Michigan State University creates resource office for victims of campus shooting

EAST LANSING, Mich. (WILX) - Michigan State University has announced the creation of a new resource to help the victims and members of the community still impacted by the mass shooting on campus.

The Office for Resource and Support Coordination was created to provide support to the victims and their families.

“The goal here is to support our campus and support our victims and support the families of our victims,” said Dan Olsen. “This office will not only coordinate internally with offices to provide trauma-informed guidance and help coordinate response efforts to the tragedy, but they’ll also be the single point of contact for victims and victim families.”

Some of those trauma-informed practices will ensure that people will not be re-traumatized in order to get the support they need. Olsen said the office wasn’t created by MSU and they aren’t the first to create the resources.

“Unfortunately, given the mass shootings we’ve seen around the country, this has become sort of a best practice and so our peer institutions that have gone through similar tragedies have set up similar offices and they’ve seen success with that and the coordination of response efforts,” Olsen said. “So, we’ve taken that, there’s a model for that and we’re implementing it here with this office.”

The office will be temporary, but there is no set end date. The university said it will be assessing the needs of resources as time goes on.

“We’re a campus of 60,000 individuals and very much so we have a campus of 60,000 individual needs and so we want to make sure this office is well equipped to respond to those needs in the most efficient way possible,” Olsen said. “So, providing that central point of contact helps streamline that information so that the resources that we are giving are timely but also catered to those individuals that are reaching out.”

Although there is currently no sign-up yet, MSU will continue to build the new office’s network and obtain resources and support for the victims, their families and others who have been impacted.

Read next:

Subscribe to our News 10 newsletter and receive the latest local news and weather straight to your email every morning.

Copyright 2023 WILX. All rights reserved.