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Heheh.

Link IS a piece of the triforce…

Run. Hide. Fight.

    I am a student at The University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and on Tuesday April 30th, 2019 a student brought a gun to campus and opened fire in a classroom.

   Our school is in a suburb of Charlotte, so from time to time in surrounding areas there will be gun violence and the school will notify us that it doesn’t appear to be a threat. But at 5:50pm I received a text from the UNCC Alert System saying “Niner Alert: Shots, reported near kennedy. Run, Hide, Fight. Secure yourself immediately. Monitor your email.” Looking back now I can see whoever sent out the alert was obviously in panic just from the building’s name not being capitalized. I can only imagine having to be the one to send that message. Instead I was the one receiving it.

   I was off campus at a networking event when the text messages flooded everyone’s phones. Immediately everyone started calling and texting their families letting them know they were safe. Friends desperately texted each other trying to figure out if you were on or off campus. My mom called me in full panic.  The news was reporting it less than half an hour later.

   What was strange was my first reaction- and everyone’s first reaction. It wasn’t an emotional one, it wasn’t “oh my god why is this happening?” or “I can’t believe this is happening.” My first thought was “It’s happening.”  

   There were rumors going around those of us off campus at the time that the students walking into an on campus concert got into a fight and that’s how the shooting happened. It wasn’t until later that we realized the truth as more stories came out. It wasn’t until I saw the library that I had spent hours and hours in studying, hanging out with my friends, and writing papers in, on the news with students coming out with their hands up as police run past them. I wasn’t until I saw the walkway that I take from Chick fil A to class on Tuesdays and Thursdays that I started to understand. And suddenly I saw the Kennedy building- a building I walked by that day after my last day of classes for the semester plastered across news headlines with the words “ACTIVE SHOOTER AT UNCC” that it hit me.

   The next 24 hours were filled with tweets and emails and text messages. Emails from professors asking for students just to email them back so that they would know they were okay. Texts from family members and friends and people checking in “Safe” on Facebook.  Tweets and videos showing doors barricaded that I’ve walked through. I recognized the tables in the library and the tables from study rooms being stacked in a panic on top of each other against doors as desperate protection. I saw a student’s white dress shirt covered in blood laying on the ground and I recognized the bricks underneath it and knew what building it was outside of.  I imagined over and over again the shooter walking into a classroom that I had classes in and firing.

   There was a tweet from a girl saying that her friend’s boyfriend wasn’t texting her back. She couldn’t find him and was worried about him and asking for information if anyone knew where he was. The next day I saw an article with his name spread across the headline “Riley Howell hailed as a hero for jumping on the shooter to save the lives of others.” He was dead. The kid was dead.

   Riley Howell and Ellis Parker will never walk across the stage at graduation. They will never have another summer vacation after finals week. Ellis will never celebrate his 21st birthday. Riley’s girlfriend will never receive a text saying, “I’m okay!” like I had the privilege of receiving from all my friends.

  Drew Pescaro, Sean DeHart, Rami Alarmatin, and Emily Haupt will never forget being shot in a classroom. They will never forget the feeling of seeing the shooter. They will never forget the ambulance ride or calling their families. They will never be able to walk into a classroom and not look for an exit door. They will never. forget.

 The students on campus will never forget where they went when they got the text message. What study room or classroom or building. The students who ran will never forget their heartbeat as they sprinted away as fast as they could. They will never walk the same path they ran and not think about how their backpacks slapped their back as they desperately tried to get off campus and the noises of helicopters and ambulances passing them, going in the other direction.

  As a student who didn’t experience the shooting first hand I have felt a lot of guilt about my strong reaction to it. I wasn’t there, I didn’t know anyone in the classroom, and all of my friends were okay. But  I’ve had nightmares every night. I had to stop looking at social media and reading articles and news headlines. When my mom would wake me up or open my door while I was sleeping I would wake up and scream. I’ve cried every day since then. My mind plays the same things over and over again. The gunman walking into a classroom of kids just trying to give their final presentations. The kid looking down and seeing his white shirt turn red. The students running and being in lock down for hours all over campus. A place where I never realized that I actually felt at home suddenly felt broken. I felt like something had been robbed from us. This caused me to realize that I shouldn’t feel guilty about my feelings about it. UNCC is all of our home. Every student and teacher that steps foot on to campus.

   The support of the students and faculty and the community has been incredible at our school. Emails constantly being sent out about counseling and wellness events, therapy dogs, a candle light vigil, a March for Our Lives rally, people offering rides and homes to those who didn’t want to stay on campus.

   But on May 1st, 2019 there was a shooting outside of a student apartment complex a mile from campus. The shooting was not in any way related to the shooting on campus at UNCC. But once again we got an email “UNC Charlotte is monitoring multiple reports of persons injured at University Village Apartments, which is located near main campus. Police officials do not believe there is a threat to campus but we are monitoring the situation.”  One person was killed, they were not a student. It felt like the world was ending.

  I keep up with a lot of mass shootings, and have strong views that I will not get into here. I went to March For Our Lives in D.C. after the shooting in Florida and while I was there I thought I was marching for my sister’s safety and the safety of all students. I was oblivious to the fact that all students would include me. I was marching for my life as well, and the lives of the students at UNCC.

   On that I will say this- seeing shootings in the news is nothing like having it happen at your own school. You don’t recognize the bricks underneath the blood soaked shirt. You have never walked past the building after finishing your last exam and feeling the sunshine on your face of your first minute of summer vacation. You will never see the places you once felt comfortable and be filled with tears and images of students running for their lives. You have never texted your loved ones and don’t know if it will be the last time or heard your mom’s panicked voice on the phone because she doesn’t know if you’re alive.  And I hope you never have to. But we did. And so have so many other students.

  My friend texted me a few hours after the shooting had happened and said “I just want to know why.” I responded with “It doesn’t matter why he did it. He did it. He did it easily. It happened.”

  I hope at some point it stops happening.

1k notes and I’ll send this to my Very transphobic Very christian parents