Editor’s Note: This article contains reference to gun violence and death.

This letter from the editor accompanies a guest column written by Timothy Johnson, a former NC State student incarcerated for homicide. Technician seeks to platform all perspectives and invites nuanced discourse. Letters to the editor may be sent to technician-editor@ncsu.edu.

Twenty years ago, NC State student Timothy Johnson opened fire at the NC State fairgrounds and killed two people on the day of the football season home opener.

The Wolfpack saw two people die at the hands of one of their own. It was a day that changed the NC State community irrevocably.

Earlier this month, Johnson submitted a guest column to Technician reflecting on the murders 20 years later. Upon reading it, I knew it needed to be run by our publication. Johnson details how, despite seemingly having everything going for him, he fell into a life of violence that ultimately led him to commit these murders.

It’s an honest and retrospective view of a tragic time in NC State history from the very person who caused that tragedy. Johnson doesn’t shy away from this. He takes ownership of the crime while showing remorse for the murders themselves and for the choices he made that led him there.

Each of us could learn from his ability to take responsibility for his wrongdoings and his message to not compromise your values. For this reason, Technician is publishing this guest column because I believe it not only deserves, but needs to be read by our students.

More than that, Technician is publishing this column out of respect for our journalistic duty to display every angle of the story we’re telling. Technician reported on these murders and the trial that followed extensively in 2004 and the years after. Johnson’s perspective that he offers in this column is one that would have been impossible for Technician to report at the time. Now that Technician has access to that, it is only right for us to publish it just as we did 20 years ago.

A fundamental component of Technician’s mission is to function as a meeting place for campus discussions. Not only is it our obligation to report on every aspect of this story, it would be a disservice to our community to inhibit this column from public consumption.

Johnson’s remorse and newfound perspective will not undo the harm he caused. It won’t bring back the people he killed, and it won’t heal those hurt in the wake of it. What I hope the column might do is teach today’s Wolfpack about the way that each individual choice is contributing to who we will ultimately become and what we will be remembered for.