President Stern responds to shooting at his alma mater

Stern’s office; Paul R. Burley | Courtesy

Saddleback President Elliot Stern responded to the Michigan State University shooting, his alma mater, in an email to the Saddleback community Tuesday morning. 

“May these tragedies also remind us how precious we are to each other and how precious are these students studying in the LRC, sitting up in our classrooms or walking across the quad as the sun shines and birds chirp,” Stern said in his statement.

The shooting left three dead and five injured, according to CNN. This is Stern’s statement in full: 

Yesterday, a day before the fifth anniversary of the shooting of students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, killing 17, another mass shooting occurred, this one at Michigan State University, my own alma mater. The killer shot three dead and injured another five. We pray that the five injured will survive and recover and that the families and loved ones of all these victims eventually find solace and relief from their grief.

The scene last night at MSU was described as chaotic, with alarms going off everywhere and police hunting down the killer. Students remained in hiding, hunkered down, or ran from campus. The gunman was eventually found, dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. It will take a long time for those on campus to recover and feel safe again.

Our own students will feel a little less safe on our campus today, and that’s normal in the wake of a mass shooting on a college campus elsewhere. We should be mindful of that and show our support. 

With each mass shooting in a school or on a college campus, we are reminded how crazy our world has become and how much more vulnerable are our students (and us). May these tragedies also remind us how precious we are to each other and how precious are these students studying in the LRC, sitting up in our classrooms or walking across the quad as the sun shines and birds chirp.

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