All around the Journalism Building Friday, students and professors spread the news with disbelief: A professor’s son was shot and killed the night before.

Arthur Middleton, 16, son of journalism department head Kent Middleton, died Thursday evening in his mother’s home near Cedar Shoals High School.

‘Faculty and staff were walking around in a daze,’ journalism professor Barry Hollander said. ‘There wasn’t a whole lot of urge to do classes.’

About 100 students enrolled in Middleton’s communication law class were met with a ‘class canceled’ sign on the door and no explanation. But the news spread.

Throughout the day, Hollander said, colleagues left campus to visit Middleton’s home.

‘We take seriously the idea that the college is a family of faculty and staff,’ Dean J. Thomas Russell said. ‘Basically everybody’s sympathy is with him and the family.’

At Kent Middleton’s home Monday, family and friends gathered to comfort the parents.

‘A beautiful life was lost for nothing,’ Middleton said, flipping through snapshots of his son. ‘It’s unfathomable.’

Middleton likely will return to work sometime this week.

In lieu of flowers the family asks that donations be made to the Arthur Moog Middleton Scholarship for Music and Writing c/o the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Athens, 780 Timothy Road, Athens, Ga., 30606.