The CVS and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Emory Point, a well-liked apartment development close to campus, were fired up by a guy, killing a DeKalb County police officer. The CVS door still has bullet holes in it.
For many years, Emory and the CDC have collaborated to advance public health for people in our state, our nation, and the world. We are here to support them as friends, neighbors, and peers, so our cooperation doesn’t stop at the lab door. In a statement released on Saturday, interim President-Elect Leah Ward Sears and President and Chancellor-Elect Gregory L. Fenves said they have been and will continue to strengthen campus security.
Lola McGuire, a rising student at Emory, received the notice while driving through Nashville, Tennessee. She initially disregarded it, believing it to be a small event similar to those that occurred earlier in the year when no one was harmed.
Then a friend from high school texted her. And her granny called. People began phoning her mother to inquire about McGuire’s presence on campus.
Emory had garnered national attention.
On Tuesday, McGuire will return to campus to instruct orientation leaders prior to the arrival of first-year students. She worries about the CDC being nearby, but she isn’t anxious to return to Emory.
It simply makes me worry for the well-being of everyone in my immediate vicinity, including the CDC staff and the kids enrolled in their daycare. “I’m worried about them, but I’m not as worried about myself and my safety,” she said.
Basic safety instruction has always been a part of orientation, but this year she’s adding a new topic: how to keep safe in the event of an active shooter.
While in California for lunch, rising senior Anushka Basu of Emory received the notice. Like McGuire, she surmised that it might have been an armed robbery. She claimed to feel numb now.
“I’m afraid something could also happen during the school year,” she remarked.
Hailey Greenstone, a fourth-year medical student in Massachusetts who received her bachelor’s degree from Emory in 2022, experienced a sense of déjà vu when she learned of Friday’s tragedy while working at a hospital.
Greenstone grew up in Charlottesville, Virginia, whose reputation abruptly changed in 2017 from being the home of the University of Virginia to being the scene of a violent white supremacist rally where a man intentionally crashed his car into a crowd, killing one person and injuring 35.
She remarked, “It feels like that again, where somewhere I feel really connected to is receiving all this negative attention.”
During the epidemic, Greenstone was a junior living next door to the CDC, which the nation relied on to develop a COVID-19 vaccine.
While on a hospital rotation, Greenstone said over the phone, “I don’t want Emory to end up being framed as this dangerous or problematic place just because we have a relationship with science.” It seemed like home, but because of the life-saving research and initiatives taking place on campus and nearby, people no longer feel secure there.
She was brought up to work in healthcare by Emory. That work is now being attacked.
As someone who is attempting to base my career on saving lives, I am aware of the reasons why those who work at the CDC did the same. “I think it’s just psychologically really disruptive for me to have to know that our lives are on the line while we’re doing it,” she said.
Saanya Kapasi, who is entering her second year at the UC Berkeley School of Law after graduating from Emory in 2024, saw the news on Instagram from California. She was from Atlanta, lived at Emory Point throughout her undergraduate years, and frequented the CVS.
We could have been caught in the middle of that, she said, adding that it really could have been any one of us, any Emory student at any moment. That’s the biggest lesson I’ve learned from this. Every Emory student is well familiar with the entire area.
It hurt to watch Emory and Atlanta on the news from a distance.
“I truly believed that I wanted to return to Atlanta later in my life, after law school,” she stated. My dream has always been that my children might attend the same high school as me, and perhaps one of them will go Emory since we will have a family connection there and I don’t think it’s a safe city to live in anymore.
Usually, when Georgia makes the headlines, she becomes excited. Her heart sank this time, though.
“It’s really annoying because I want people to think well of my background,” she remarked.
