Keeping Vigil: A Professor’s Response to a University Shooting

Like 7,000 other members of the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Charlotte community, I attended a vigil organized by a remarkable group of students just one day after the tragic April 30, 2019, shooting on our campus that left two students dead and several other students seriously injured. A colleague and I sat together at the vigil, and we both felt moved by the students’ compassion for the victims of this shooting and their resolve not to let this tragedy undermine their commitment to their university. Over and over, the students used the phrase “Charlotte strong” when expressing their response to the shooting.

After the vigil, I returned to my office and quietly reflected on the experience of attending the vigil. I started thinking about the word vigil and its sister word vigilance. Both words come from the Latin word vigilia, which means wakefulness. As the word has evolved, vigil now means staying awake, being watchful, keeping guard. The phrase keeping vigil means being present and attentive even when one would normally be tired or asleep.

For our students, the vigil that they organized gave them an opportunity to take comfort by spending time in the presence of their fellow students. It also provided them with an opportunity to articulate the importance of guarding, in a deliberate and attentive way, their identification with UNC Charlotte. That is why almost all of them wore their UNC Charlotte tee shirts to the vigil. The students left the vigil knowing that they were about to face difficult days in the aftermath of the shooting, but they also came away with a renewed sense of vigilance in terms of their refusal to be defeated or defined by it.

As a member of the UNC Charlotte community, I can relate to the sentiments expressed at our students’ vigil. However, my personal response to the shooting is also tied to my role as a faculty member. When I first learned of the shooting, I told my wife that this tragic event was taking away the joy that I have always found

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in teaching. The day after the vigil, as departmental chair I spent nine hours in my office dealing with the issues of exempting students from finals and the anxieties of faculty and students. For much of that time I just wanted to go home and take our dog for a walk. For a few minutes, I even contemplated retirement, but then I thought about the students’ vigil. I thought about their resolve not to let the shooting rob them of their college education, and it dawned on me that I could and should learn from our students and emulate their vigilance.

I left my office about 6:30 that evening feeling physically tired but also feeling like I had just awakened. I realized that I needed to stand guard against the temptation to let the shooting and its aftermath sap the pleasure and meaning I have always taken in teaching. As I drove home that evening, I realized that I wasn’t just keeping long office hours that day; I was, in a sense, keeping vigil. In the face of the horror of a national contagion of mass shootings, psychologically informed clinicians, educators, scholars, and all citizens need to keep vigil in defense of our young people and society.

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