Though Marquette’s campus is a thousand miles away from Sutherland Springs, TX, the effects of the shooting that killed 26 people are being felt around the nation.
The Texas church shooting tragedy outside of San Antonio has deeply affected some students, regardless of which Texas city they come from.
An estimate of 56 current undergraduate Marquette students originate from Texas, according to the First-Year Student Profile Interactive Report for all four current classes currently enrolled.
Aidan Miano, a freshman in the College of Business Administration and a Dallas native, said he had been through Sutherland Springs, where the shooting happened, and New Braunfels, the hometown of shooter Devin Kelley.
While Miano and his family live nearly five hours away from the area, he kept up to date with the news. Miano said he eared for his family’s safety because he was unclear on the exact location when the news first broke. He knew they would have been at church at the same time as the shooting. His own parents told him to be careful while attending mass in Milwaukee.
“Glancing at it from the highway, (Sutherland Springs) looks like any other small town,” Miano. “(It’s) just a great community. It’s like nothing bad could ever happen here. But then the unthinkable happens.”
He adds; his sense of Texan pride makes it hard for him to be far away from home during the aftermath of the shooting. He said that he wishes he had the power or resources to do something about the situation.
While Texas is the second largest state in the country, it has its own community through which everyone feels connected, especially in hard times such as this shooting, Miano said.
“It affects your community, so you definitely feel the ripples,” Miano said. “It almost brought me to tears.”
Brendan Patnode, also a freshman in the College of Business Administration and Dallas native, said he has friends that attend schools near San Antonio and Sutherland Springs.
Patnode said the geographical proximity of the shooting scared him, and that while he was concerned, he was overall also not emotionally affected due to the rising regularity of mass shootings in the United States.
“This is unfortunately becoming such a regular occurrence,” Patnode said. “It’s just another one, not necessarily a special one.”
Patnode said he believes many people are not giving victims and their families the right kind of support. Instead of calling for political change, he thinks people should take a step back and give families time and space to cope.
Timing is paramount for shooting issues like this, Patnode said. Calls for political action should not be immediate, so that victims’ families have the chance to cope.
“One of the arguments coming out of this is politicians and media saying we need to stop saying thoughts and prayers, and for me, that’s not something that needs to be said right now,” Patnode said. “They’re viewing it as a political type of thoughts and prayers, and that’s not what (prayers) are for. They’re for the mental states of the people.”
