USM Lewiston campus holds vigil for Oct. 25 victims

Riley Worth, right, student body president for the University of Southern Maine, urges people Tuesday at USM’s Lewiston-Auburn campus in Lewiston to search for connection in the community during a vigil to reflect on the Oct. 25 mass shooting. ASL interpreter Regan Thibodeau signs on the left. Worth says he has four points of connection to the victims of the mass shooting. Andree Kehn/Sun Journal

LEWISTON — University of Southern Maine Lewiston-Auburn College students and staff held a vigil for the victims of the Oct. 25 shootings Tuesday evening at the 51 Westminster St. campus.

College President Jacqueline Edmondson said the USM community learned several among them were profoundly affected by the Oct. 25 shootings at Just-In-Time Recreation and Schemengees Bar & Grille, which claimed 18 lives and injured 13.

Maxx Hathaway, a father of two with a third on the way, recently completed requirements for an undergraduate degree in business, Edmondson said. USM alumnus and American Sign Language interpreter Joshua Seal leaves behind four children, and Becky Conrad, USM Board of Visitors chair, lost her nephew, Tom Conrad, also a father, she continued.

“Many at USM knew these people and other victims, and our community mourns with everyone who was impacted,” said Edmondson. “There are no words to express this sorrow at this loss of life, to convey how this tragedy has impacted so many lives.”

USM senior and student body president Riley Worth, a Sabattus native, said Lewiston has “basically been his entire life.” As a longtime community member with academic ties to the city, it is important for the L-A College community, and for the wider community, to know that though the burden has been placed on Lewiston, it isn’t the city’s alone. It’s evidenced in how those across the state — especially on the Portland and Gorham USM campuses — and across the world have stood in solidarity with Lewiston.

“Having a singular university split into three campuses makes it easy to seem we are all spokes of a wheel, detached and pointing in different directions. Yet, any of you who look at the tires on your car know there’s a hub at the center of that wheel. I see that hub here today. I see it in my friends who came from across the country to stand in solidarity with Lewiston at our previous vigil. I see it across the administration providing students with numerous resources.”

Others who spoke at the vigil included Netty Provost, campus director, and Neil Kiely, CEO of Androscoggin Bank. Provost said staff, faculty and students are grieving and processing with compassion, understanding and support for one another. She urged mindfulness and reaching out in kindness with small gestures as well as self-care.

“I hope we can commit to caring for ourselves, supporting those who are hurting and fostering community where compassion is important in everything we do,” Provost said.

“(This) would be a greater tragedy if we don’t find a way to turn this insensible act into something meaningful by how we move forward and live our lives from here both as individuals and as a community,” Kiely said.

After his speech, Worth said students, staff and faculty have all been grieving in different ways; there are some who, “like a soldier,” have become numb to the violence, and there are those who need to speak aloud and lean on one another. There are emotions across the spectrum, most of which are, like many mass shootings before (and since) Lewiston, feed into a call for action.

“I think, for students anyway, to our political leaders, we put our trust in you when we go to the mall, when we meet with our friends, when we’re at the bowling alley …. We’re here to say it’s unacceptable, that the place I went for my birthday party three days before is now shut down. Because of gun violence. Because a lot of people died in there. We want to live in an America that is so much like the developed world, where we can go freely and not saying, ‘Am I going to lose my life and the 20 friends I’m with now?’ That thought, especially now that it’s happened in Maine, is always in the back of our heads.”