The night of Feb. 13, Víctor Rodríguez-Pereira emailed his students to see if they were safe. There had been a mass shooting and MSU was in a shelter in place as authorities tried to apprehend the gunman. Rodríguez-Pereira, an assistant professor, had been on campus just an hour earlier. And his students were still there, scared and hiding.
“It didn’t feel real,” Rodríguez-Pereira said.
The next day was a blur. It wasn’t until at least 24 hours after the shooting that he fully realized what had happened.
“After that, the rest of the week was sort of a mix of anger and sadness, and a lot of emotions.”
But during that week, he, and all other MSU faculty, had work to do. They had to figure out how to approach next Monday’s class. What was expected of them? What would they say to their students? And how could they get through work when they too were grieving?
Though the university required professors to hold class that week, many did not immediately jump back into course content. Rodríguez-Pereira sent a survey to his students to hear their needs and expectations. The consensus was that they were not ready to resume work.
Rodríguez-Pereira felt uncertain and anxious for what lay ahead. But he knew he was glad to see his students again.
“That first class back, we just got together and just talked about it, and we just talked about how we felt,” Rodríguez-Pereira said. “It was very emotional because it's not always easy to share that part of yourself so willingly in person. It was very sad. It was very emotional. It was very heavy. I don't think I've ever taught a class so heavy, and I don't think I've ever had such a personal experience with my students ever.”
One James Madison College professor, who wished to remain anonymous, said returning to class was one of the hardest moments of his career. He wanted the class to be a space for students to process the tragedy and be together, but he was ill-prepared.
He sought advice from mental health professionals to ensure he would not cause further harm or trigger students. He learned he should focus on discussing feelings rather than experiences.
“We just used that time to be together and reconnect and process,” he said. “I thought it was really meaningful to reconnect as a classroom community in that time, but it was hard and it was heavy. All of us had our own mix of grief, fear and anger during that time. I just tried to make space for people to be where they needed to be and to take care of themselves, and to make sure that they all felt supported.”
At the same time, professors had to determine how to adjust syllabi, course schedules and course content that could be triggering. Many allowed students to attend class virtually and cut portions of the syllabus altogether.
Nearly all decisions were in the hands of professors, which Rodríguez-Pereira said acted as a double-edged sword.
“Sometimes carrying this onus of this heavy responsibility, without clear direction in some areas, has felt heavy,” the anonymous professor said. “On the other hand, I do really appreciate that they've put their faith in us to find a way forward, and I feel supported enough.”
Though professors recognized that administration was put in an “impossible situation,” and “did the best they could,” the circumstances pushed more work onto faculty. Not only did they reorganize their courses, but they also provided emotional support for students.
Rodríguez-Pereira didn’t want to call this work a burden. He said he was honored to support students because it was an essential part of his job, and he did it willingly.
But it was also unexpected and unpaid labor. And he didn’t feel qualified to do it.
“I've just made myself available for students,” Rodríguez-Pereira said. “Because I don't have any training in counseling or therapy, I don't know what to tell them or how to help them in that way. I can be there. And I told them repeatedly, I am there, if anybody needs to talk, if you just need a listening ear, if you just want to vent, I'm always an email or a call away. But other than that, I don't feel like I can help them as much as I would like to.”
Because many faculty were constantly in “support mode” for students and sometimes for their own children who needed help processing the shooting, they had little time and energy to support themselves. The anonymous professor said his own emotional processing got lost behind everything else, causing extreme fatigue and difficulty concentrating.
“I don't know if it could be any other way,” he said. “In the wake of something like this, there aren't any easy or clear answers, and no clear way forward. My colleagues and I are doing the best we can, and I see my colleagues just pouring themselves into supporting our students as well. I hope that when the semester is over, (professors) are able to do their own processing and kind of recover and recharge.”
Rodríguez-Pereira said several weeks passed before he could “function normally again” and sleep properly. He described the experience as a painful uphill battle.
For associate professor Celeste Campos-Castillo, adapting to her students’ needs was helpful in her own recovery.
When the shooting occurred, Campos-Castillo was in a unique position because she had just started working at MSU in January. Though she hadn’t been here for long, she soon felt the grief — especially when she thought about the faces she would never have the chance to see.
She was not yet teaching classes, but she was helping students with research projects. This meant she could tell her students to refocus their attention on more flexible projects without immediate deadlines. In turn, giving her students time to grieve allowed her to grieve as well.
“At that moment, I knew that I couldn't handle any extra stress because of what was going on, and so I was very careful to make sure that whatever work I was doing was fairly easygoing, and that I could stop it if I needed to,” Campos-Castillo said.
She said the support shown by other faculty was the most conducive to her healing. They shared resources and discussed their successes and struggles of returning to class.
“I was appreciative of the email exchanges among the faculty in my particular department, and how they approached getting back to work and interacting with students,” Campos-Castillo said. “I gleaned the important values that were set forward for anybody who was interacting with students … which were to be flexible, hear them out, but also to just show them that you care and appreciate them.”
Rodríguez-Pereira said the importance of community among faculty and students continues to be a driving force in progress. But the progress hasn’t been easy, and it will continue to be an uphill battle, he said.
“I think a lot of people are functioning as if this has passed already, but I think it's gonna take a long while for people to feel any sense of normalcy, really," Rodríguez-Pereira said. "People need to keep that in mind … this is not over. And we're going to have to deal with this grief for a while, so we need to be mindful of that when we approach each other.”
