The campus remains closed Friday morning at Northern Illinois University following a horrific shooting yesterday. Six people are now confirmed dead and 16 students are injured—the result of a gunman opening fire in a lecture hall.

Reaction to the shooting has gained international news. Yesterday an emotional John Peters—the president of the university—says he’s received calls of support from people near and far.

PETERS: The governor has called, our senators have called and from here and other states. It’s truly been helpful.

The college town located about 60 miles west of Chicago was left reeling after a lone gunman opened fire on students in a large lecture hall.

University officials say the gunman entered the classroom from the front with a shotgun and two small handguns. They say he appeared to fire at random into the introductory geology class.

He then turned the turned the gun on himself. All in all, officials say the whole thing took only a few minutes.

Police have not released the identity of the gunman yet, but say he was a white male and a former grad student at NIU last spring majoring in Sociology.

He had transferred to another college, but early indications show he had no previous arrest records. President Peters says he’ll begin meeting with students.

PETERS: And do what I can personally to help them through this. And they’ll help me through this.

Peters says he’s canceling all university events until further notice on the campus with about 25,000 students.

He says campus police are working with the FBI on the shooting. Late last year NIU cancelled classes for a day because officials found graffiti written on a bathroom wall.

It had references to last year’s Virginia Tech shootings. Peters says he doesn’t think the graffiti is related to yesterday’s shooting.

From DeKalb, I’m Tony Arnold, Chicago Public Radio.