Memorial sculpture recognizes strength of campus community

Among the tall trees of the UNC Charlotte Botanical Gardens is a new memorial dedicated as part of the University’s 2022 Niner Nation Remembrance of the April 30, 2019, campus shooting.

Designed by Marek Ranis and Tom Schmidt, associate professors of art, the sculpture commemorates how the campus and greater community united to express “We are all Niners.”

Almost immediately after the 2019 shooting that ended the lives of Riley Howell and Reed Parlier and injured four students, the Botanical Gardens invited people to write their feelings and thoughts on small river rocks and leave them in the garden.

Those stones served as the basis for the 12-foot sculpture of larger river rocks erected in the Botanical Gardens and dedicated Thursday, April 28.

Art student and Levine Scholar Danielle Walden, who was a freshman in 2019 and who will graduate in May, said, “I hope future students can visit this site and take the time to move around the sculpture. I hope they reflect deeply on past events, and it encourages them to take better care of each other and themselves in the here and now.”

Meg Whalen, director of communications for the College of Arts + Architecture, chronicled the story of the remembrance sculpture’s creation on the college’s website.