Photos posted to snapchat of a professor hit by a truck on campus shocked Sam Houston students last Wednesday.
“I was walking down the street, coming from the LSC, and from a distance, I see a group of people on the street,” freshman Desiree Irizarry Santiago said. “I started hearing ‘he hit her,’ ‘is it a student,’ and ‘I don’t understand how this happened!”
Santiago explains she saw a university truck stopped with the professor lying on the street in front of it. People were hovered over her calling for help on their phones. She says the driver of the SHSU truck was also there talking on his phone.
“Everyone was in shock, but kept walking trying to not make a bigger scene,” Santiago said. “She looked so pale. It was a scary scene.”
News of who the professor began to spread after her students started receiving emails letting them know of the incident and the future of their classes.
“As you may have heard, Dr. Rosanne Barker had an accident on Wednesday and is currently at the Huntsville Memorial Hospital,” an email from the history department reads. “Her injuries will, unfortunately, prevent her to teach for the rest of the semester.”
Other professors will be taking over Barker’s classes for the remainder of the semester.
Santiago mentioned that she did not recognize it was her history professor that was hit until she saw the news on social media.
Another student said her new professor told the class Barker suffered a broken wrist in three places and has to have her hip replaced due to the accident.
Barker is an Associate Professor of History at SHSU started in September 1992, specializing in American Women’s History, Colonial American History, and Native American History. She has taught numerous history classes, from introductory courses to graduate courses and seminars.
“She is sweet, but mostly blunt and unique,” Vontavia Smith, an SHSU alumna who took her class in 2013, said.