After a fatal shooting near the University of Missouri’s campus early Saturday morning, Raygan McDile received an alert on her phone. She ignored it at first.

“I feel like that happens kind of often,” McDile, a junior at Mizzou studying middle school English education, said in an interview. “Like, OK, another shooting.”

But McDile quickly learned more about the shooting in a group chat for Black students at Mizzou. The chat encouraged students to be safe and show support for the woman who had been killed, Aiyanna Williams, a student at nearby Stephens College.

“They were just providing a moment to just, like, grieve and show support for that student,” McDile said. “I felt really sad after that.”

Students across the sprawling campus of Missouri’s flagship institution are grappling with

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