After shooting, how is UNLV community emotionally? Survey will find out
As UNLV prepares to bring operations back to a new normal next week, a psychology professor is studying the immediate emotional effects last month’s campus shooting had on the community.
Dr. Stephen Benning previously conducted similar research after the Oct. 1, 2017, mass shooting.
That study determined that the more support and validation and the less criticism survivors received about how they felt from their peers in the months following the tragedy, the better they fared emotionally, he told the Las Vegas Review-Journal on Friday.
Benning’s study is being conducted through surveys.
The first questionnaire, which will examine the emotional effects a month after a gunman killed three professors and wounded a fourth, closes Saturday. Professors Jerry Cha-Jan Chang, Patricia Navarro Velez, and Naoko Takemaru died in the attack.
That survey will examine the “acute stress period” of what respondents experienced through the first month after the Dec. 6 shooting.
Gunman Anthony Polito, 67, died in a shootout with school police, according to the Metropolitan Police Department.
“The purpose of this study is to see how people’s stories about what happened around Las Vegas’s mass shootings are associated with psychological symptoms as well as their personality traits, well-being, and beliefs about the traumatic event,” the survey reads.
Benning wants to hear from adults who were on campus the day of the shooting, or those who are part of the UNLV or Las Vegas communities who learned about it within 24 hours.
The initial questionnaire will take no more than an hour to complete, and the subsequent ones will take no more than 10 minutes, Benning said.
Benning said this study will differ from the one that examined the Oct. 1 shooting by allowing respondents to share their personal stories.
The UNLV shooting hit close to home for Benning, who had to lock down in his office for four hours, dragging a desk to block the doorway, before police arrived to clear his building, he said.
Benning said he spent that time contacting students, but that an unrelated incident at his son’s school “sent my mind spiraling a bit.”
Benning helped clear his mind by counseling people at a reunification center that day, but that the days after were “pretty emotionally difficult because of the flashbacks.”
Return to campus
On Friday, UNLV President Keith E. Whitfield said that all faculty and staff will return to campus for the first time in a month.
Meanwhile, he announced that Beam Hall, where the shooting occurred, would remain closed through the upcoming spring semester.
Classes previously scheduled there, as well as other services, will relocate to other buildings or to a remote function, he said.
“Even though we continue to make progress on building repairs in Beam Hall, we also understand the intense emotional trauma that exists for our colleagues who work in the building, and for students still recovering from the impact of the Dec. 6 tragedy and its aftermath,” Whitfield wrote.
A previous version of this story misstated the duration of the shooting.
Contact Ricardo Torres-Cortez at rtorres@reviewjournal.com.
