As the frightening story of Northern Illinois University freshman Antinette Keller's disappearance and suspected murder unfolded in the media last month, Teresa Downing, of downstate Mechanicsburg, watched as her daughter filled out an application to spend the next four years there.
"My first reaction was, 'No, she's not coming here,' " Downing said Thursday in DeKalb at an NIU open house, the school's first major recruiting event since Keller's case was declared a homicide investigation.
High school senior Alyssa Downing had none of her mother's hesitation.
"You can't really decide what to do by being scared about what could happen," said Alyssa, who listed NIU among her top college choices and added she was going on the campus tour with an open mind.
Many other prospective students who gathered at the Holmes Student Center for the open house said they, too, refused to be deterred by the backdrop of a series of violent, though isolated, incidents that have struck the NIU community over the last few years.
A classroom shooting on Valentine's Day in 2008 left six people including the shooter dead and more than a dozen injured. This February, a student was shot in the leg outside a residence hall. While he survived, many on campus expressed uneasiness at hearing gunshots on campus so close to the 2008 shooting anniversary.
Then art student Keller was reported missing last month, and authorities later found burned human remains in off-campus Prairie Park next to belongings believed to be hers. While the remains were too burned to identify, DeKalb man William Curl, 34, is in custody, accused of Keller's murder.
Whether the confluence of these cases will impact recruitment at NIU, a school of roughly 25,000 students, remains to be seen.
University officials said registration numbers from Thursday's open house would not be available until next week. After the Valentine's Day shooting, NIU experienced an initial enrollment decrease of nearly 900, but school officials attributed that to the poor economy, and some other Illinois colleges reported a similar drop. Freshmen applications then went up in 2008-09.
"No campus is immune from crime," said NIU spokesman Brad Hoey, who noted that campus crime statistics, in many categories, have dropped in the last several years. "No campus is immune from tragedy."
Violence seemed to be the last thing on the minds of many students at Thursday's open house at the Holmes Student Center, one of three major recruiting events throughout the year. They flocked to booths on campus Greek life and career services, bookstore bags swinging at their hips.
The booth on campus security manned by NIU police, however, was largely idle throughout the day.
Parent Heather Czarnecki, of Wheaton, was among the few who paid them a visit. She heard about late-night escort rides and stepped-up security in the wake of the Keller investigation. She walked away feeling NIU might be safer than other campuses because officials there have experience handling violence.
"When you have an unfortunate event, you learn more," she said. "It's a blessing out of something tragic."
But Ronda Champney, whose son Paje is a sophomore at NIU, said in a phone interview that she would have tried to dissuade him from attending if he were applying now.
"Because things keep happening there," said Champney, a Bourbonnais resident. "I definitely would have encouraged him to check out other schools."
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