University officials cite bolstered police patrols, while students said they were not overly concerned for their own safety
NEWARK -- The NJIT community reacted to the fatal shooting of a fraternity brother Monday with added security and more sorrow than fear, according to university officials and students interviewed on campus.
"It was just really heartbreaking," said Vidhi Parekh, 19, a freshman from North Bergen. "When I read the (president's email) messages, I thought, 'Oh, my god,' I hope that's not true.'"
Parekh, a sister at Alpha Sigma Tau, said she knew the shooting victim, Joseph Micalizzi, a mechanical engineering student, through recent Greek Week activities that mingled her sorority with his fraternity, Tau Kappa Epsilon.
Christian Tavares, a Rutgers junior who attended parties at the TKE fraternity house at NJIT, left a bouquet of flowers. "A great bunch of people," he said.
The messages she referred to were campus-wide emails sent out by NJIT President Joel Bloom, notifying students and faculty of what had happened, but assuring them that, "there is no imminent threat to the campus."
Micalizzi, 23, was shot at about 3:22 a.m. in the TKE frat house on the 300 block of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard, the Essex County Prosecutor's Office said.
The incident remained under investigation, with no arrests made as of Monday evening. Early in the day, NJIT offered a $10,000 reward for information leading to an arrest in the shooting, followed by another $10,000 offer on top of that from the Essex County Sheriff's Office.
It was the second fatal shooting of a student in less than a month in Newark's University Heights section, after the death of Shani Patel, 21, of Toms River, a junior economics major at the Rutgers Newark campus neighboring NJIT.
Parekh and a friend, Priya Ravi, 18, a freshman from Kearny, were in between classes when they paused to talk about their reaction in a busy NJIT quad between the Campus Center and Fenster Hall, which was abuzz with students and looked as if all was normal on Monday afternoon.
Both said they felt safe on campus, and noted that NJIT had provided safety tips during orientation and intermittently throughout the year, for example, don't text while you're walking, which could distract you from potential threats.
They also said they were reassured by the president's emails.
"It's good because they want everybody to be informed, and it shows that they care," said Ravi, whose parents told her at the start of the year not to leave the campus after 9 p.m.
Joe Gedutis, a 20-year-old freshman business major from Hawthorne, said he was "not too concerned" about his safety after the Rutgers or NJIT shooting, and that he tried to follow the advice he got from the school.
"They told us walk in twos or threes, don't be on your phone noticeably, mind your own business," Gedutis said, adding that the school did not discourage students from venturing off campus, only to be mindful of their surroundings while doing so.
A spokeswoman for NJIT, Lauren Ugorji, said patrols by the NJIT Police Department were being bolstered in the wake of the shooting, and that messages wold go out to students reiterating basic safety precautions, including the availability of off and on-campus escorts or rides by NJIT officers.
"Our students can call public safety any time of the night and they can get an escort," Ugorji said. "And we can't emphasize that enough. If they feel unsafe in any way they should call security."
Ugorji said plainclothes and uniformed officers patrolled the campus on foot, on bikes, and in patrol cars, watching out for the school's 11,300 students, inlcuding nearly 7,000 undergraduates. She said about 1,800 students live on campus, although many live in private housing within blocks of the school, including the TKE fraternity house.
Newark's acting public safety director, Anthony Ambrose, said he would meet with Rutgers Chief of Police Carmelo Huertas and NJIT Police Chief Joseph Marswillo "to work on strategies to increase patrols in the area."
Ugorji said that TKE brothers whose house is now a crime scene were being offered free on-campus housing for the two weeks remaining of the semester.
Graduation is May 17, and most classes had ended by Monday, before the start of later this week, she said. Students upset or disrupted by the shooting would be given extra time, Ugorji said.
"Of course, whenever a student feels they need extra time for anything, they can always toalk to our dean of students, and we can make accommodations," she said.
Over the years, Ugorji said NJIT has tried to move fraternity houses onto the campus in order to better police security and other activities, though the issue is a sensitive one because the frats are private organizations that traditionally have resided in private housing. There are now 10 fraternities on campus, and seven off, most on a the same two-block fraternity row along MLK Boulevard where TKE is located.
There are actually two TKE frat houses on that row, one of them the Rutgers TKE house on the 400 block, one block north of the NJIT house. Members of both houses declined to comment on the incident.
Micalizzi was one of 30 current NJIT students who belonged to the TKE chapter, said Alex Baker, chief information officer for at the fraternity national headquarters in Indianapolis, In.
"We are saddened to hear about the shooting of a member of Tau Kappa Epsilon that happened at NJIT," Baker said in a statement. "Our thoughts and prayers are with the member's friends and family."
Like several other local frat houses, each TKE house had its own security measures: an "Emergency" call box outside the Rutgers chapter house front door; and at teh NJIT house, a box with a large red button reading "Help," was well as a sign posted reading, "Warning: Premises protected by 24-hour surveillance."
While several students said they were not concerned for their own safety, that didn't mean mothers and fathers weren't worried. Parekh and Ravi, the NJIT freshmen, said some of their classmates had been ordered home for the remainder of the semester.
"We have friends whose parents were freaked out about it," Parekh said. "And they said, 'We're going to take you home right now.'"
Steve Strunsky may be reached at sstrunsky@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @SteveStrunsky. Find NJ.com on Facebook.