After

Following the incident of Charlie Kirk’s murder at Utah Valley University, confusion rippled through the community.

As campus shut down and students and faculty were sent home—isolated from one another over that first weekend—media and outside voices quickly stepped in, telling people how to feel and what to think. But the emotions that arose from that traumatic day, and the repercussions that followed, were far more personal and complex than anything being broadcast.

When we returned to campus and finally had the chance to speak with one another, it became clear that everyone—regardless of political affiliation or belief—had been affected in some way. Each person was processing the effects of the event differently. It also became clear that our community needed a space: a space to feel, to express, and to navigate this new reality as we all try to regain our footing and move forward.

With a hope to bring these stories to light—to foster understanding, empathy, and community, and to document a critical moment in both our campus and our country’s history—I met with students and asked them to share their personal experiences from the day it occurred. I asked each person what they would want the world, or fellow students, to know: the thoughts, realizations, or shifts in perspective that have emerged since. I have been deeply moved by what they shared. Despite our differences, many of us experienced similar moments of reflection about ourselves, our relationships, and the society we are part of.

“There are all these negative reasons to not want to be here on campus… but I don’t want to set aside the profoundly beautiful moments that I have had with people these past two months.”

  •  Hunter arrived a few hours early so he could get in line to ask Charlie Kirk a question about transgender rights in relation to gun rights. With his background in philosophy, he felt prepared to respond to Kirk’s classic questions and engage him directly. He waited far back in line until event staff began narrowing down who would be allowed to speak, eventually moving him to second in line. When Hunter finally stepped up to ask his question, he only spoke with Kirk briefly before the shot was fired. For a moment, he thought the gun was right behind him.

    “I don’t know that I have changed too much, that’s kind of the weird thing about all this. A lot of people think that who you’re going to be afterward is going to be radically different than who you were before, but there is this thing that Hank Green said once, that he got cancer and he just assumed that it would overtake his life, but he said something like ‘I’m still me’. And I think that is a hard thing to recognize weirdly, that you are still you after all these things have occurred. You still have the same thoughts and opinions, and you’re a lot more cogent than I think you’d think you would be. I can’t speak for everyone, I’m sure for a lot of people it was debilitating.”

    “There were a lot of comments that I got, I made a video a month and a half after it happened about something unrelated. I just wanted my life to get normal, and people were saying ‘clearly this man isn’t grieving enough, he is still energetic and smiling’. I saw a few interviews of David Hogg, he was a student at the Parkland shooting, and he was talking about doing interviews and people would stop him and thank him for what he was saying and get a picture of him and he would smile, then those pictures would circulate online and people would say ‘why is he smiling?’
    When I was eight years old there was this man in church, and he had five kids and a wife and his wife died unexpectedly. It was a Saturday night, and the next day he was at church. He had gotten all of his kids dressed up, and I remember thinking, this guy didn’t love his wife enough. It was a very harsh feeling that I felt. Why isn’t he at home grieving? He shouldn’t be able to get out of bed. And I think I felt that, and my mom was like no, he needs God in that moment. And I think that nowadays being more secular minded, I think that the way that I think of that event is that he needed his community. I think it’s such a brave thing to do to stand up and go into church and know that people are going to judge him, cause I think that when he did it he knew that there would be some stupid eight year old that was gonna think ‘this guy should be in bed’, and he could have hid in house and done the ‘right thing’, and stayed in in the way that people would expect him to do, but I think in that moment he needed someone to look over his kids and for people to hug him and talk with him, and to feel with him, and I think that sometimes we divorce ourselves from allowing ourselves to feel things because we are worried about the perception. And I think that is something I’ve been struggling with the past couple months. I hope I’m in a better place where I'm able to move forward and care a lot less about the negative voices and care a lot more about the positive. I had gone back to school the following week because I didn’t know what else to do, I needed that community.”

    “There are all these negative reasons to not want to be here on campus, there are people that look at me and probably judge me and maybe even think that I am behind something, but I don’t want to set aside the profoundly beautiful moments that I have had with people these past two months. That those moments are everything to me.”

    “I disagreed with Charlie on a thousand things, but I do think that something he believed strongly in is the spirit of debate and conversation and having a dialogue, and I want to make sure that we don’t lose that. I’m glad that he at least seemed to care, and I hope that we take a moment to hear other people out. I think that in these current times we are ostracizing and isolating people who disagree.”

    “I hope we do a better job at listening to each other. I do think at the end of the day that we all have our same guiding intuitions about wanting people to be okay and caring about other people, and wanting our neighbors to succeed, and we have very different policy prescriptions on how to do that but I think that we call people bad or evil a little too frequently. I don’t know how many bad or evil people there are but I certainly think there are very, very few of them.”


  •  Naomi was modeling for a drawing class when a student ran into the classroom to tell them what had happened. The class stayed in the room, unsure of what to do.

    “Interestingly I was also at the No Kings Protest this Summer(where one person was also shot and killed), so I was like dang, I was at two of the most crazy Utah shootings and I’m at both of them.”

    “The main thing I thought was this is really good, it wasn't a mass shooting. Cause I think a lot more people could have died. Because even though it's not good that someone died, at least it wasn’t a mass shooting because there literally wasn’t any information(from the school) sent out for like thirty minutes, so it feels a bit scary that it could have been worse.”

    “I’m pro gun control… Anyone that dies from gun violence is a victim of gun violence.”

    “I’ve felt a lot of pessimism… The fact that the video spread everywhere just feels so Black Mirror to me. This is not a sign of a healthy society, this is a sign of a very sick and violent society… I’m surprised it happened here(in Utah), but I’m not surprised it happened, because we’re such a violent nation.”

  • Staci was training a new hire bus driver and sitting in the passenger seat, getting ready for early-out when high schoolers started filing onto the bus. She noticed them looking at their phones and gathering together, realizing that something was going on. She asked what had happened, and they told her what happened. Staci and her trainee then continued their routes to pick up junior high and elementary students who were on lockdown, keeping a brave face for the young children.

    “It felt like an attack on my community. The impact that it had on my community, I don’t really have feelings for the person, but I have feelings for his impact on people. Like his family, our students, our peers, and not feeling safe in your own community with your own people is really scary, and then seeing how it has turned into a political circus is in my opinion super disrespectful towards Mr. Kirk, but it’s also disrespectful to us, as a student body, because this is something horrible that happened on our campus with our people. And it shouldn’t be something so political and so divisive, it should be something where we can come together and say there is a problem, and we need to fix this, whether it’s A, B, C or D, rather than let it be something that is tearing us apart.”

    “This all has had such a deep impact on my student body. You can see it in their psyche, that they’re not feeling safe anymore. And then we had a student take his own life two weeks after in almost exactly the same way. On a field trip. So one of my bus drivers was the first person on scene. It’s been a severe impact on my community. Because I’m a public educator, I’m not allowed to talk about it at work. Because it’s something so political, we aren’t even allowed to discuss it. So with my students I can just tell them that I’m here for you, if you need me.”

    “I had students that were wanting to share the video on the bus, and I said absolutely not. That is disrespectful to the students around you, disrespectful to me, disrespectful to people involved, you’re not doing that.”

    “Our siblings go to UVU. Our parents, UVU has just as much impact as my district does.”

    “To me, the whole point of violence is to feed into chaos and turning against each other. As Americans we are a democracy and we have the freedom of speech, and we are supposed to be able to have our opinions no matter how awful they can be. We should be able to share our voices and opinions without feeling like we are not safe because we think certain things. And I think it’s the most disgusting and disrespectful thing you can do in this country is to take away someone’s voice in such a violent and public way. It just makes us start tearing each other apart. When situations like this happen, I think it’s important that we be more focused on the people impacted, the community, and really look inward before we are reactive. They say when you’re grieving, you shouldn’t make big decisions for the first year after you lose someone close to you, because you’re in that emotional rollercoaster, and it’s really easy to just go off of emotions rather than logic. I feel like as communities we should be able to just focus on how we feel and come together rather than let exactly what the shooter wanted to happen happen and tear us apart.”


  •  Lisette was in a classroom working on a photo project when a student ran from the event to warn her and her classmates. She took shelter in a photo lab with several others until professors came to tell them they should leave.

    “I felt like this person got shot for what he believes in, and it made me afraid to speak my own personal voice about things that I am passionate about, because there are probably people who don’t agree with those things either, so I became afraid at that moment. 

    “Is it worse for Charlie now that he is gone, or is it worse for us because we have to deal with the repercussions and we were witnesses of the whole event? We are left behind with memories and these bad experiences and the aftermath. Not saying that death is necessarily better, but we continue to deal with the aftermath.”

    “I felt like we could have had more time before coming to school, but as a university how do you respond? Are you trying to make money or maybe give more time to students? There were many extensions but even then, it felt too soon to resume our day-to-day life and live our day-to-day life and just walk around like nothing happened even though something did. We should have given it more space.”

    “There are serious things in our lives but they seem lighthearted compared to what happened… It's an extreme juxtaposition between the event itself and here we are, living our lives but it just doesn’t feel right to mix the two. I had to desensitize myself upon coming back to try to not feel so deeply so that I could keep going with what I’m doing in my life.”


  •  Hyrum was covering the event as a student news reporter in the Fugal Gateway staircase. He had just stepped inside the building when the shot was fired. He saw people running out of the building—panicked, crying, talking on their phones to loved ones. As a reporter, Hyrum pulled out his phone, started recording video, and posted it to the UVU news page. His footage ended up on national television, and he continued talking with national news agencies as a liaison to share what was happening on campus.

    “I asked myself what can I do to help? What does the UVU community need to stay informed, to feel like it’s okay to come back to campus?”

    “The days after I had such an uneasy feeling seeing it all unfold. It sucks that UVU is going to be known for this forever now, and that’s why I’m choosing to focus on the good things.”

    “The UVU news is shifting a focus to how we can get better from here. It’s been cool to see the community come together. I think that there are some good things to come out of it too, therapy being offered from the community, haircuts, flowers, hugs. It’s cool to see how people have bonded together as a community in the wake of these acts of violence.”


“While we were running I saw the humanity of everyone… we were all trying to escape to safety. We all blended in together.”


  •  Michelle was at the event and evacuated the courtyard through the door of a school department office, moving with the crowd of people before going straight to her car.

    “When I was running, I remember thinking that it was like my life was flashing before my eyes– I would take anything difficult in my life over dying. It's tragic that someone had to die in the first place. No one deserves to go through that. I didn’t know what happened to him until I saw everyone running. I guess I am just grateful I am alive. I think we should set our differences aside sometimes, because I don’t think you should take it to an extreme level to end someone.”

    “While we were running I saw the humanity of everyone. It is so easy to demonize people… in the moment I saw people calling their parents afraid, as freaked out as me, and we were all trying to escape to safety. We all blended in together.”


  •  Esteban hadn’t planned on going to the event, but when he realized what it was, he decided to attend. It felt like a unique opportunity to see Charlie Kirk beyond the short clips he’d seen online. When chaos erupted after the shot, Esteban stayed calm and helped people gather themselves and find the exits.

    “ I’m sure other people would say to seek Christ, but I’m not going to say that, because if you haven’t been doing that after what’s been going on the past few years I’m not sure what else would convince you. 

    “To prevent things like this, we have to be willing to listen to the people that we don’t agree with. Political violence and war happen when people have had enough and don’t want to hear.”

    “Live for those who couldn’t, or live for the others in your life. We don’t need this to scar us forever. Personally, I heard that they have been thinking about a memorial, I prefer that they just keep the flag there. Because there is nothing more moving than the flag itself and the virtues that we strive to have though we fail sometimes. Instead of placing blame on a political party, seek to understand. What does killing do? Nothing. I don’t know for certain but it may have inspired more violence, like what happened in Michigan (referring to the 2025 Grand Blanc Township church attack), but at the end of the day you have got to keep moving on with your life and learn how to live together as people.”

    “Love thy neighbor, really. If you don’t agree with them, at least listen. If we are to be productive citizens and do our civic duty… we need to be able to discuss these ideas instead of dismissing them.”

  •  Makenna was working at the school's climbing gym when she saw people running through the halls. At first she didn’t think much of it, until someone rushed in and told her to shut everything down immediately. Without asking questions, she closed the gym, locked the door, and had everyone move away from the windows.

    “There’s a balance between good and evil. For anything awful that happens like this, it can be balanced out by really good things too. There are signs, and even literal signs, of that all over campus. People are generally really aware that the whole community is struggling with this. There are a lot of reminders that there is so much good, and that is what I think will get me through.”


  •  Kodi was at work as a nail technician when she got a text about the shooting. She was deeply worried about her brother, who was on campus and had previously mentioned wanting to attend the event to talk to Charlie Kirk. She was relieved to learn that he had chosen to go to class instead. As she texted him, his professor kept teaching, unaware of what was happening outside. Kodi tried to hold herself together as she finished her appointment.

    “When my brother asked if I was okay I said that I’m not traumatized, but I did spend the majority of my day thinking that you could be a victim of a school shooting. I don’t know what I would’ve done if I had been there, I would have probably just frozen and gone numb, and that is basically what I did here, I didn’t start crying or freaking out, I was just telling my client that I needed to check my phone now and then because there was something going on, and then the videos started getting posted online… I wanted to see it so I could understand the situation. I watched the video looking into the crowd to see if I knew anyone, a few of my clients that weren’t students had told me they’d be there.”

    “I understand the idea of a memorial, but I didn’t like coming back to seeing all the chalk everywhere. They weren’t checking what was written… there were political booths on some parts of campus reaching out talking to students, it felt tactless… I don’t want to walk around campus with politics all around me. It feels bombarding.”

    “ I wish more people would come together when big stuff like this happens, but it has kind of proven how screwed up our society is that it deepens the divide. This should have been something that everybody came and comforted each other, not even to bring up political affiliation, not talk about if we liked him or didn’t, just that we are all experiencing this.”

    “I have a lot more compassion for people than I used to from this, just being like: I had this experience and you had yours and that doesn’t make it any less valid or any less hurtful. Everyone is human, feels things, struggles with a million things all of the time, but when we have this collective struggle everybody needs to come together and be kind to each other. You don’t know who is dealing with it internally or externally, who’s numb. Compassion for all human beings is a big thing that has come out of it for me. I don’t care if you believed it or didn’t believe it, I’m so sorry that you had to see that. I’m so sorry that this happened at your school. I’m so sorry you have to walk by this every day.”

    “Put all the other bullshit aside, this was a big fucking deal for all of us.”

    “I just wish that people would take a step back for a minute. Take all of it out of the equation and just be human. Don’t be a red human, don't be a blue human. Just human. Everybody deserves to be comfortable and safe going to school.”


  •  Parker was at the security administration office to do paperwork, having just come straight from UVU’s campus. While he was standing at the window, he started getting alerts and emails. He began messaging his friends on campus to find out what had happened.

    “(In giving advice to struggling students)Look around for people that can help you out. Find a place to sit down with yourself to think and deal with yourself. I sit in my room, play music, and think about what I’ve been doing. In the end you stay yourself and no one can help you out with that, so sitting with yourself and thinking can help, or you can go to therapy.”

“Whether you were there where it happened or not, you are going to be fazed by it.”

  •  Howard was teaching a drawing class when another professor came to warn them of the threat. He had his students stand along the concrete wall of the classroom to keep them safer, while he stood by the door because it couldn’t lock. In the days after students returned to campus, Howard brought his dog, Ned, to help comfort students.

    “There's a lot of feelings going around like, oh, I wasn't there, but I'm feeling all these big feelings. We're trying to grapple with that. It's a traumatic thing, and I don't think people realize that… Whether you were there where it happened or not, you are going to be fazed by it.”

    “As an authority figure I've had a lot of experiences in my life where I was first response, like first responder with car accidents, people being in some sort of injury, the person getting hit by a speed boat out in the middle of the lake, things like that. So I've been around those sorts of crises enough that I think I switch over into crisis mode so I can manage that. On Friday I saw my shrink, and he said, ‘are you sure you don’t have PTSD? And I said, ‘why would I have that? I’ve seen all of these things.’ He then said, ‘You don’t get PTSD from one thing, you get it from everything collected, and this is the first time you haven’t been able to do anything to help. That’s why this is harder for you this time.’”

    “I love being here. And this has tarnished that a little bit for me. And I'm really angry about that. And I'm angry that we're resorting to violence to silence people. Universities are where you're supposed to be able to have free dialogue. Where everybody should be entitled to something. And we're saying, now anybody with a gun or a knife can shut someone down. That makes me angry.”

    “People are complex. I am trying to look away from the politics, and focus on one simple thing: that night, two kids lost a father, and a wife lost a husband. That’s all I care about right now. There will always be someone that will be a hero or a villain, someone will replace him. People will love him, hate him, but no one can replace him as a father and a husband. And that's all I care about right now. There will always be somebody that will come that will be a hero or a villain. Always. Somebody's going to come and replace Charlie Kirk. But no one is going to replace him as a father and as a husband. So that's sort of what I think. Do my politics align with him? Do I disagree with everything he says? No. Do I agree with everything he says? No. But did those kids deserve to have a father? Yeah. So that's where I am.”


  •  Janessa was driving toward UVU when she noticed more people than usual walking around and traffic moving unusually slowly. She remembered the TPUSA event was happening that day, and when she saw that most people around her were on their phones, she had a sinking feeling that something bad had happened on campus. Traffic eventually came to a stop, and she had to pull aside to let police cars pass. She texted a friend she saw walking nearby to ask what had happened.

    “It was weird because I wasn’t affected by the specific person dying or scared for my safety, I wasn’t scared that they would shoot anyone else. But it did affect my feeling of stability, school is one of the constants in my life so for school to feel so shaken up affected me.”

    “It’s a weird balance with the school’s reaction, the first week they had support animals and signs for mental health resources, and that seems like an appropriate reaction, but at the same time it was in my face so much. Every single email in my inbox was about an act of violence… this is supposed to be my school and it’s supposed to be academic and not about this, but at the same time I know that it’s good for them to offer as much support as they can, like how do you as an organization deal with that?”

    “With people talking about a memorial, I don't know if I want to see it and be reminded about someone being shot there on campus. I don’t want my school to be a tourist attraction… when so many people are on campus that aren’t affiliated with the school, it feels less safe.”


  •  Juliette was walking through the Fulton Library when her friend texted to alert her about the threat on campus. She was able to get to her car quickly and leave. To support students returning the next week, Juliette and her friends drew positive messages in chalk on the sidewalks near the library to spread encouragement.

    “We as UVU students need to stick together and love each other, and uplift each other… me and my friends drew chalk all over the sidewalk… we need to remember we all go here, we all have our different beliefs, we’re human, and you need to care for each other. Divide is the worst thing that can happen in this country, we would be so much stronger if we were just loving one another and here for each other more.”


  •  Todd was working at a golf course when the events on campus occurred. He saw a post on Facebook about what had happened, but it didn’t fully hit him until his brother called to ask if he was okay. That’s when Todd realized he needed to let his family know he hadn’t been there and that he was safe.

    “In the Declaration of Independence and Pledge of Allegiance it says ‘one nation under God’. In the aftermath people were preaching Charlie. And that is going to create a bunch of hate, not the fact that Charlie wasn’t a good guy, but in many eyes it was people preaching him rather than preaching Christ, and that’s where my mind went. We are not going to ever completely agree on religion, we are not going to completely agree on politics, but there is one way we can preach peace and for me that’s Jesus Christ. Knowing that there is a plan and that everything is a part of it, there is nothing that happens, in my opinion, that God doesn’t know or think about. That is where I felt peace. So it started from unfollowing politicians, it started from getting myself out of the political aspects and getting myself into focusing on my church leaders, focusing on my religious beliefs, being in the Bible, I’m a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints so being in The Book of Mormon, finding myself in those situations, and knowing that this has been a part of the past for many years whether it’s been in our country or ancient Egypt. The political assassinations come, but there is one thing that brought everyone together and that was religion. I just see that there was one thing to be preached but it wasn’t.”

    “Mind if I quote scripture? Alma, a book in the Book of Mormon, it’s after a bunch of war and chaos has erupted in the civilization and political climate, the one thing that sticks out to me is it said that people can be hardened by the hard experience they have, or they can be softened by the hard experiences they have, and when they talk about that they talk about it being softened with the light of Christ. And I think that is where we are at in our political climate. I think people are either being softened or being hardened. And a lot more people are choosing to be hardened. To stick to saying this is all bad. Our culture and where we are as a society isn’t great, but it isn’t going to be changed by politics. It’s going to be changed by God. It’s going to be changed by talking about Christ. Talking about who brings you joy, whether you be Muslim, whether you be Christian, whether you be atheist. What brings you joy is going to be what gets us back on the right path.”

    “I feel like if we talk, and if we are okay with being proven wrong, if we are okay with losing an argument, it’s better to lose an argument than lose a friend… I’d rather lose an argument than lose a brother.”

    “We need to preach peace, not that the stuff on the other side of the aisle is garbage.”


  •  Grace had just walked down to the courtyard when the gunshot rang out. After a brief moment of hesitation, everyone started running. Grace ran back to the classroom where she had just been in class, telling people on her way what had happened. She told her classmates, and together they took shelter in a photo lab.

    “Part of the reason I was frustrated was that some people knew immediately, but everybody else was in the dark, not getting a text from the school about it until twenty minutes later. So the fact that there was an active shooter on campus for 20 minutes is what is concerning. I’m not mad at UVU for what happened, I don’t blame them, because obviously he was a very big political figure. I'm sure he and his team and the campus came to an agreement about what was safe, but it is the lack of preparedness. You want to feel safe when you’re at school, and the lack of preparedness in an emergency is what is hard.”

    “I know a lot of people who don’t feel safe, people who have dropped out for the semester and don’t know if they’re coming back… it shouldn’t be about if you like him or not, it should just be about school. It just all makes me sad that people don’t feel safe and that someone did something that caused that at our school.”


“We can grieve together but we can come together.”

  •  Sarah was in a music class when a student came in and started whispering to the professor. At first she assumed someone in the hallway needed help, but then the professor had the student tell the class that shots had been fired on campus. The professor told everyone it would be best to leave campus as soon as possible. She and some classmates went to an ice cream place because they didn’t know where to go.

    “When I got to the train station(afterwards)it was packed. It is usually busy, but every seat on the train was full of students. It was interesting because people around us were talking about how they were there when it happened, and I felt bad, there was this little boy who was about twelve or so sitting next to me, and he is hearing everyone talking and whispering, and he asked me ‘did something happen at UVU? Because the train is really full today.’ I didn’t want to lie to this kid but I didn’t want to freak him out, so I told him that there was a shooting and one person was shot, and everyone is safe as far as we know, hopefully he’ll be okay. He asked ‘was it that Charlie Kirk guy? I know a lot of people don’t like him.’ I feel like my mom instinct kicked in a little bit, I want to make sure this kid is okay. It’s hard when something like that happens not even to young people, but around young people, it’s scary because they don’t deserve to grow up in that world.”

    “I definitely held my baby a little closer to me.”

    “And it’s not that I loved Charlie Kirk, I think based off what I found out after the fact, I was like yeah he said some nasty things that I’m having a hard time imagining an appropriate context for, but that doesn’t mean that someone deserves to die because they are saying their opinion.”

    “I was trying not to stay on anything serious for too long, because there were people calling him a modern day prophet or that he was the worst person ever and he deserved it, and it was just insane.”

    “When an event like this happens it’s not just about who it happened to, who the direct target was, because it happened to all of us, and it’s okay to grieve for our campus. I think being mindful of that is important.”

    “It’s such a testament to our resilience in a way, that even though there are people who are feeling uncertain and unsafe, I do appreciate what the university has done to be mindful of us. I have always felt UVU has been really good about trying to include everyone and really caring about their students, and that has been my experience being a nontraditional student, and my graduation was delayed because I gave birth in the middle, things like that. But they have worked hard to make sure that we are taken care of, and I think that there has been a spirit of people taking care of each other more on campus, whether it’s by official means or unofficial channels.”

    “We can grieve together but we can come together.”


  •  Katelyn was working a booth at a resource fair in the Hall of Flags on September 10th, right above and behind the UVU courtyard. She remembers that everyone felt on edge even before the event started; many people walking around were not UVU students—adults and children mingling in the space. At one point they saw people start to run. Katelyn joined efforts to evacuate and warn others, going into classrooms to tell people to leave. The professors she encountered didn’t know what was happening either, but they offered shelter.

    “I’m frustrated that my entire campus is becoming a memorial for someone that doesn’t align with our university’s values. It’s becoming more like tourism than a space of learning and a safe space for our community. It’s unsettling and frustrating. I’m aware of a lot of unenrollment, I almost un-enrolled.”

    “Nobody really expects violence to happen where you are and where you spend your days and time and money, and you make your friends and all your experiences, and there is always that before and after in a lot of traumatic events, and this was definitely a collective traumatic event for the university and students. But there is a lot of rebuilding that needs to be done. It doesn’t seem like there are a lot of steps being taken to either include the students’ voices in it, or to actually engage the students in that rebuilding.”

    “(Referring to the university)We are not actually addressing the students’ concerns, we are kind of just saying okay we took a week off, time to get back to it! Saying that you’ve had your break and it’s time to move forward is not the energy they were pushing for, but it’s some of what the professors were pushing at us, not necessarily the university. It’s a lot of wanting to rush past it, which is understandable, no one wants to dwell on it, but I don’t think we have done anything to make the community safe again.”

    “I would like to see more unified efforts. I know there were flowers being passed out on campus and that was a great thing that was happening, and that was a student-organized movement which was amazing, but I think that we need to be doing similar things to that on a university scale, actually engaging with students and showing them how much we care about them rather than the optics of the situation, because that is how it is coming off. More long-term resources being out in the open. The initial response was great, but it needed to be continued, louder, spread, and more well communicated and offered for a longer period of time rather than just right then. The aftershocks of widespread community trauma can’t just have a bandaid put on it. It’s a long-term effort to rebuild and rehabilitate. There are independent efforts. If we did more of these efforts, everyone was getting involved, everyone was communicating, we had an actual conglomeration rather than having to go hunting for it.”


  •  Sara had just left campus to go to a coffee shop. While she was there, listening to an online class, the professor interrupted to say that students were reporting something happening on campus. Earlier in the year, Sara had been at a protest in Salt Lake City where gun violence occurred, so this was very triggering. She tried to contact as many people as she knew on campus as possible to make sure they were okay.

    “Just that day I was already gaslighting myself, like you weren’t even there. Why are you feeling this way?”

    “It has become so blatantly clear how social media really affects our perspective on a situation because I actually didn’t really know who he (Charlie Kirk) was before. I knew that people didn’t like him and that they were mad that he was coming and once I saw his face, oh he’s that guy.”

    “...I was seeing the stuff that he was saying about all the really racist and hateful rhetoric and being like, okay so he was a trash human, he was not a good guy, but then there's the other side of the fence that’s like he was such a good Christian man and he was the nicest man I've ever met, never hated anybody, and I actually saw a post about this; she was saying ‘I was having a discussion with my friend and she had that belief(that he was a good Christian man) and I was on the other side of like no he was a terrible person, and so we both were showing each other videos that neither one of us had ever seen.’ And so she's like ‘I can see how what she was seeing would frame him as this wholesome Christian family man who loves everybody because she wasn't seeing any of the stuff that I was seeing’. Anyway, so that's been hard because I've had some family members take that stance of like he just wanted to debate people, there's no reason he should have died for that.”

    “I personally have been so angry. I’m really mad. Partly because why has this garnered such an insane reaction on the political side of things because obviously no one should lose their life, but he was just a guy. He was just a podcaster. He wasn’t a politician, he wasn’t anybody… so I’m just angry at how people have responded to this.”

    “It’s been hard for me, I actually had to go on a different road to campus because I couldn’t stand to see all the stuff out front of the school, it just fired me up in such a way I want to go take it all down. I didn’t even know there was a memorial in the courtyard. I just saw that the other day cause I’ve been trying to avoid the area for the most part, but that giant American flag, it all just makes me so mad. We just want to feel safe and be able to finish our education. The school has turned into an absolute circus. And I’ve had a really hard time getting back into it.”

    “Before this I was busy, but I felt like I was doing a good job at staying on top of my schoolwork and balancing my time, but then after that I feel like I’ve been moving through sludge. It’s been near impossible to get myself to get up and to do my homework and to go to class, to do anything. I don’t want to do anything. And I don’t know if I am going to get that motivation back this semester, and that really sucks, cause I was feeling really good.”

    “We kind of feel like this is going to start a whole new other thing and UVU is ground zero. That’s our home. That’s supposed to be our safe space. And it’s not anymore. Because of my job I work closely with a lot of faculty, and hearing their responses and their feelings and how the university has been handling it has been kind of rough as well.”

    “I didn’t want to talk about it, I just wanted to move on, but bringing it up with my classmates has been helpful. Initially when people were asking me about it I just felt, could we just not? I don’t want to keep rehashing the thing over and over again, but now I am finding it a little nicer to talk to people and realize that other people are feeling the same way.”


  •  Amy had gone to class that day. When a classmate needed a ride, she left campus to drive him where he needed to go. On the way to her car she felt a vague uneasiness she couldn’t quite place, and it didn’t ease until she was away from campus. After dropping off her friend, she stopped by a café, opened her laptop, and saw an email from a news outlet that said, “shots fired at UVU.”

    “I had a hard time marrying the fact that I was there with the headline I was reading. It didn’t really feel real for a few hours. I followed all the news, like we all did, and I heard that he didn’t make it. And we saw the fallout and discourse over the next few days, but it didn’t feel like a real event that happened for a solid twenty-four hours. The main feeling I had was that my bubble of safety here in Utah County had been encroached on by all the divisiveness. Through Covid we all felt so shielded.”

    “It was kind of a wake up call, for me and a lot of us, that we have let the political division go too far and we haven't done a good enough job at reaching across party lines and trying to understand each other. Just to see something so intense and jarring so close to home made that political division really touch my life in a really scary way. So I think very personally it has helped me have more tolerance and empathy for beliefs that I might not resonate with, and helps me want to do a better job at being empathetic and assuming the best. And trying to find more common ground than choosing to be divisive or make assumptions.”


  •  Steel didn’t know Charlie Kirk would be on campus until the day of the event. He decided to go, because it’s not every day he gets to see such a public figure in his own community in Utah. He stood on the outskirts of the crowd, and he had only been there a few moments before he heard the gunshot—then the screams. He said he witnessed the feeling of safety shatter in the crowds faces the moment they heard that echo through the atmosphere. 

    “It shouldn’t matter which side you choose to land on, right, left, up, down. It shouldn’t matter. We take a lot of things for granted in this country, one of them being that we can speak our minds. A lot of people would argue that is what makes where we live such a blessed and privileged place, because we do have the freedom to speak our mind. And it’s so important for a multitude of reasons, one of those reasons being able to have open and safe dialogue because that is how we’re able to connect, it’s through our words. It’s how we are able to explore our ideas, flush them out. To learn more about the story of the person sitting across from me and an opportunity to share mine. Regardless of whatever walk of life we come from. It’s the incredible ability to build bridges. For the fact that he was shot and killed for exercising that right on a university campus, which encourages the expounding of knowledge, the growing of minds, and of character, it could not have been a bigger sign of an ultimate shutdown of that idea. Because that is not what anybody has been thinking, especially that day, and I would even argue afterward, that I’m not safe to speak my mind. No one is really, and that is dangerous. If history has proven anything, it’s that when people are afraid to speak freely, horrible unspeakable things happen. Horrific. And again, I can’t emphasize it enough with it happening at a university with so many young impressionable minds, what’s the biggest walk away from that situation? People are already scared enough to speak their mind already, to stand up for whatever their truth may be, this did nothing but drastically hurt that. In a very significant way. Again, no matter where you decide to plant your flag in anything, nobody should be killed for speaking freely. Nobody.”

    “How is society ever going to progress if no one can talk about anything? Or only allowed to talk about specific things that certain people or institutions deem as acceptable to talk about. Censoring and controlling freedom of speech, again, pick any history book up ever and see the atrocities that come after the restriction of such things. But with that being said, on the other side of the coin, it’s also lit a really big fire under a lot of people that have taken this mindset of refusing to roll over, where now more than ever people are turning to seek divine guidance, flooding to church buildings, flooding to seek more comfort outside of themselves because it is something so much bigger than them, bigger than all of us. History will show us there are the ones that take the role of oppressor, and those that take the role of standing up in such oppressive acts. So it has been interesting to see what directions people have decided to go in.”

    “I think we all need to bury our weapons of war, and leave them buried. And understand that we are all people. We are all people living here on this earth just trying to figure things out. Trying to find meaning in our lives, so that when our time eventually will come, we can look back and say I did my best, and lived a meaningful life. I think that’s what we all want deep down, regardless of if we know that or not, one day we will. We should be promoting the landscape for that to be the case as much as possible, cause what else really matters?”

    “I think everyone knows how important it is. I understand that some of the things he might've said may have been really offensive to some people– I get it. I understand. But the bottom line is in order to think, you must run the risk of being offensive to somebody. Cause not everyone is going to agree with what you have to say. There will be some people that will take offense to what you say. So does that mean we stop thinking altogether? It is just part of the package deal. There are plenty of things people have said that have personally offended me, but never once have I thought that merited the ending of their lives, no, because they are exercising their right, they have the right to say that, no matter how it affects me.”

    “He handed people a microphone, and he caught a bullet for that.”