Are College Campuses Safe Anymore?
In the news, there has been an influx of mass shootings going on for months now. 2019 seems to be the year where mass shooting has increased in the public awareness in the media with some 248 mass shootings since the beginning of this year to now.
Last year there were 323 mass shootings and we are hoping that the year 2019 won’t be host to a couple dozen more shootings. Given this atmosphere, the question America should be asking itself is how safe are our schools.
Times Have Changed...
Elementary, primary, middle, and high-schools have adopted safety measures for security. The age when someone could walk through the door inside a school is over with electronic locks, metal detectors, and an intercom to vet strangers.
Colleges are especially vulnerable to mass shootings. Within last month a shooting occurred due to some altercation about noise at Clark Atlanta University. In the rough and tumble neighborhood that surrounds it, and even with its police force present, universities like CAU with their open campuses are exceptionally susceptible to individuals brandishing a rifle.
For such people with nothing to lose, college campuses are perfect places to seek notoriety on the news.
What Causes It?
Circumstances leading to gun violence on school grounds can occur for a variety of other reasons such as relationship problems, drunkenness, and depression. With young adults fresh out of high school,immaturity has not been weeded out of them yet and relationship mishaps can have disastrous consequences when mixed with booze, drugs, and guns.
This fact is made all the more grim with laws allowing students to have guns on campus, which seems like a bad idea. Given the aforementioned hazards, is America going to have to adopt the same stringent protections we give to elementary students in regards to our campuses? Were security and police forces as prevalent in the past in America’s schools as compared to now? The future may not be favorable to open campus colleges.
Will the college campus, a place of learning and transitioning into adulthood, be a place of bars and walls?
