The day following the mass shooting on MSU campus, members of the community began leaving flowers on campus to honor Arielle Anderson, Brian Fraser and Alexandria Verner, the three students who lost their lives.
What started as a few bouquets quickly became large memorials at the Rock on Farm Lane, Sparty Statue, the Union and Berkey Hall. Each site was completely covered in flowers, signs, candles, stuffed animals and other items within a week.
Since then, however, East Lansing has experienced freezing rain, snow, high winds and freezing temperatures, which have caused the flowers to deteriorate and other items to become weathered. The university decided to take action to preserve the items at the memorials before weather could damage the items further.
The offices of Student Life and Engagement, Health and Wellbeing and Arts and Collections coordinated in the preservation project. They also invited the student government, the University Activities Board and Residence Hall Association to assist in hosting the event.
On March 2, the groups picked up the items from each memorial. They removed each bouquet from its plastic wrap and collected the flowers, as well as items and signs.
The flowers were picked up by Infrastructure Planning Facilities to be turned into mulch, which will be used to plant a memorial tree outside of Berkey Hall. The other items will be turned over to MSU Archives and the MSU Museum.
“We’ll have that memorial tree to continuously memorialize the students we lost and then also we’ll have the mulch underneath it, that is from the flowers, that just reminds us of the love and the community that has come together in this time,” Associated Students of MSU President Jo Kovach said.
Assistant Vice President for Student Involvement and Leadership Allyn Shaw said prior to the pick-up, the university contacted the families of the three victims to notify them and give them the chance to collect items from the memorial.
Kovach said the organizers also decided to collect the memorial items before spring break so that students wouldn’t return from break to all the items gone. They said this was important so that students did not feel like the traumatic event they endured and the lives that were lost were being forgotten.
“Something that a lot of students fear is that this is a huge event that happened to all of us and it's going to affect us forever, and I think a fear is that time's gonna go on,” Kovach said. “We watched the national media leave and the nation started moving on already and I think a fear is that people are just going to move on from this and not necessarily give it what it needs to have. ... We always need to remember the students we lost, but also the loss of the people we all were before it happened and the loss of that safety and security that we had before this.”
Kovach and Shaw said the preservation of the memorial items and the new memorial tree will serve as physical symbols of the community’s grief and healing, as well as memories of Anderson, Fraser and Verner.
“To honor every Spartan that has passed is incredibly important … and a tree is a sign of growth,” Shaw said. “We say that they’re always a Spartan, so it's a place for the families to come back to, friends to come back to, to remember when their Spartan was here. And then in the future, people will know who these people were. ... I think the mulch around this particular tree is just showing the love and the healing and the family all coming together, because the mulch will help the tree grow. So there’s, I think, a lot of symbolism in terms of being able to show the love and the care that's part of the Spartan family.”
