The Express staff asked various faculty members on campus these two questions:
Which emotions are the strongest for you in the wake of the latest mass shooting?
What are you hoping students are paying close attention to?
Sean Day, International Student Specialist
“Sadness and frustration that this keeps happening and no laws have changed. Being afraid for myself and for our students. Underneath the sadness right now my strongest emotion is i think anger. Anger that this happened. Anger that there are machine guns like this that are easily available in our society. Anger that there were so many opportunities to stop and intervene. Anger that a person who was in the position to stop it, somehow waited outside the building while students were being shot.”
Uphie Ngwa, ASLPC Director of Communications
“This is the first time that I’ve really noticed the new generation, generation Z, actually taking a stand because we are actually known as like the lazy social media generation. But now we see that we are using that platform to actually make our voices known because you are seeing all this news coming up of people trying to make a difference. So I do hope students know that they can actually use their voice and actually participate in these outlets that our peers are organizing to show our voice.”
Elena Cole, English Instructor
“Here we are again. I am outraged that guns of that sort are so accessible. Take care of yourself. Don’t walk around in pain and fear. Take care of yourself.”
Jennifer Snook, Editor in Chief of Anthology
“Exhaustion and disbelief, followed by anger.”
Ernie Jones, Psychology Instructor
“The first thing I thought was 17 is not so bad compared to 59. We easily get jaded. But then I caught myself.”
Tatiana Hernandez, ASLPC President
“I am angry but i think anger can channel passion. I think passion is what makes us feel hopeful and what’s going to get us something to change and I really think this time around things are going to change. I’ve seen people talk about it, I’ve seen all the news, I’ve read articles, and I think there are a lot of people trying to make a change. And there’s this tweet, and twitter is not the place to get your information but there’s this one tweet where it says that when students are the ones taking a stand, then you know our future will change. Because those are our future leaders, students are our future leaders in the next coming years. I am hopeful.”
Zainab Dogar, ASLPC Vice President
“All of us at student government are really passionate about trying to create some some type of positive change and really showing solidarity with those students. We always hear things about how someone should do something about that or we should pray for them, but it’s like no we are someone and we have to do something about that and so we’re talking about possibly doing a walkout.”
Compiled by The Express staff