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Northern Illinois University will be the location this June of a seminar on campus crime, just months after a former student opened fire in a classroom on Valentine's Day, killing five students and then himself.But an official from the group presenting the seminar said the location is a coincidence and was chosen before the shootings.

After Feb. 14, "the registration did slow down," said Catherine Bath, vice president of Security on Campus. "I would hope that [people] would be more likely to come."

About 40 people have signed up, she said, and 100 to 200 could attend. The seminar is designed for college staff, legal counsel, other professionals and victims' advocates.

Security on Campus, based in Pennsylvania, is a nonprofit organization founded by the parents of Jeanne Clery, a Lehigh University student who was raped and murdered in her dormitory in 1986.

Under a federal law passed in 1990 that was later renamed after Clery, colleges and universities are required to publish selected crime data annually and alert the campus community about ongoing threats and how to seek help if a crime occurs.

The NIU seminar will discuss legislation proposed in Congress in response to the shootings at Virginia Tech last year in which a student killed 32 people and himself, Bath said.

"Schools are going to be required to have a security plan in place," and give a warning within 30 minutes in the event of an emergency, she said.

However, the seminar, one of five nationwide this year, will cover all crime that needs to be brought to students' attention.

Data reported under the Clery Act show that NIU's 25,313 students are much more likely to be the victim of a rape or burglary on campus than they are to be murdered. Sexual assault, burglary, aggravated assault, robbery and theft were the most common crimes reported from 2004 to 2006, according to figures the school supplied to the federal Department of Education.

"On campus, the worst crime would probably be theft," said Lee Blank, 23, an NIU student and reporter for the Northern Star. He added that sexual assaults will likely be underreported, "no matter what."

NIU reported 10 forcible sexual offenses on campus in 2004, eight in 2005 and six in 2006. Most occurred in residence halls. There were 60 burglaries in 2004, 66 in 2005 and 44 in 2006. Aggravated assaults jumped from zero in 2004 and 2005 to eight in 2006. Robberies doubled from two in 2004 to four in 2005 but stayed steady in 2006.

During this time period, NIU reported no instances of murder or negligent manslaughter. Nationwide, an FBI survey of about 550 colleges in 2005 found five reported cases of murder or manslaughter. Also, no incidents at NIU were classified as hate crimes.

Statistics showed only one arrest at NIU for on-campus illegal weapons possession in 2006. But there were three disciplinary actions for this category in 2004 and 2006, with none in 2005. (NIU does not allow students to have weapons in campus residences and requires they be kept in the University Security Office with permission.)

However, off-campus crimes, particularly muggings, are a problem, Blank said. Those incidents are handled by DeKalb police.

NIU's police chief and security officer were unavailable for comment Tuesday.

Barely a month after the Super Tuesday primaries, two congressional candidates in the west suburban 14th district are asking voters to return to the polls--on a Saturday no less.

A special general election on March 8 will determine whether Jim Oberweis or Bill Foster will be able to run as the incumbent in November when they will be vying for a full two-year term. The special election will put the Republican Oberweis or the Democrat Foster in office until at least January 2009.

The question is: Will voters turn out to grant this 8-month trial run that may or may not prove to be the start of a long-term replacement for former Republican Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert?

The answers vary.

"We would hope that at least the number of people who voted in the primary would be coming out, if not even more," said Doreen Nelson, assistant director of the DuPage County Election Commission.

Confidence in equaling the primary turnout is not as high in DeKalb County, one of the other seven counties included in the district.

"I don't see that we're going to have a huge turnout," DeKalb County Clerk Sharon Holmes said. "If 50 percent turned out I would love it. I would think that is great. I don't think that's going to happen."

Holmes said a lack of early and absentee voting has indicated the March 8 numbers won't match Feb. 5.

"We're not having that big a turnout [in early voting]," she said. "We maybe have five, six, seven, eight [people voting] a day compared to 30, 40, 50 a day for the [February] primary."

With all the voters turning out to vote in the Feb. 5 primary, which featured the presidential race, the special primary totaled more than 141,000 votes between the Democratic and Republican ballots across the district. Still, that was more than 10,000 fewer votes than the same race garnered on the regular primary ballot.

Voters were asked-but not required-to pull a regular and special primary ballot. Despite efforts to educate voters on the confusing process, Holmes said many voters just didn't get it.

"A lot of voters still do not understand why there's a second election, why we're having the March 8 [election]," she said. "People just aren't that aware."

So the drop in number of votes from the regular primary to the special primary is not surprising, but how it breaks along party lines is intriguing. While Republican candidates on the special primary ballot maintained about 96 percent of the votes they received in the regular primary, Democrats totaled just 88 percent of their regular total.

In fact, in some counties like DeKalb, Henry and Lee there were more votes cast in the Republican special primary election than in the same race on the regular primary. This contrasts with the Democratic candidates who received a lower number of aggregate votes in the special primary than the regular primary in each of those counties.

This was a result of voters selecting a Democratic regular primary ballot and a Republican special primary ballot, according to Bill Pascoe, campaign spokesman for Jim Oberweis.

"There were actually more people who asked for a Democratic ballot in the regular primary throughout the 14th district than there were people who asked for a Republican ballot," Pascoe said. "That's a shocking piece of information politically because no one's ever seen that before in the 14th district."

Pascoe has a theory as to why so many voters in this traditionally conservative district opted to vote in the regular Democratic primary.

"What appears to be happening is [Republicans] don't want to wait until November to take the opportunity to cast a ballot against Hillary Clinton," Pascoe said. "[They are saying] 'The more important thing for me to do is be able to make absolutely positive that Hillary Clinton doesn't get anywhere near the White House."

Theories about the discrepancy of votes between the regular and special primaries are just conjecture, said Don Rose, a longtime political consultant.

The breakdown of the Feb. 5 results is not the focus of Foster's campaign, which is directing all of its attention to the March 8 primary, according to press secretary Andrew Pupuy. It's clear though that Foster must improve on the number of Democratic votes cast in the special primary if he is to win the special general.

The fact that the election falls on a Saturday is a wild card no one is sure how to measure.

"Looking into my crystal ball that's really difficult to say," Nelson said. "We've not had an election on Saturday since before consolidation of elections."

Saturday elections generally produce greater turnout, according to Rose.

"It's a day off. People can do it easier," he said. "They don't have to stop on the way to work or rush in after work."

While Pascoe is uncertain who the Saturday election might favor, he doesn't think Gov. Rod Blagojevich scheduled it that way without reason.

"I'm sure Governor Blagojevich, a close Bill Foster ally, believes that the [Saturday election day] favors Foster," Pascoe said.

"What [Gov. Blagojevich] didn't obviously think about was that the day before the March 8 election Northern Illinois University goes on spring break," Holmes said. "Now do you think those students are going to be worrying about voting or being on the beach? You tell me."

NIU is located in DeKalb County. The 14th Congressional District also includes parts of Bureau, DuPage, Henry, Lee, Kane, Kendall and Whiteside counties.

Students at Northern Illinois University were only just beginning to grieve over the tragic campus shootings that killed five of their own on Valentine's Day, when they were faced with even more pain.

The fundamentalist religious organization Westboro Baptist Church, based in Topeka, Kan. and led by Fred Phelps, posted messages on its Web site supporting the shootings and members came to Illinois to picket the funerals of slain students. The organization, found online at www.godhatesfags.com, claims that violence in the U.S. is the result of the country's general acceptance of homosexuality.

"I just am so beside myself," said Curtis Batterton, an NIU junior. "Really, just how anyone could do this to another person...I think doing this sort of thing is just inhuman."

"I don't understand how a human being could actually be so hateful."
-Nora Lindvall, NIU sophomore

Batterton is among more than a dozen NIU students who have turned their anger towards the Westboro group and feeling of helplessness over the shootings into positive action. They are standing outside of each victim's funeral, despite freezing winter temperatures, to protect grieving families and friends from the WBC's hateful messages. Using large tarps tied to poles, they block the mourners' sight of the WBC picketers.

The students were outside slain NIU victim Daniel Parmenter's funeral Tuesday. Though the protesters from Kansas never showed up, the previous night they had been at the funeral of another slain student. Students said the group held up signs that read, "Thank God for the shooter."

The WBC has garnered national attention for picketing the funerals of fallen soldiers. Since 1991, the WBC claims to have held more than 34,000 demonstrations. Fred Phelps heads the organization.

Shortly after the shootings, the NIU community became aware of the WBC's vocal support for the violence from its Web site. On the site, the WBC wrote: "Thank God for the NIU Massacre! They are in Hell!!!" The site declares that the shooter was sent by God and that there are no "innocents" in this massacre.

Outraged students protested these messages on Facebook, forming groups such as "Stop the WBC from protesting at the funerals of NIU students" and "NIU Students Against Westboro Baptist Exploiting Our Tragedy." Within six days, the groups had over 13,000 members.

The handful of students outside Parmenter's funeral have made it their mission to literally shield their fellow students' grieving family and friends.

"Right now," Batterton said, "we have the most vulnerable individuals of our community in a situation that they've been affected by a random act of violence that makes no sense. We just want to block [the WBC's] messages from the most vulnerable part of our communities so that they don't have to experience any more hurt or pain."

The WBC is scheduled to picket two students' funerals on Wednesday and a NIU campus-wide memorial on Sunday. The students plan to bring their tarps and silent presence to these events.

"Having experienced similar tragedies in my own life," said Nora Lindvall, an NIU sophomore, "I know from personal experience that you're so beside yourself that the last thing you could possibly want to deal with is something of this completely inhuman magnitude. I don't understand how a human being could actually be so hateful."

Lindvall, who is among the group of anti-WBC protesters, was right outside the lecture hall when the shooting took place. She had class in that room three days a week, she said, and she ran outside with the students racing from the room after the shooting broke out.

Lindvall will continue to bring her tarp to the upcoming funerals and memorial service, doing her part to help her community grieve in peace.

"I think we're going to be OK," she said. "We're going to stay strong and move forward together."

Further Reading: "On Heels of Tragedy at Northern, Daley Calls for Tougher Gun Laws Nationwide"