Classes reflect on Chapel Hill shooting

At Wednesday night’s vigil, family members of Deah Shaddy Barakat urged community members to “move on with dignity.”

And today, classes will resume at the School of Dentistry, where Barakat was a second-year dental student.

Classes were cancelled Wednesday for all graduate students in the School of Dentistry. On Thursday, classes for first- and second-year students were cancelled, and third- and fourth-years were allowed to take the day off as their schedules permitted.

Across campus, faculty and students are struggling to get back into a routine. Some professors have pushed back assignments or spent class time discussing the homicides. Others feel the issue is too sensitive to discuss with students for now.

Victoria Ekstrand, assistant professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, gave her media law students the option to postpone their test on Thursday if they were not feeling up to it.

The test was on the limitations of free speech, including hate speech. Ekstrand said some students felt it was fitting to study the material given Tuesday’s homicides.

Other students requested time to mourn.

“I was going to do a case-by-case evaluation of who needed an extension, but some students wanted to take the exam as an academic response to a horrific act,” Ekstrand said. “It takes time for people to know where they are in their grief.”

Only eight of Ekstrand’s 90 students requested to postpone the test.

Nina Martin, associate professor of geography, said she did not know how to approach the subject with her students.

Martin said she planned to bring the issue up in her urban geography course, but that she would give students time to process the homicides before it became a class topic.

Martin, who studies city planning, said parking issues have always been contentious in her line of work.

“People really do fight about parking,” Martin said. “I always say this to my classes, and then something vicious like this happens to prove it. I’ve never seen anything this extreme, though.”

Shaena Mallett, a lecturer in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, changed her lesson plan for Thursday to teach students about sensitivity in reporting.

Her class discussed the need to give people space and time in sensitive situations like the vigil held on Wednesday night for the three victims.

Mallett said people are like icebergs in that you can only know 10 percent of them by looking at the surface. The other 90 percent lies below the surface — and that is the level where she wants her students to get to know their sources.

Mallett said she wanted to create a space to honor the victims and inspire conversations about storytelling.

“Honestly, I thought it was a conversation that needed to happen in all of my classes, whether or not it was deemed relevant to the subject; it’s relevant to life, and that’s what we’re supposed to be preparing for here,” said Lucero Sifuentes, a student in Mallett’s class.

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