meaning to my life, and letting them go would be difficult.” And it was. He slept for days when the semester ended. His body collapsed once he had exhausted every ounce of adrenaline to finish the year. He realized he’d been running on fumes. After recovering, and now with all the time in the world, Díaz-Muñoz had to find a new purpose. So he turned to gardening, tending to his longneglected yard. He mowed the lawn and planted perennials — some flowers and trees he’d seen on campus. He fell in love with hibiscuses, first planting one, then two, then three, then too many to count. “Slowly, I started filling my days with waking up with the sun, a cup of coffee on the deck upstairs, and then looking down at the flowers and feeling excited about watering them and going to Horrocks to buy more and plant more,” Díaz-Muñoz said. “That started bringing me a sense of purpose and a sense of peace. It was very therapeutic.” At the same time, Díaz-Muñoz continued therapy to address the trauma. He could not just shove it into a drawer and close it forever. Unaddressed trauma would resurface eventually, he said, and it would likely be worse. F R IDAY, F EBRUARY 9, 2024
“That’s why I’m going to therapy — to, once a week, open that drawer and address it,” Díaz-Muñoz said. “At that time, in the summer, I kind of moved from a state of limbo and depression and fear to the joy of nature and gardening, and the sun.” While he taught an art class during the summer’s second session, DíazMuñoz also started thinking about a project he first envisioned years ago that was slated by the pandemic: taking his art students to Europe. He requested a sabbatical for fall semester and flew to Italy with his wife. There, he captured Italy’s art with over 6,000 photos. He planned to use the photos in his class to show artists’ techniques. The search for art was how he found himself in so many churches. DíazMuñoz said he’s always held religion close, but his faith was strengthened after the shooting. Churches offered a space of retreat, a place for him to connect to something intangible. This connection to “something greater” kept him grounded as life devolved to chaos. After the shooting, when he said it felt like life had no meaning and he was all alone, faith was something to hold on to. “To me, all that we touch and feel is not all there is,” Díaz-Muñoz said. “I feel there’s something higher than all of us, and I’m not expecting anybody to share my my beliefs, but I believe there’s something greater that guides this ship. And that, many times, it seems like it has no meaning and makes no sense. But something greater is in control, so I default to that.” As his trip drew to a close and he returned to Michigan, he grew anxious thinking about returning to campus. Díaz-Muñoz now teaches in Erickson Hall. He no longer requests to teach in Berkey Hall room 114, which he always used to love because its windows allowed sunlight to pour in. In fact, he avoids Berkey Hall at all costs. Not only has he avoided the building itself, but he’s also avoided news coverage of its reopening. Though the building is open for classes again, the room he taught in is boarded up. “I know I wouldn’t want to go inside the building, not for God knows how long,” Díaz-Muñoz said. “I definitely don’t want to walk by that classroom.” But it was only a matter of time before he would be forced to confront it. At the start of the semester, his colleagues supported him by accompanying him across campus. One night, after driving a colleague to their car, Díaz-Muñoz followed them to exit campus. Construction forced them to drive past the south side of Berkey. The last time he’d been on that street, it was filled with police cars, ambulances, and his students being taken out of his classroom. He felt a deep anxiety as he drove past the building. He looked the other way, but out of the corner of his eye, there it was. He couldn’t ignore it: the same lights, a similar cold night. “I knew (I was) gonna go through a very unpleasant moment, and I did, but I survived it,” Díaz-Muñoz said. It is not just Berkey that scares him, but all of campus. He always has some degree of alertness, he said, especially when he’s alone. The fear that someone
could start shooting at any moment is always with him. Though his brain has mostly suppressed the trauma, moments of fear bring back glimpses of a memory. “(The memory) flashes as if it were veiled, as if you had frosted glass, like in your shower,” he said. “So I don’t see it in all its details. It can come back, but it’s as if you were seeing it through a filter. You don’t see all the details.” His anxiety also grows as the oneyear anniversary of the shooting approaches. The university has canceled classes for Feb. 13 and has a week of events planned on campus. But for Díaz-Muñoz, Tuesday, Feb. 13, 2024 is just a date. What scares him is the night before — the same Monday evening class. “Everybody in two weeks will be aware that this is the week when this happened,” Díaz-Muñoz said. “A year ago, this week was horrible. But what will make it more real to me is not Tuesday the 13th, but Monday, because that’s when it happened. That’s when all the things will coincide: the hour, the time, the class.” Despite the pain, Díaz-Muñoz has kept an open mind. He doesn’t hate the gunman. Though Díaz-Muñoz saw him as a monster in the days after the shooting, he said he realized the gunman was “a point in which everything that was wrong converged.” “That person that showed up in my classroom had no humanity left in him,” Díaz-Muñoz said. “For him to do what he did, he was filled with rage, filled with hatred, filled with loneliness. Only someone who has nothing left inside could have no compassion toward the people he killed.” Díaz-Muñoz said this was not an isolated event. The consistent stream of mass shootings that happen in this country are a result of wider issues, he said. “He was expressing his rejection of society, his hatred of the world,” DíazMuñoz said. “But he didn’t get there alone. He got there because of all the dead ends in life that he faced.” Violence did not begin with the shooting, Díaz-Muñoz said. In reality, acts of violence are perpetrated by the government every day. Whether it’s the defunding of social services, denying mental health care access, or a lack of education and jobs, Díaz-Muñoz said when governments and corporations prioritize profit, people suffer. Shortly after the shooting, DíazMuñoz spoke to the Michigan Legislature about gun control. He has always been against guns, but this feeling intensified after the shooting and persists today. Díaz-Muñoz believes sociopolitical change could end the constant violence that he and millions of other Americans have endured. He said we must critique what has gone wrong to move forward. This, he said, is an act of optimism. “Light is brighter than darkness,” Díaz-Muñoz said. “Love is greater than hate. So even though we experienced darkness and hate and everything, I still default to positive optimism.” His open-mindedness seeps into every aspect of his life. His home office is filled wall-to-wall with art from across the world. On his desk is a Buddhist hand sculpture that
symbolizes serenity, which has been significant to him this past year. “I’m just open to listening to everybody that has been wise in this world, that has left something for us to learn from.” On his shelf is a clay sculpture of a head. It’s his own work, molded by his hands when he attended Albion College and studied architecture and art. He’s been creating art for as long as he can remember. When he was a child growing up in Costa Rica, his mother nurtured his talent, always praising his work. Memories from childhood were often a place to retreat to after the shooting. And his childhood connection to art is at the core of his love for it. He said his sculpture on the shelf “brings back those memories of being in a safer world at a safer stage in (his) life.” And, it reminds him that he can create art, which he sometimes forgets. This is why art became another saving grace this past year. And, it’s one of the reasons his trip to Italy was so significant to his healing. “Teaching (an art) class is the most fulfilling one for me, because then I’m doing or teaching about what I love most,” Díaz-Muñoz said. But more than that, it’s teaching that helps him “feel reconnected with the goodness of life.” It’s his connection with students that drives him forward. It’s his connection with students that gives him a sense of purpose. And, it’s his connection with students that made losing two of them — Arielle Anderson and Alexandria Verner — so devastating. And yet, it’s the moments of connection with them that he remembers. “(Their smiles) are what I associate with them, and that’s what they left with me — a sense of something positive,” Díaz-Muñoz said. “Life is good, and they left that with me. I don’t want to think of what happened. I want to think of what I shared with them — their smiles.” Teaching has been a source of joy, which has been the most crucial thing to hold on to since the shooting. “There’s a difference between happiness and joy,” Díaz-Muñoz said. “You can go through the hardest thing and feel joy, because joy is … an understanding that you matter in this universe. And even though you’re going through a difficult time, something greater than you reminds you that you matter, and that each human being matters.” This joy is what he felt when he sat in the plaza and looked up at the stars, a moment when he was “really in the present.” Everything that grounds him — hibiscus in the backyard, memories of childhood, brushstrokes on canvas, quiet churches, and teaching — brings him this joy. And that is how Díaz-Muñoz heals from the day that changed his life forever. “When you know that even though you’re going through war you have (joy), then you can find some comfort in that feeling,” Díaz-Muñoz said. “Teaching and seeing my students reminds me of that — that my life is good. Because I’m doing something I love.”