MOSCOW, Idaho — University of Idaho students sensed renewal of the everyday campus experience Wednesday with the start of spring classes, enjoying overdue greetings, embraces and conversations with classmates almost two months after the North Idaho community became the talk of the nation.
Heavy foot traffic returned to the state’s namesake university for the first time since November, when the stabbing deaths of four U of I undergraduates at an off-campus home upended the 9,300-person student body’s usual movements. Many attendees were back shuttling between academic buildings, traversing the morning’s slick pathways, for the first time since Thanksgiving break, after some chose to finish the fall semester from home in the wake of the killings.
Several students said the arrest of a suspect — Bryan Kohberger, a Washington State University Ph.D. student living just over the state line in Pullman — put their minds at ease ahead of the new semester. Kohberger, 28, is charged with four counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of seniors Madison Mogen, 21, and Kaylee Goncalves, 21; junior Xana Kerndole, 20; and freshman Ethan Chapin, 20.
