Subdued campus as USC students remember a gifted professor (+ videos)

On the University of South Carolina Horseshoe on Friday, there was the usual murmur of quiet voices along the leafy brick-lined pathways. Nearby, someone bounced a basketball on an outdoor court. A snatch of hip-hop music wafted through the air.

High school seniors and parents on a campus tour meandered past the Russell House. “Does anybody have any questions so far?” the leader asked.

Ordinary sounds on a day that was out of kilter for so many in the wake of a murder-suicide on campus the day before, and the loss of a well-regarded exercise science professor, Raja A. Fayad, 45.

“It’s one of those things where you are saying to each other, ‘Where were you?’” said Kristy Lagarde, a senior from Frederick, Md.

She and freshman Summer Nguyen were outside the Russell House drumming up support for the April 17 Relay for Life sponsored by Colleges Against Cancer.

But the young women gathered around a table ladened with T-shirts, cups and pencils had their minds on more serious matters as they talked of emergency campus texts and urgent calls to parents.

“It is kind of a somber mood” on campus, Lagarde said. “It was not one of those things you think would happen on your campus.”

These students were in middle school and high school when the worst college campus shooting in U.S. history took place at Virginia Tech on April 16, 2007. There, Sueng-Hui Cho, a mentally ill senior, shot to death 32 students and faculty in two locations before turning the gun on himself.

Thursday, USC quickly alerted students that the shooting was isolated to the Public Health Research Center on Assembly Street, and that no shooter was ever loose on campus. Sunghee Kwon, who was once married to Fayad, was believed to have first shot him first before turning the gun on herself, according to the Richland County coroner.

But that didn’t stop rumors from flying, a group of Australian exchange students said. Some had heard that shots were fired on the historic Horseshoe, a rumor that was quickly debunked. They were scared because such shooting incidents are a rarity in Australia.

Outside the Public Health building, bouquets of flowers lay on the steps leading into the front door. One card read: “God is with us. We will remember you, Raja.”

Fayad’s resume was impressive: Graduate director and head of the Arnold School of Public Health’s Applied Physiology Division and director of integrative immunology of inflammation and cancer laboratory.

Fayad specialized in the study of gastrointestinal ailments, including Crohn’s, inflammatory bowel disease and colon cancer. And he made one of the toughest classes on the schedule, anatomy and physiology, understandable and fun, students said.

While classes in public health were canceled Friday, the building was open to researchers. But nerves were evident; when some ROTC visitors wearing fatigues entered the building to meet with a professor, someone called police to report their presence.

Clemson University students turned to social media to show their allegiance to their cross-state rival, coming together under the hashtag #twoschoolsonestate. Students tweeted out condolences and vowed to wear garnet and black in support of their friends in Columbia instead of the orange normally donned on Fridays.

That meant a lot to students who planned to come together for a Friday afternoon vigil on campus.

They had called and sent texts to family members in the moments after the campus text alert, with students like Tiffanie Wise going so far as to screen shot the alert and text her parents how much she loved them – just in case something bad happened.

Thursday evening, Wise said she went home to Lexington. “I hugged my mom and I hugged my sister.” Then her dad came home, and he got a hug too.

Students said the incident would resonate for a long time.

“I think it is something I’m going to remember,” Lagarde, a public health major, said. “That building is like my home.”

This story was originally published February 6, 2015 at 7:45 PM with the headline "Subdued campus as USC students remember a gifted professor (+ videos)."