On Oct. 1, a 26-year-old gunman opened fire in a classroom on the Umpqua Community College campus in Roseburg, Oregon. In less than 10 minutes, 18 students and educators were shot. Nine people were killed.
The gunman, Christopher Harper-Mercer, was shot by responding police officers and subsequently took his own life, according to media reports.
Weeks after the event, the vulnerability, anxiety, anger, and fear felt by survivors is just beginning to sink in, Dr. Jack Sarmanian, a disaster mental health worker for The American Red Cross, said.
On his third deployment with the Red Cross, Sarmanian, an Edgecomb selectman and experienced mental health professional, spent eight days at the community college working with students and educators. The focus of his time there was helping students and educators grieve.
“Everyone in the community was affected,” Sarmanian said. “There wasn’t a single person out there it did not impact. It changed the safety of everyone.”
In his professional career, Sarmanian has worked as a counselor, administrator, researcher, educator, and therapist, among other roles in the mental health field. He holds four degrees in psychology, human relations, social work, and education and counseling.
In retirement, Sarmanian volunteered to serve as a disaster mental health worker. He traveled to Minneapolis in 2011 and Oklahoma in 2013 to assist in the recovery efforts after deadly tornadoes. His time at the Umpqua Community College was unlike any of his previous deployments, Sarmanian said.
“There’s some rationale to a natural disaster,” Sarmanian said. “You can understand it, but a random shooting … It’s unfathomable. What’s the logic behind it? It’s so illogical, you’re not even sure what to be angry at.”
The Red Cross organized teams of mental health professionals to work in different areas of Roseburg in support of the Community Health Alliance, the local mental health organization. Some worked with first responders and hospital staff who handled the deceased and treated the injured.
Others worked with parents, families, and friends of the victims. Sarmanian’s team worked on campus with students, faculty, and staff. In the science building adjacent to Snyder Hall, where the shooting occurred, Sarmanian led a lecture and classroom discussion with approximately 60 students.
Initially, not one student said a word, Sarmanian said. “There was an aura of morbidity,” Sarmanian said. “There was a huge dark cloud hanging over the school.” The simple act of returning to the school took an enormous amount of courage, he said.
“The first thing I did was to thank them for being there,” he said. When students and staff did begin to speak, many said they could not eat, they could not sleep, and they could not stop replaying the events of Oct. 1 in their minds.
After the first shots were fired on Oct. 1, a mass e-mail was sent to faculty and staff stating there was an active shooter on campus and to go into lock-down. Faculty said they felt ashamed when they closed and locked the doors to their classroom, knowing that their colleagues were in trouble.
One staff member told Sarmanian they heard the shots and the screaming, and could do nothing. “Upset is not an appropriate word,” Sarmanian said, describing the emotions that gripped the campus.
Anger, fear, anxiety, paranoia, guilt, helplessness, hopelessness, and overwhelming sadness, were all felt, oftentimes simultaneously, by many survivors.
Many in Roseburg protested when President Barack Obama visited the community, a reaction to Obama’s previous statements which advocated for gun control in the wake of the mass shooting. For Sarmanian, his work with staff and students was unconnected to politics.
His role was to help students, faculty, and staff begin the grieving process and come to terms with a loss that cannot be measured, and heal from wounds that cannot be seen.
Students asked, ‘why did it happen?’, ‘what do we do now?’, and ‘what happens if it (the emotions) don’t go away?’ – questions that have no easy answer, Sarmanian said.
Self-care was the message Sarmanian shared – eat, sleep, exercise, and communicate. Sarmanian encouraged survivors to stay away from the news and break out of the repetitive process that keep that day’s traumatic events at the forefront of their mind.
“People will be affected by this long-term,” Sarmanian said. “For some, it won’t let go of them.”
Umpqua Community College was a launching ground for the academic and professional careers of many students from an area economically depressed due to the decline of the lumber industry, Sarmanian said. Many students questioned whether it was even worth being a student, he said.
Sarmanian encouraged them not to lose sight of their goals and not allow one man’s “gross, vile choice,” to prevent them from moving forward with accomplishing their dreams.
The Community Health Alliance will be working with students, faculty, and staff to establish support networks and provide resources in the long-term, Sarmanian said. While exhausted from his experience in Roseburg, Sarmanian said it has also motivated him to do more.
“It just reaffirmed that we need to do so much more work,” Sarmanian said. “There aren’t enough resources. We have a lot of systems but we don’t have resources. When people are hurting, they hurt full time.”
