Michigan State President Woodruff: 'Our Spartan hearts are broken'
East Lansing, Mich. – Michigan State University interim president Teresa Woodruff delivered an emotional address Tuesday morning at an on-campus press conference in the wake of Monday’s fatal campus shootings.
Woodruff’s voice trembled as she addressed state-wide and national media about the shootings which left three Michigan State students dead and five other Michigan State students in critical condition.
“Our Spartan hearts are broken,” said Woodruff, who wore a Spartan green cardigan at the press conference. “We’re grieving as a community. We’re grieving together.
“We struggle to comprehend. We lost families, friends, classmates and our hearts go out to the victims and families of this senseless tragedy and we offer to each of them the peace of passive understanding.”
Michigan State University is operating under modified operations/services on Tuesday and Wednesday of this week. Michigan State will resume normal operations on Thursday.
All campus activities including athletics, classes (in person and remote), and all campus-related activities are suspended. Functions designated as essential under a department’s Business Continuity Plan (BCP) will continue and critical employees with essential functions are reporting to work.
“I want to thank the staff who are on campus today,” Woodruff said. “Michigan State is on modified operations, which means we are on essential personnel only for today and tomorrow, and those staff who are here to support our 17,000 students who are on campus and our 50,000 students across this great university, we thank you.”
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On Tuesday, with permission from their families, Michigan State released the names of three students who suffered fatal injuries on Monday:
- Brian Fraser, Sophomore, Grosse Pointe.
- Alexandria Verner, Junior, Clawson.
- Arielle Anderson, Junior, Grosse Pointe.
Five other Michigan State students remain hospitalized with life-threatening injuries.
“We continue to thank for our medical professionals at Sparrow Hospital and we know that they are taking the best care possible of our students,” Woodruff said. “To our students, we have available to you the support that you need at the Hannah Community Center. This includes counseling and pyschological services as well as employee assistance programs for our faculty and staff.
“As a university, we also thank our law enforcement colleagues, here and in multiple jurisdictions who responded immediately and continued to protect our community today and each day.
“I also thank, directly, our students, faculty and staff who complied with requests to shelter in place for hours on end without knowing exactly what was happening. We thank you for your courage to maintain that shelter which allowed our law enforcement to take the actions that they did.
“We ask each of you to honor your feelings and to take care of yourself and each other and together we will come back more resilient than ever and more ready to face what is needed in this society, which is the courage to all of us to ensure that this never happens again.”
