Vanderbilt students with ties to the Florida State University community expressed distress and calls-to-action after news broke of a mass shooting at FSU’s Tallahassee, Florida, campus that killed two and injured six individuals on April 17. One of the deceased was the university’s campus dining director; the other’s identity, though not a student, remains undisclosed.
The suspect is a 20-year-old FSU student, the son of a sheriff’s deputy — from whom he allegedly obtained the weapon. According to peers, he espoused far-right views that, at times, “made others uncomfortable.” Due to issues with his rhetoric, he was removed from a political discourse club while a student at Tallahassee State College, before transferring to FSU.
Senior and Tallahassee native Maxwell van Hoejj said that his father and sister were on FSU’s campus at the time of the shooting but were unharmed. He also went to the same high school as the suspect, though he did not know him personally.
“We’ve grown used to seeing hundreds of shootings just like this one around the country and on TV, but when it happens in a place that I call home, it really forces you to see the reality of the situation,” van Hoejj said in a message to The Hustler. “My heart goes out to everyone affected by this senseless act of violence, and I hope that we can come together as a nation and ensure that this doesn’t happen again.”
Hailing from central Florida, junior Noah Jenkins said he also has personal ties to the FSU community.
“When I heard what happened at FSU, the first thing I did was reach out to all my friends there to see if they were okay,” Jenkins said in an email to The Hustler. “Unfortunately, one of them was in the student union where the shooting occurred, but luckily she was able to evacuate unharmed after hearing the gunshots.”
Jenkins, who also serves as the president of Vanderbilt College Republicans, called for providing time to “process and mourn” before engaging in conversations on politics, though noted he believes “all that could have been reasonably done” to prevent this incident “was done.” He highlighted that the alleged weapon used was a legally purchased handgun, as opposed to a semi-automatic rifle, and praised the university and county police response. Handguns are the most common weapon used in mass shootings, though semi-automatic rifles yield the most fatalities.
“The gun restrictions commonly advocated for after incidents like this would not meaningfully change this reality,” Jenkins said. “Let us pray for the dead, their families and all affected, as well as for peace in our communities.”
Jonathan Metzl, director of Vanderbilt’s medicine, health and society department and gun violence researcher, urged against complacency. He referenced Nashville’s 2018 Waffle House shooting that he explored in his recent book, where the shooter similarly obtained his weapon legally.
“I reject the idea that, because that’s the case [of legally purchased firearms], we can’t do anything about [mass shootings]. That’s a really passive, ineffective and tragic narrative,” Metzl said. “Part of the story is that if our laws are letting mass shooters get guns, we should change our laws. There are a lot of other countries that have this same problem of disturbed views but don’t have mass shootings.”
According to Metzl, these policies should include red flag laws that operate regardless of whether the individual has a prior criminal history, noting “there is still a kind of descent into disturbing behavior” discernable among those who eventually commit mass shootings.
Florida enacted a red flag law in the wake of the 2018 Parkland high school shooting, which was associated with an 11% reduction in firearm homicide rates from 2019 to 2021. Bipartisan efforts also raised the minimum age for owning a gun to 21 and implemented a three-day waiting period before most rifle purchases. Last month, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis called for a review and potential repeal of the state’s red flag law.
Sophomore Drew Spiegel, incoming Vanderbilt College Democrats president, expressed his devastation toward the news and criticized legislative inaction.
“This problem has been around for our entire lives; the FSU shooting happened just one day after the 18-year marker of 32 students getting shot and killed at Virginia Tech,” Spiegel said in an email to The Hustler. “At a certain point, we have to ask ourselves ‘why are the gun lobby and extremist politicians preventing life-saving legislation from being passed? What more will it take?’”
As of publication, Student Affairs has not emailed students about the shooting or the university’s support services.
