Divya Victor, an associate professor of English who teaches classes on poetry and non-fiction writing said she was teaching in Berkey about five hours before the shooting took place. She was personally ready to return to Berkey for the spring semester. 

“I think it's important that we actually talk about how we return to spaces that are marked with violence,” Victor, a scholar and poet who “engages with histories of colonized spaces,” said. 

Victor noted that MSU occupies the traditional, ancestral and contemporary land of the Anishinaabeg people, a Native American tribe that was subjected to genocidal violence by colonists and forcible displacement from their homelands by the U.S. government.

“We need to acknowledge that we're always living on violated land,” Victor said. “... If we are serious about change, and creating society for more, we have to be able to talk about how we occupy spaces that are marked by violence.”

Despite Victor’s willingness to return to Berkey personally, she said she feels solidarity with the students who protested the reopening and are bringing attention to the “lack of administrative response.”

“They should protest and use their voice whenever they feel that the institution is not hearing them well or accurately,” Victor said. 

Victor said in protesting the reopening, students are “creating small icons for bigger problems.” She said this, in effect, brings more attention to the national conversation on creating positive change for the nation’s gun violence problem. 

As far as providing accommodations for her students, Victor has tried to make her students feel comfortable. Victor said one of her students asked if a friend could come with her to the first day of class, which she allowed. 

While Victor has not had any students request online options for her class, she said she doubts the university would support her if she expressed a desire to go that route. She also said instructors were overworked during the COVID-19 pandemic when being asked to provide multiple modalities for their courses and never properly compensated for that work. 

“The university basically abandons faculty members, when they say it's up to (our) discretion and they make us the enemy,” Victor said. “We are the ones who are thinking, before we go to bed, how do we support this kid who's too scared to come into class?” 

Eddie Boucher, an assistant professor and the associate director for the Center for Integrative Studies who has worked in Berkey for years, was also an advocate for returning to Berkey. He said Berkey has always felt like a “home” for him. 

But Boucher said he acknowledges that not all of his students feel that way. 

“There's something about coming back to Berkey, to me, that's a privilege and therapy in and of itself,” Boucher said. “But that's me, so I can't speak for the 100 students I instruct in here." 

Boucher said he tries to be flexible with his students, and told them that if they are struggling attending class in Berkey, they will not be penalized. He said faculty in Berkey, who are by and large members of the College of Social Sciences, are “empathetic”.

“There's a genuine concern for students and student well-being, at least at this college level,” Boucher said.

Boucher said the university’s statement that professors can determine how to format their class “was not congruent with what was conveyed to (him).” 

“It was communicated to me that you can't have a few students taking this course online, and then have the rest of the class (in-person),” Boucher said. “... I don't think it's up to the individual professor on whether they can alter their modalities, because in my case, that just wasn’t true.”

But Boucher thinks the administration’s decision not to mandate hybrid options for classes held in Berkey may have been done so as not to “overwork the faculty,” who were asked to prepare for several modalities during the COVID-19 pandemic. He thinks the university’s administration has an “impossible task” in balancing the needs of all students, staff and faculty. 

The most “sobering” piece of the issue, Boucher said, is that society has “had to get used to insecurity in public places.” Boucher said he previously worked at UNLV, another university that recently experienced a mass shooting. 

“It's sad that we're all experiencing the same thing across our country,” Boucher said. 

History professor Roger Rosentreter, who teaches in Berkey, said none of his students have raised concerns to him about returning to Berkey. 

“We needed to come back to Berkey and I think they did everything in their power to make that return as smooth as possible,” Rosentreter said. 

Rosentreter said the university made an effort to remodel the building by boarding up the doors of the classrooms directly affected by the shooting. 

“We've been here for two weeks and things seem to be moving in the right direction,” Rosentreter said. 

Levy Bauer, a graduate student and teaching assistant in the biology department, was teaching a class held in Berkey the semester the shooting occurred. He said he wasn’t on campus when the shooting occurred, and didn’t have personal reservations about returning to Berkey. 

However, he said he felt “jittery” on his first day back in the building. 

“It's hard to tell if that was just, you know, a little bit of anxiety from the first day of returning as a TA or if it was because I was back in Berkey Hall,” Bauer said. 

Bauer said he told his students on the first day that there were other sections available for the course, and that they could come to him if they were uncomfortable attending class in Berkey and wanted to switch. He said four of his 30 students requested this change. 

Bauer said he did not receive any guidance from the administration on how to go about adopting online options. 

“I think it's really much up to the individual instructor to figure out a solution if they need to find one,” Bauer said. 

Bauer said he wishes the university mandated that instructors were required to provide online options if one of their students requested it.

“Often people don't like to do any more work than is absolutely necessary,” Bauer said. “So I can imagine tons of professors who, even if they would have had students requesting it, wouldn't be willing to do it.”

Bauer said he senses that the majority of students are comfortable in the building, but he wants to “personally apologize to students who are in a class where they can’t get out of Berkey Hall if they wanted to.” 

“Frankly, it feels like students were told to suck it up,” Bauer said. “I don't think that's a very moral, ethical, or even kind way to handle the situation.”