Purdue University gave its students a day off Wednesday to help recover from the death of a classmate during a campus shooting a day prior.
“When tragedy happens, we unite,” Amy Barton, a Purdue sophomore psychology major, said. “It’s really incredible. Even if you didn’t know the person, we were all affected. … The Boilermaker family.”
Andrew Boldt, a 21-year-old from West Bend, Wis., died Tuesday after another student shot him in the Electrical Engineering Building on Purdue’s main campus in West Lafayette, Ind. Cody Cousins, a 23-year-old Purdue student, will have an initial hearing today at 2 p.m., facing a murder change.
Barton was rehearsing for the Purduettes with classmate Abby Schneller when she got the university’s emergency text, and they both headed home.
“I looked down [the street] and I could see all these cop cars and ambulances,” Schneller said.
Schneller, a sophomore majoring in women’s, gender and sexuality studies, said she was upset classes weren’t immediately canceled after the all-clear, but appreciated the day to recuperate.
“I feel silly being not really OK, but at the same time, it was a scary experience,” she said.
A few hours after the shooting, Schneller, Barton and the rest of the Purduettes sang as part of a vigil in Boldt’s honor.
“We shouldn’t be afraid of what happened, we should all stand together,” Barton said.
Today, students return to campus. As Barton said, Purdue is resilient.
Andrew Boldt
Boldt was an undergraduate teaching assistant at the university.
His LinkedIn profile says he spent two summers interning for John Deere in Silvis, Ill., and planned to graduate in May.
Jean Morrell, Boldt’s calculus teacher at Milwaukee’s Marquette University High School, recalled how Boldt often stayed after class to talk about math concepts and robotics. The two also discussed his dream to attend Purdue, which is Morrell’s alma mater.
“Andrew Boldt was a young man who had the potential to make the world a better place,” Morrell said. “He was a phenomenal young man. He had a great mind, but he also had a great heart. I’m just sad he won’t get an opportunity to realize his dreams, to make his contribution to the world.”
Rev. Warren Sazama, the president of Boldt’s high school, said the family was in shock.
“The mother said, ‘You don’t expect to get up in the morning and expect your son to be one in a million for a tragedy like this,’” he said.
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