Live From Another Stunned Campus…

by E Wayne Ross on February 18, 2008

Inside Higher Ed: Live From Another Stunned Campus…

In the hours after last week’s shooting at Northern Illinois University, Michael Van Der Harst wasn’t watching the television coverage of his campus. He was helping feed it.

As an editor at the Northern Star, the student newspaper, and a reporter for the campus station, Northern Television Center, Van Der Harst split his time speaking to sources and fielding phone calls until 2 a.m. “When I hung up the phone it would start ringing instantaneously,” the Northern Illinois junior said the morning after Steve Kazmierczak, a former NIU graduate student, killed five students plus himself in a lecture hall rampage. (For an update on developments at Northern Illinois, see the bottom of this article.)