Essential and voluntary Michigan State University workers are clocking into their shifts and performing their normal duties, despite showing up to an empty campus that students fled after Monday's mass shooting.
Some workers are having a hard time acclimating to the quiet atmosphere.
Joanne Roth, a cafeteria worker at the Vista in Shaw Hall, defined the feeling as "eerie," due to the lack of students and overhaul of police cars and tape.
Roth and her daughter both work for MSU dining halls. They both felt the need to leave campus, as many students did.
"(My daughter) says to me, ‘I just don't feel right,’” Roth said. “Fine, we're going home … It was just a sense of feeling, because everything was so eerie, strange. It felt safe, but strange at the same time.”
Roth has now come back to Shaw Hall, which houses one of the dining halls that remains open with limited hours, to help the workers there. She said she came back because of a sense of purpose, a feeling of camaraderie with her team and the security of being close to her daughter.
“The staff and the managers are right on with ‘Do you feel okay? You don't have to be here if you don't want to,’” Roth said. “It’s very welcoming, very comfortable with everything, so coming back, outside of the lack of students, it's okay.”
Aggie Yoder works at Thrive at Owen Hall as a cafeteria worker. She stepped in to volunteer with the extended hours of the dining hall. Yoder recently reconnected with a student who worked at the Sparty’s Refresh at the Union who happened to not be scheduled the night of the shooting.
“I really enjoy working with students,” Yoder said. “I really do when I get to know some of them on a first name basis. Some of them, I’m wondering where they are. I hope they show up today.”
Yoder hopes that the students can recover from this and feel safe enough to try and get their education.
Nurha Lim works at Sparty’s Refresh at Snyder-Phillips. When she was at home, the only thing she could think about was coming back to work. Whether she liked it or not, she said, she was going to have to come back next week anyways.
“Right now, my legs are wobbly … because it feels empty and even though I (was) not here during the shooting itself, it feels wrong,” Lim said. “No one's here to tell you that it's going to be fine because it's not going to be fine.”
Lim said that she’s not sure what to expect next from campus, but she hopes students will come back stronger next week.
Computer science sophomore and IM East front desk worker Mehmet Caylan has been dealing with two tragedies in the past two weeks. Last week, two devastating earthquakes hit his home country of Turkey – and this week, he lost more members of his community. He said that it’s been tough for him to feel okay.
“It’s going to be tougher and tougher for a while to maintain our life like usual,” Caylan said.
Caylan and his friends are international students, so they can’t go home yet because they don't have enough time off work. Coming to work and even going to get food has been hard on him, because he feels unsafe whenever he leaves his dorm.
“There might be more policies, more security we see on the campus,” Caylan said. “They have eyes on the campus, they see what happened and what is happening on the campus, but I don't see any police cars frequently on the road or maybe waiting on some parts of the campus. It might be useful for students who feel insecure and this can be helpful for them.”
Calvan's coworker, computer engineer preference sophomore, Marvins Joseph, said there were only 19 people in the gym, a lot less than the regular Thursday. He said coming back to work felt lonely and empty, especially with IM East being one of the locations on campus that was evacuated due to reports of shots fired.
“It feels kind of weird because I was here an hour before this happened,” Josephs said. “I was here. I was working out and we usually finish working at around 9 p.m., but we finished early Monday, so we weren't here when it happened, but I was pretty close to where it was at the CATA station.”
While work has felt and looked different for MSU employees on campus, workers have turned to fellow staff members for community and support.
“It's a good community base,” Roth said. “I always feel close … with (my) coworkers, and then you get to know the students and stuff. So in that respect, it feels good to be back, even though most of the students aren't here, but the people you work with are here ... and so that makes you feel good about being here and helping.”
