It is a sad, harsh world that we live in.
On the morning of November 28, 2016, Ohio State University officials sent out an alert on what they thought was a shooter. They warned students to, "Run. Hide. Fight." After putting the campus on lockdown and asking students to remain inside, the culprit was shot by police. After further investigation it was discovered that the only shots fired were by the police. The attacker, Abdul Razak Ali Artan, was discovered to have driven his car into a small crowd of people who were evacuating a building after a fire alarm was pulled. The man then got out of his car and began to stab people with was has been reported as a butcher knife.
The man who attacked campus was a student of Ohio State University who was also a Somalian refugee. This has stirred up a lot of controversy and many people are using this attack as a reason to block refugees from entering the country. While this is the opinion of many, others are saying that this man legally came into the country and that his actions should not represent all refugees as a whole. A lot of the people in Artan's life said that they never saw this coming. However, a few hours before the attack, a social media post which was believed to have been written stated that he was "sick and tired of [his] fellow Muslim brothers and sisters being killed everywhere."
In the aftermath it was totaled that 11 people were injured in the attack and the only death was that of the attacker. The police officer who ended the attack, Alan Horujko, has also been given a lot of mixed feedback by the media. Many have praised Officer Horujko as a hero while others are condemning him, saying that gun use was unnecessary as the attacker was not in possession of any firearms.
Another campus stabbing occurred on December 2, 2016 by a University of Southern California student. David Jonathon Brown, a USC grad student fatally stabbed his professor, Bosco Tjan. Tjan a psychology professor and was Brown's mentor. The stabbing occurred after a dispute allegedly occurred between the two. Unlike the Ohio State attack, the student only targeted one victim and authorities declared that the safety of USC's campus was uncompromised and that students could continue to safely go about business on campus.
Both instances ended in the loss of a life and, as a college student myself, I found both of these to be absolutely heartbreaking. A student should never feel unsafe while getting and education and, especially in the case of Ohio State, a lot of students could potentially feel unsafe enough that their education is comprised. My heart goes out to both of the lives that were lost in these tragedies, because both were victims in their own way. The world we live in such a scary place and we can all only hope that one day that violence will stop and we will no longer live in fear of each other.
