20 CHARLOTTEMAGAZINE.COM // JUNE 2019
puter again. Half-eaten boxes of Papa John’s and Domino’s
cover a table in the middle of the oce. They’re gis from other
newspapers—the University of North Florida’s student paper,
Spinnaker, provided lunch, and The Charlotte Observer sent
dinner.
Mather tweets a “thank you” to both publications and gets
back to work. In his oce, Kopp talks to two former Niner Times
editors. Sands inserts earbuds and transcribes an earlier press
conference.
Mather pulls out another bag of supplies from his bookbag
and addresses the room: “I also have anti-diarrhea medicine if
that pizza gets to you.”
FOR STUDENTS TODAY, the question is not if they’ll have
to endure a campus shooting but when. In spring 1999, two
teenaged gunmen killed 13 people at Columbine High School
in Littleton, Colorado. At the time, it was the deadliest school
shooting in American history. The record, in just 20 years, has
been topped three times: Virginia Tech in 2007, Sandy Hook in
2012, and Parkland in 2018.
Sands, a graduating senior at UNC Charlotte, was three when
Columbine happened. College students today were in elemen-
tary school when 33 were killed at Virginia Tech. Most have
never known a time when school shootings weren’t a threat.
“You wouldn’t expect it to happen,” Sands tells me two days
later. “But you’re also not surprised when it does happen.”
In recent years, students have used the hashtags
#GenerationLockdown and #LockdownGeneration on social
media, and UNCC students echoed them in the days aer their
shootings. Students understand that their generation faces
unprecedented danger, the genuine and constant threat of the
worst. So when the worst happens, students don’t have to stop
to think about what to do. They just do.
Kopp was walking home when he saw students running out
of Atkins Library yelling, “Shooter!” He ran the other way, got
into a fellow student’s car, and ended up at a nearby Target.
Chris Crews, a photographer, took a couple of pictures outside
the library, where dozens of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police cars
congregated.
Elissa Miller, the paper’s arts and entertainment editor, was
o¤ campus and headed to the now-closed O’Charley’s on
University City Boulevard for a press brie¥ng. “Everyone else
was stuck on campus, for the most part, and couldn’t leave ...,”
Miller told me Tuesday night. “I’d never reported on anything
like that before ... (I felt like) I did not know what I was doing.
“I just needed to be doing something.”
LATE THE NEXT AFTERNOON, about an hour before a memo-
rial vigil at Halton Arena, Kopp and Dobrzenski gather the
editorial team to discuss coverage plans. Everyone wears
green. A couple of reporters snack on leover, room-temper-
ature pizza.
“Can people be allowed to be anonymous?” It’s against their
normal guidelines, Kopp says, but in this case, he’d consider it.
“But we shouldn’t o¤er that,” Sands adds. Everyone in the room
agrees, and Dobrzenski scribbles a note on the whiteboard.
“Should we approach students for comments at the vigil?”
No, the team decides, but we should listen if they want to share.
Mather suggests they hold signs, and he starts to scrawl the let- EMMA WAY is editor of this magazine.
THE BUZZ
The UNC Charlotte Niner Times editorial staff stands in their office
on campus. (Left to right, front row): Beth McGuire, Pooja Pasupula,
Madison Dobrzenski, Nikolai Mather, Elissa Miller, Chris Crews. (Middle
row): Alexandria Sands, Jeffrey Kopp, Drue Hammonds; (Back row):
Darnell Lynch, Noah Howell.EMMA WAYters in Sharpie on white posterboard: “If you want to share your
experience, ¥nd us @NinerTimes.”
Thousands of students, alumni, parents, and friends of the
college pack Halton Arena, where, Dubois has assured everyone
during a news conference earlier in the aernoon, commence-
ment ceremonies on May 10 and 11 will go on as planned. The
crowd ¥les in through doorways where volunteers o¤er tissues,
and Sands takes pictures of students who accept. There aren’t
enough seats for everyone.
Dubois holds back tears as he speaks. “We can’t bring them
back,” he says. “But with your help, we will ¥nd a way to remem-
ber their presence as 49ers.”
As thousands of people exit the arena, heading outside to a
candlelight vigil, a chant grows louder and louder.
“For-ty! Nin-ers!”
“For-ty! Nin-ers!”THE NEXT DAY, May 2, the Niner Times sta¤ announces an
extra print issue. It’s been two days since they ¥nished what
they thought would be their last issue of the semester, since
they thought they could celebrate, relax, and, for many of them,
prepare for graduation.
It’s been two days since everything changed.
As of press time, Drew Pescaro, the sportswriter who was
shot, was still hospitalized but expected to recover, as were
the other three—Sean DeHart, Rami Alramadhan, and Emily
Houpt. Mather, Sands, Crews, Kopp, Dobrzenski, Miller, and
many other Niner Times sta¤ members hadn’t stopped working.
They planned to send the extra issue to the printer Sunday and
have copies delivered to campus on Tuesday, exactly one week
aer the shooting. It’d have only news and opinion stories and
eight color pages instead of the usual two.
They decided to call it the “Charlotte Strong” issue.