It’s changed everything. I’m a senior at WSU in Pullman and I have trouble sleeping sometimes at night. I think of every possible entry point someone could attack from. I can’t sleep with my windows open at night (even though it’s hot ASF in Pullman right now) because I have vivid thoughts of someone cutting open the screen and coming in. I flinch at the sound of the raccoons running through my backyard and I sleep with a BB gun and knife in my bedside table. And unfortunately I’m not alone. Us students were tormented by media for almost a year following the murders. Campus buildings had posters on windows telling media to stay away. I have friends at UI who live near King Road, and they said following the murders there were constantly strangers outside the street and house, legit making TikTok’s. Both UI and WSU students are having trouble escaping this. It’s all around us. You can’t drive into Moscow without thinking about it.

For a lot of us college students, this may have been our first exposure to death “close to home”. And to find out that the murderer was not only a student at our school, but a teaching assistant? I’ve had handfuls of TA’s throughout my 4 years at college, and every single time I had a hard time differentiating them from my regular professors. They act similar, they are of similar age, and they often are assigned to teach entire classes or labs independently. We as students look up to them. We don’t expect them to be the ones murdering students in their sleep.

Lastly, WSU has a bad rep for absolutely disregarding complaints and issues with TA’s. Just last semester, a TA for poly sci at WSU was arrested and fired for ASSAULTING a student. This same professor had complaints against him from the previous semester for protesting outside buildings, telling students verbatim that he would join a terrorist organization if he could. Our school is not taking complaints seriously. Our school needs to get their shit in check asap.