Hunter
11/01/21
Today marks 30 years since one of the biggest tragedies occurred on the University of Iowa campus.
Former UI graduate student Gang Lu shot and killed five people, including professors of physics and astronomy Christoph Goertz and Robert Smith; Dwight Nicholson, the chairman of the department; Linhua Shan, a postdoctoral researcher, and associate vice president for academic affairs T. Anne Cleary.
Jo Ann Beard is a writer who graduated from the UI’s Nonfiction Writing Program. Her essay on the shooting was originally published in the New Yorker in 1996. She tells the Daily Iowan that the event “was an enormous tragedy. It profoundly affected not just the school, but the town itself and the countryside.” She added that in a tragedy of that magnitude in a small community, nearly everyone has some connection to the story.
Former Cedar Rapids state representative Ron Corbett said at the time the event wouldn’t change anything about Iowa’s gun regulations, and his statement has proven true 30 years later, with the laws even less restrictive after recent new legislation.
