DETROIT — When Oxford High School alumna Maya Clemens first heard that there was an active shooter Monday night on Michigan State University's campus, she was in shock.
Hearing the sirens outside her dorm, the 18-year-old freshman didn’t think it was actually happening to her. Again. It was the second school shooting Clemens has survived in roughly 15 months.
“It's kind of a blur. … I didn’t want to leave just because of all the misinformation I was getting. I was just really scared to do anything," she said. “Being in two shootings, I have a lot of experience with it now."
Some survivors and their families were just beginning to move on from the shooting at Oxford High School in November 2021 where a 15-year-old gunman took the lives of four classmates and injured seven others.
Now, that trauma has resurfaced after police said a 43-year-old Lansing man came to MSU's campus and opened fire Monday night, killing three students and wounding five more. And though it's reopened wounds and emotions, some say they're angrier this time and committed to using their voices, especially when it comes to addressing gun violence.
Jennifer Clemens, Maya's mom and a second-grade teacher at an Oxford elementary school, never thought her daughter would have to experience another school shooting when she left for college. She was excited for Maya to go to MSU because it was really difficult for her to go back to Oxford High School last year.
“She just wanted to move forward. … She was so excited,” Jennifer said. “And she was so confident that it was the best thing for her to do that it made me feel good. And all of this time, ever since she's been at Michigan State she's loved it. … Now I don’t know how it’s going to go.”
Two of Oxford parent Patrick Damer's children have now experienced school shootings at different academic institutions less than two years and 100 miles apart. He feels "incredibly blessed" that his children have survived both shootings.
"It's a nightmare," he said. "The parents that have to bury their children — it's their worst nightmare. I can't even imagine."
Damer's 17-year-old daughter, Sophia, is an Oxford High School senior and had been looking forward to closing out her high school experience nearly 15 months after Michigan's deadliest school shooting to date, he said. But when her sister Bella, a junior at MSU, came home Tuesday morning, it was a setback for the whole family.
"It put her back ... into what she went through 15 months ago so, she knows exactly the path that her older sister is now on having experienced it firsthand herself," Damer said. "I picked up Bella from Michigan State (Tuesday morning), and I know she was so relieved to see her walk through that front door."
It 'brought everything back'
On Nov. 30, 2021, Maya was “pretty close” to the vicinity of the shooting at Oxford High School, her mom said. She ran out of the school and FaceTimed her minutes after it happened.
So when Jennifer started receiving texts about an active shooter at MSU from her daughter around 8:30 p.m. Monday, it “brought everything back," she said.
"We've been through this before and I didn't know what was going to happen, but I just knew that I needed to be close," Jennifer said.
She immediately drove to East Lansing and thought the shooter would be caught by the time she got there but he wasn't found by police until after midnight on Tuesday. Maya spent two "terrifying" hours barricaded in her dorm before joining her mom after it was cleared by law enforcement.
“At Oxford it was more like, get out right now, just quick, in an instant fight or flight,” Maya said. “(MSU) was more just like, the anticipation of what’s going to happen next and when’s this going to be over.”
Experiencing another school shooting so soon is, “just not something that’s supposed to happen,” Jennifer said.
The Clemens family has been processing and recovering from the Oxford shooting every day for the last 15 months.
“I struggled a lot after (Oxford) with like, motivation and being able to focus and do things like I could before,” Maya said. “I definitely was doing a lot better in school and everything. I don’t want to say that it’s a setback but it’s kind of like a new challenge that I have to figure out.”
Two-time survivors
Experiencing trauma affects the brain and can make people more vulnerable to new trauma and negative symptoms, said Bill Sanders, an MSU Medical School alumnus and chief medical officer of Pine Rest Mental Health Services in Grand Rapids. The center has been assisting MSU in the shooting's aftermath by providing extra crisis counseling sessions to the university community.
For people experiencing their second school shooting, the reactions may be different than the first time, Sanders said.
"When somebody experiences a significant trauma and they work through that and then they experience another one, it can reignite thoughts, feelings and almost take people back to that place," Sanders said.
Some two-time survivors might be more prone to being re-traumatized while others may see the experience as a calling and want to help others, Sanders said.
As a parent, Jennifer felt a lot of anger and hopelessness that she couldn’t ensure her child’s safety after Oxford. Anxiety and hyper-vigilance were also common in the aftermath and Monday’s shooting has brought some of these feelings back, she said. Since then, memories of Oxford have started coming back more and more.
“I'm asking myself, ‘Is this for real? Am I in a dream? Like, how can this possibly be happening again? It just can't,’” Jennifer said. “I couldn't get past that it was actually happening for a second time.”
Having also gone through a school shooting as a parent twice, Damer feels for all those experiencing it for the first time. He's been trying to help other parents navigate it and said recovery will be a marathon, not a sprint.
"The [Oxford] shooting tore through my naive thought that I could really protect my kids and keep them safe at all times... and that's a horrific feeling," he said.
Jennifer has been asking herself how her family will move forward all week but still isn’t sure of the answer. Right now she is prioritizing Maya's well-being and handling the return to school on Monday.
“We're supposed to take care of our kids. They're supposed to have a great time in college and now, how can we say ‘you're going to be OK, go have a great time,’ because nobody believes it anymore,” Jennifer said. “And I don't know how to change that.”
As a teacher for 23 years, she said safety in the classroom has always been a priority, even before the shooting in her district. She has also been trying to help other MSU parents who have never been through a school shooting.
“I think it's really important that we stick together and we talk about it and that these parents understand that whatever emotion they're feeling is — I hate to say normal — but is what I went through, is what I know that my friends went through,” Jennifer said.
Anger in the aftermath
After surviving two shootings, Maya wants to use her voice to make a change. She has been doing a lot of research on where to start.
“After the one in high school, I was mainly focused on my own healing and getting back to normal, but this time I'm definitely… more angry this time and ready to do something about it,” Maya said. “Now I definitely feel like this is my decision and people need to hear what I have to say.”
She is not the only one. Damer also said that this time is different. When the Oxford shooting happened he, "was filled with tremendous grief and sadness," but now he is angrier.
"I'm feeling more anger ― anger that this continues to happen, anger that this continues to happen to my family and anger at myself for not doing more to try and solve the plague of gun violence in our country," Damer said. "I'm not going to make that same mistake twice."
MSU was his daughter's happy place and it will be forever tainted after Monday's shooting. Damer said there are a lot of people who believe a "common sense" approach could reduce "the overwhelming amount of gun violence in this country," such as safe storage and putting limits on allowing those with mental health issues to get weapons.
"We're better than this and... I'm tired of the inaction," Damer said. "You go through it once and then not even a year and a half later we're going back through this and nothing in our state has changed."
———
