University where Charlie Kirk was shot confronts unwanted infamy
Orem, Utah – It took two decades at the University of Utah Valley to evolve from a small community college in the largest school in the state, boasting of having one of the country’s surest campuses.
It only took a few seconds for this image to be broken by the assassination of right -wing activist Charlie Kirk.
The sprawling campus of nearly 50,000 students under the Wasatch mountains will be attached forever to the events of September 10, when a ball killed the founder of Turnure Point USA while he was talking to a large crowd in an outdoor amphitheater in the middle of the campus.
The University – largely unknown outside the Utah so far – has been set under an undesirable national projector during the search for the Kirk killer. Students and teachers have returned in progress this week still in shock of sorrow, fear and anxiety, and confront a thorny question: how do they deal with the sudden infamy of UVU?
“It put university on the map and gave it more attention than ever,” said Timothy Calkins, branding expert, professor at the Northwestern University. “They certainly didn’t want this situation. But they have to find a way to come back.”
University leaders say they are concentrated at the moment on the safety of students and their community, but they are already starting to think about how to reshape the broken identity of the school.
Kyle Reyes, one of the vice-presidents of the University of Utah Valley, said that he hoped that the school could be a model of healing and adoption of difficult dialogue.
“We know that the eyes are on us and we are not going to avoid demonstrating our resilience collectively on this subject,” said Reyes.
The school has only had minimal violence for years, according to data collected by the American Department of Education. The most recent UVU report for its main campus in Orem, covering the 2021-2023, has shown that the police have investigated or received reports on four allegations of aggravated assault, 13 allegations of rape, a fire fire fire and no case of murderous murder or manslaughter. The murder of Kirk was the first murder on the campus of which the administrators know, said the spokesperson of the University Ellen Treanor.
University officials cite this data to support the assertion that it is “one of the country’s safest colleges”.
UVU also boasts of its strong ties with the Church of Jesus Christ of the Holy Days, as the world’s largest education institute for young Mormons. His mascot is Wolverine. “Like Wolverines, UVU students are determined, ambitious and intrepid,” said the University’s website.
Student Marjorie Holt, 18, who studies elementary education in UVU, was late at the Kirk rally and arrived a few minutes before he was shot. She ran with others to shelter inside a neighboring building overnight.
Since then, Holt has taken leave of work and returned home to spend a night with his family in Salt Lake City. She said she had the impression that the university failed Kirk and her family by not ensuring better security. She is worried about going to lessons in a building near the crime scene.
However, as Kirk’s shooting deepens the political divisions of the nation, Holt thinks that the shared trauma has compared UVU.
“We are all people who, you know, loved it or hated it,” she said about Kirk. “We all get together, no matter how we believe it, and I have the impression that it brought our school closer to that ever.”
When the students returned on Wednesday, they said that the courses were quieter than usual. Matthew Caldwell, 24, said that in the history class, “he felt like the professor included more beliefs and that it was in the end to share these beliefs.”
The president of the student body, Kyle Cullimore, urged his classmates during a Friday vigil to stop putting labels and to see himself as human so that UVU can be a “place where the disagreement does not erase our dignity”.
Other schools that have become synonymous with fire offer different models to tackle the fallout.
The 1999 High School Columbine massacre inaugurated safety and training increased for shooters in the United States schools on the same day, Kirk was killed, these protocols were put to the test in a shooting at the Evergreen high school in Colorado when two students were injured and the shooter followed his life. It is the same school district as Columbine, and managers have credited years of preparation and training to avoid more victims.
After Virginia Tech University shooting in 2007, the Sandy Hook primary school in Connecticut in 2012 and the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida in 2019, victims and family members channeled their grief in activism for the control of firearms.
In Uvalde, Texas, the officials voted to demolish the Robb primary school after a mass shooting that killed 19 students and two teachers.
At Kent’s State University, where soldiers from the National Guard killed four students and injured eight others during a Vietnam War demonstration in 1970, Professor Johanna Solomon said that the school had since supported his role of place to freely express ideas.
There were difficulties along the way. From 1986, Ohio School began to change athletics uniforms, header paper and signaling to highlight “Kent” and put “state university” in small letters below, trying to distance itself from the shooting. The change was abandoned in 2000, said Karen Cunningham, professor at the School of Peace and Conflicts of the Kent State which was established in response to the 1970s.
“I am very proud of their decision to achieve as an university that he does not escape or does not forget what happened,” said Solomon. “The leaders have a really brutal choice after things like this happened, and one is to look into the division and the other side is to humanize people, to bring people together.”
While UVU students ventured last week, the Republican Governor of Utah Spencer Cox met a small group on campus. “It was difficult, on the right, for all of us,” he said. The world knows only one thing about UVU now, he said-and he wants everyone to know the rest of the story.
“This place is incredible and it is incredible because of the students who are here, incredible teachers,” said Cox. “The world desperately needs change, but they will not find it politicians. It must come from you.”
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Brown reported Billings, Mont.
