VESTAL, N.Y. — One after another, students and faculty members at Binghamton University trickled out of a classroom lab that had been converted, for convenience and tragic necessity, into a grieving room for the day.
Many held one another. Some cried after walking past the small office of Prof. Richard T. Antoun. Others tried to divert their attention by talking about exams and papers that are due as the semester comes to an end on Friday.
On Friday, Dr. Antoun was killed in his office by a student who repeatedly stabbed him, according to authorities. On Monday, the first full day of classes since the killing, Dr. Antoun’s office was locked and the light was off; a single lavender-colored flower was at the foot of the door.
Inside the office, things looked remarkably normal. There were stacks of books and papers, and a sketch of Iraq — Dr. Antoun was an expert in Middle East studies — drawn on a chalkboard.
Meanwhile, a clearer picture began to emerge of the mind-set of the suspect, Abdulsalam S. al-Zahrani, in the hours and days before the killing. According to classmates and a professor, he was distressed about not getting financial aid, and was trying to figure out how to finance his dissertation fieldwork in Detroit.
Dr. Antoun served on a dissertation committee overseeing Mr. Zahrani, and while the suspect had never suggested to his roommates that he was angry at the professor, he was clearly agitated about his status in the anthropology department.
Less than an hour before Dr. Antoun was stabbed, Mr. Zahrani had met with another professor, asking if he could transfer into the philosophy, interpretation and culture program and receive financial aid, according to the professor, Joshua Price. Dr. Price said that Mr. Zahrani was visibly nervous about his financial situation.
Mr. Zahrani’s roommates also said that they had noticed his increasingly erratic and violent behavior, and one of them said that he had warned university personnel in recent weeks about the possibility of Mr. Zahrani’s being even more of a threat.
In a statement released on Monday, Lois B. DeFleur, the president of Binghamton University, did not address whether campus officials had reacted appropriately. She said that the university’s campus was safe and that the suspect had been quickly apprehended and “isolated and contained to a wing of the Science 1 building, and there was no immediate danger to the rest of the campus community.”
On campus, students and faculty dealt with the tragedy in different ways.
Those from the anthropology department met for about 90 minutes on Monday in the same building where Dr. Antoun kept his office. Some of those who attended the meeting said that the group talked about how it was not only a tragedy that Dr. Antoun had been killed, but also that a member of their community had been accused of committing the act.
“We are all stricken with sadness for both parties,” said Prof. H. Stephen Straight. “It’s a terrible tragedy what happened to Dick, and it is a tragedy that the alleged suspect was one of us.”
Dr. Straight said that university officials had advised those at the meeting not to speak with the media, but he chose to speak publicly because of a relationship with Dr. Antoun that extended back to the 1970s, when they both began teaching at Binghamton.
“It’s tragically ironic that he would fall victim to someone who had been paranoid and delusional about his identity,” Dr. Straight said. “Dick had spent his whole life trying to understand people and their identities.”
According to Andrew Merriweather, the director of anthropology graduate studies, Mr. Zahrani, who is Saudi, was well regarded and had planned to travel to Dearborn, Mich., to do his fieldwork for his dissertation.
“We admitted him, we are very selective,” Dr. Merriweather said. “He came in with a master’s degree and he did very well in his classes compared to other students.”
The Broome County public defender’s office was approved on Monday to represent Mr. Zahrani, although he may yet choose to request a private lawyer, according to Jay L. Wilber, the head of the public defender’s office.
Michael D. Regan contributed reporting.
