ILLUSTRATION BY MELIA KENNY
PAGE LAYOUT BY SARAH CHUNG
Wednesday, March 9, 2022 // The Statement — 2
Content warning: Language about violence, school
shooting.
November 30, 12:50 p.m.
If you asked, I could recall the day, not like it hap-
pened yesterday, but like it’s happening now. Like I’m
still stuck in that moment.
I can smell the crisp air. It’s cold, but not that cold.
I walk to class without having to wear my mask to
protect my face from the winter wind. I’m on the
phone with my friend, walking to class, laughing. We
talked about a story I was writing. It was an ordinary,
plain day, one I thought I would most likely forget.
But I never will.
As I put back on my mask and walked to class,
kids an hour and a half away were running. I enter
my calculus classroom — room 2353, Mason Hall. I
sit in front of the window and I can see the Diag. It
still looks like fall, even though it’s late November,
nearly December. I smile. Maybe this winter will be
light, I think.
I get the text not even five minutes into my lec-
ture. It was from my dad:
Active shooter at Oxford High School. We have
Abbey.
Abbey is my younger sister, a sophomore who
was at Oxford High School on that cold-but-not-
cold November afternoon. I didn’t know then, but
she was down the hall from the shooter and had
crawled out of the win-
dow after barricading
the door with the rest of
her classmates, running
to the Meijer around the
corner. She was with my
parents before I even
knew what was hap-
pening. It was a relief.
My sister was safe.
But my best friend
wasn’t. Not yet.
Her name is Olivia
— a senior at Oxford
High School despite only being two months younger
than me. I sat there, frozen, ignoring the lecture hap-
pening not two feet in front of me. I texted her with
shaky fingers.
The words I shared with her that day are one of
the few things I can’t remember about November 30.
Maybe I chose to forget the terror behind everything
I said and to forget that feeling I never want to expe-
rience again. All I know is that I told her I loved her.
I waited for every text, hanging on the bubbles on
my screen. Every minute was more agonizing than
the last. I knew she had other people to contact, other
people to say goodbye to — just in case — but I didn’t
know what was happening. What if the words I had
sent to her were the last words I’d ever get to say to
her?
I told her I loved her again. And again. And again,
for good measure. I told her I loved her until the
police came to her classroom and escorted her out. I
told her I loved her until she got to the Meijer parking
lot. I told her I loved her until she was back at home
with her family.
I still can’t believe I’ll be able to say those three
words to her again. I came closer to the last time than
I’d ever like to. But I knew that others would never
be able to say “I love you” again. I knew that my pain
was a drop in the ocean that was theirs. I couldn’t
fathom it – couldn’t even begin to comprehend it.
It was real
I lay in my bed.
After I left my calculus lecture, far too early, I
met up with my sister. We went to a private place on
campus and cried. I called my little sister, Abbey. I
didn’t want to hang up. I was terrified she would slip
through my fingers like sand, like she almost had.
I was wrapped in the fuzziest blanket I had, try-
ing to comfort myself. I had my tissues beside me.
My phone was tuned to a local news station. I had
watched my high school from the outside many
times — often with a sense of dread as I sat in my car
in the early morning, before the first-period bell. But
this time was different. I watched a drone fly high
over the ceilings I knew so well, I saw the parking lot
from every angle. Cop cars and ambulances lined the
streets.
I had spent the last few hours convincing myself
that this was all somehow a mistake. I knew there
were idiots at my school — I convinced myself that
one of them had just crossed the line. That someone,
in a sick joke, had brought a BB gun to school and pre-
tended to freak all the students out. I had convinced
myself that the terror was only imagined — that my
family and my friends were not in any real danger. I
shielded myself with that fantasy. It was warmer and
more comforting than any blanket in my dorm.
But it was all a facade. A facade that was about to
be destroyed.
The event’s press conference was held in a park-
ing lot — the Meijer parking lot where students were
BY RILEY HODDER, STATEMENT CORRESPONDENT
Teddy bear in the snow
Where do we go from here?
Moving forward after the Oxford tragedy
BY ALYSSA DONOVAN, STATEMENT CONTRIBUTOR
Content warning: Mentions of gun violence, school
shooting.
How could this happen here? Why is my high
school, my hometown, in headlines? I felt utter shock
and horror seeing my home, which holds the people
I love and the places I grew up, plastered across the
media on November 30, 2021.
I felt a sort of willful ignorance as I anxiously
waited to hear from my loved ones at Oxford High
School, terrified to learn of the events that unfolded
in those halls. But, nevertheless, I was desperate to
know if everyone was safe.
Within minutes, the headlines changed: “Active
Shooter at Oxford High School” became “3 killed,
8 injured in shooting at Oxford High School.” The
moment that disgusting, heinous individual opened
fire, my town was forever changed. Within minutes,
three lives were lost, several people were injured and
a school of students,
teachers,
staff
and
administrators
were
traumatized.
The next day, one
of the injured victims
passed away. Once
again, the headlines
changed to reflect the
new death toll. I could
not fathom that this
was real — every text
from my loved ones,
every story from that
day, every headline in
the news, served as a
sobering reminder that
this was all real.
As soon as resourc-
es appeared to help aid the families of the victims and
survivors, I knew I wanted to find a way to help from
Ann Arbor. I made an online tool called a ‘linktree’ to
consolidate ways to help. And yet, instead of jumping
to contribute and spread information, people from
outside of Oxford (or those who were not connected
to the event) took to social media, flooding it with
some of the most awful words I have ever read.
Oxford was in mourning. But, rather than recog-
nizing the agonizing losses we had just experienced,
strangers on social media were slandering the names
of school officials or teachers they did not even know,
claiming what they “should” have done or how they
failed, as if everyone in that building are not also sur-
vivors of this traumatic event. And further, they were
posting the face of the murderer on their timeline —
an incredibly triggering act for survivors that has the
potential to encourage copycat threats.
While of course, the internet isn’t real life and
staying off social media is often one of the first rec-
ommendations after a school shooting occurs, I
learned how quickly a town can be tainted by trag-
edies.
My town held a vigil that week for those lost,
and there was a panic caused by an attendee faint-
ing. Someone yelled for help, and out of fear, every-
one scrambled. My step-father scooped up my little
brother and just started running. Survivors of the
shooting reliving trauma, people in my town run-
ning for their lives, all due to the aftershocks of the
shooting at Oxford. Media outlets present at the
vigil were shoving cameras in the faces of mourn-
ing people, sobbing people — the vigil was only one
of the many places that media outlets asserted their
invasive presence.
***
Once the initial shock wore off and I had taken
the time to begin coping with the events of Novem-
ber 30, I realized that this tragedy took place after a
devastating number of precedents.
In March 2018, a group of Oxford High School
students held a walkout in solidarity with the Mar-
jory Stoneman Douglas High School students. After
we walked out, we held a vigil with 17 minutes of
silence: one minute to acknowledge each victim of
the Parkland school shooting. I remember helping
to hold the pictures of some of the victims, looking
at their innocent faces and then lifting them up for
the crowd to acknowledge each life that was taken
by the senseless act of violence on February 14, 2018.
I silently reflected on this day this past Decem-
ber, as I drove home to Oxford from Ann Arbor to
attend a memorial service for one of the Oxford
victims. The silence was eerie as I drove past “Pray
for Oxford” billboards and posters, the air growing
denser as I reached closer to my home. I live on a
ILLUSTRATION BY SERENA SHEN
PAGE LAYOUT BY SARAH CHUNG
Read more at
MichiganDaily.com
Read more at
MichiganDaily.com