ON THE FIRST ANNIVERSARY OF MAGGIE'S DEATH. . .
Letter to the Editor of The Index,
Student Newspaper of Kalamazoo College
Published Wednesday, October 18, 2000
Submitted by Rick and Martha, Maggie's stepfather and mother
One year ago, our daughter, Maggie, was a sophomore at Kalamazoo College, making some decisions about her future studies and career. An ex-boyfriend, also a Kalamazoo College student, was intent on not letting her go, but didn't let anyone see, clearly, how angry he was at her.
On October 18, 1999, the unthinkable thing happened and it happened at Kalamazoo College in a dormitory. And it happened to our daughter, Maggie. Her murder, and his suicide, seem as impossible today as a year ago.
The past year has been a time of grief, change and healing for Maggie's family. Her absence from our lives has shredded our spirit and caused us to struggle with our sense of hope and fulfillment for our family.
We know that Maggie's friends, teachers, acquaintances and many others on this campus were also deeply affected by her death. We have talked to and heard from many of you over the past year. We want to thank you deeply and sincerely for your love and concern for our daughter and for our family. We hope that the past year has brought you some healing and that you, too, cling to happy memories of Maggie.
We also realize that those of you on campus who knew and cared for Neenef also had a year to reflect on both deaths and on what happened last year. We hope that a healing time has come for you and that you have found some peace with what has occurred.
As you return to campus this year, information and discussions are taking place aobut Maggie's death, dating relationships, violence towards women and campus security issues. Many of us took those things for granted before last October. In consideration of that fact, please join us and the leaders of your college in keeping discussions on those topics open and on-going on your campus and others.
As residents of a college campus, please work to keep weapons out of your dorms by following zero-tolerance policies and reporting violations to campus authorities. If someone in your dorm is struggling emotionally, refer him or her to someone who can help effectively. And please promote respect for women on your campus through example.
We can make our world a more peaceful place by expecting and promoting peace and non-violence where we live. This would be the most fitting way to honor Maggie and strengthen the Kalamazoo College community.
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"Reduce Gun Violence in Memory of Slain Student"
VIEWPOINT ARTICLE in the Kalamazoo Gazette
Submitted by Rick, Maggie's stepfather
Published Wednesday, October 25, 2000
A year ago, at this time, my stepdaughter, Maggie Wardle, was a student at Kalamazoo College and an athlete on the women's golf team. She was safe and close to her family in Plainwell and surrounding communities in the Kalamazoo area. She had visited other campuses as a high school senior but we all felt those other colleges in urban settings were not safe for her. How ironic! At 19 years of age, she was mature, growing into adulthood and doing well in school.
A year ago, Maggie's ex-boyfriend of about four months, also a student at Kalamazoo College, didn't want to let her go and didn't seem to let anyone know just how angry he was at Maggie. He was planning to buy a gun, without raising suspicion.
A year ago, at this time, I felt inside that I was doing something to reduce violence in the world. Working with public school students, as a teacher and administrator for many years, I have dealt with conflict resolution, social skills, and anger control training. I know my wife, Maggie's mom, Martha, in her job as a psychiatric nurse, felt that way too. We talked about it at times and we were pleased that both of our children were non-violent, caring people.
In the early morning hours of October 18, 1999, a booming, insistent knock by a police officer on our front door just north of here in Plainwell yanked us our of our fantasy that we were doing our part to make the world safer. Down the road from our home, the thumping multiple shots of a gun, fired in a crowded college dormitory, had taken two lives. Our beautiful, talented daughter was gone, murdered by her ex-boyfriend who then took his own life. Those few violent moments have irreversibly changed the lives of everyone who knew Maggie, especially her family and friends. And don't forget the effect on his famly and friends as well as all the students in that dormitory and on campus that night. There were many victims of this heinous crime. The ripples of those gunshots are still ricocheting across a wide, extended community.
Today a year after our daughter's death, I write as a representative of a victim's family. That Maggie was a victim of gun violence and that it is our family that is left to pick up the pieces of our lives without her, is utterly unbelievable. Too many families like ours -- from cities, towns, villages across the country, regardless of race or family economic circumstances know what an angry or careless person with a gun can do to our loved ones, shattering all that we believe in.
About ten days before Maggie's death, the gun used to kill her was purchased "legally," as laws currently exist. That is the issue that Maggie's family would like to take up at this discussion about guns and gun violence in our society. Maggie's murderer was able to purchase a gun at a local gun shop using a Kalamazoo College address. The purchase application gave his address as "Hicks Center, P.O. Box..." Doesn't it make sense that any background check should have raised a red flag that the address was at a college or similar type institution? Kalamazoo College has a zero-tolerance, no-weapons policy on their campus. Shouldn't the gun shop owner or the police department been required by law to notify someone on campus that a student had applied to purchase a gun?
We have made a big issue in Kalamazoo about where college students living in our town should register to vote. Shouldn't we be even more concerned that students are buying guns in our town and bringing them on campus? Any college student living in a dorm or parents of those students, should be concerned. Maggie's family was concerned but we were naïve and assumed that such an important issue whether or not guns were on campus was under control, especially in such a safe and idyllic place as Kalamazoo College.
But, it seems that guns are very prevalent on campus. According to a recent Harvard School of Public Health study, 3.5% or 450,000 college students have a firearm on campus. That is quite a potential for danger on campuses, where stress can run high. Relying on self-reporting and zero-tolerance policies just doesn't seem to be enough.
The blight of guns and violence in our society must change. In recent months, there have been many gun violence incidents in the Kalamazoo area. In some of those incidents, women have been stalked and hurt as Maggie was. The circumstances of these incidents have haunted Maggie's friends and family as they were reported almost daily there for a while in the media.
Must everyone be personally touched or emotionally devastated by gun violence before we do something about this as a society? There are way too many guns in our society, more than ever in our history and more than any other county in the world. No matter how these guns are counted -- by sheer numbers, per capita, or number of guns per owner -- we have more guns than we need. Reducing violence in our society will require more than just controlling guns in our society but it is an essential part of the total answer.
Maggie's parents, family and friends ask everyone who is aware of what happened on the Kalamazoo College campus last October to remember Maggie and her life. Remember what happened to two lives, two families, two sets of friends and an entire campus community because an angry person had a gun. In her honor, please commit some part of yourself to reduce violence, especially gun violence and violence against women in our society.
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"The Changes That Maggie's Killing Brought"
Op-Ed Article in the Hartford (Connecticut) Courant
Written by Susan Omilian, Maggie's Aunt
Published December 22, 2000
It has been more than a year now since my niece, Maggie, died and still it is hard for me to tell her story.
On October 18, 1999, Maggie, a 19-year-old college sophomore at Kalamazoo College in Michigan, was shot and killed by her ex-boyfriend, a 20-year-old junior who then killed himself.
Maggie's killer was a jealous, possessive and controlling man who wouldn't let her go even after she had broken up with him several months earlier. Ten days before the slaying, he legally purchased a hunting rifle at a local gun store using his dormitory address, although the college campus had a no-gun policy. He was upset, police found out later from his friends, about seeing Maggie with another man at a school dance the night before.
There are so many things I can't explain about Maggie's death. Why did she go his dorm room that night? Why wasn't she more afraid of him? Why couldn't she see that he was violent and vengeful and capable of murder?
I can only speculate that she went to see him hoping that he would finally leave her alone. That she was a kind person and he had never threatened her physically makes her behavior toward him more understandable. But obviously, she misjudged him horribly.
The killing set off a wave of shock, disbelief and grief in the small southwest Michigan community where Maggie lived, especially among her circle of close friends and the many college teachers and classmates who admired her.
But Maggie's death also touched many people in Connecticut, as I have told her story over and over again here to anyone who would listen.
Sometimes I tell her story to ease my own grief and incredible sense of loss. But Maggie's death is more than my personal tragedy.
Everyone loses when a person with so much potential is taken at such an early age. Maggie was an amazing young woman, whose beauty and academic, athletic and musical accomplishments were matched only by her uncanny ability to engage others in the wondrous dance of love, life, friendship and hope. Perhaps we lost the first female president or the greatest advocate for the poor and the downtrodden. Maggie's legacy must be drawn that broadly.
Maggie would have been outraged by the way she died. If it had happened to any one of her family or friends, she would be advocating tirelessly right now in their memory, fighting against violence against women, the unnecessary proliferation of guns in our society and the lack of proper treatment for mental illness. She would have made us see that a killing at the hands of an angry, suicidal man with easy access to a gun was a needless consequence of our failure to take the action necessary to save the lives of our children.
I certainly have been inspired to action by Maggie's death. I have spent most of the past year in Michigan with my brother and sister-in-law, Maggie's stepfather and mother, working on changes at the college where she was killed. Now women students will be given information and guidance about the cycle of violence and how to get help. Like Maggie, many young women have relationships for the first time in college and may not be aware of the dangers. Maggie was smart and feisty, but she didn't know the words for what was happening to her, and she thought she could solve the problem by herself.
In addition, the college is educating male students about the dynamics of violence against women and encouraging them to exert peer pressure on other men to stop such behavior. More counseling is also available for students suffering from depression and other emotional problems to get them help before they take more drastic steps.
With Maggie as my guide, I will continue working, particularly with young people, to prevent domestic violence, and heal those who have been abused. I call upon Maggie everyday to help me to put down my mantle of grief, dream my wildest dreams and not let my fears hold me back from doing what is right.
For me, this is Maggie's legacy.
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