Today, during an introductory lecture in oceanography, a man stepped onto the stage of the lecture hall from behind the screen and began firing with a shotgun and then a pistol. After firing around 20 shots, the gunman took his own life. 7 are reported dead and 16 others wounded, all of them students. The gunman was apparently "a 27-year-old graduate student in social work at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign," who used to be a sociology student at NIU, according to the Chicago Tribune.
The graphic Tribune story describes what happened in some detail.

The Northern Illinois Campus Alert with notice of vigils and where students can get counseling as well as videos of press conferences.

the New York Times story