Last week, a couple of my teachers discussed the shooting that occurred at the community college in Oregon. We talked about how sad it was for the community and how the media chose to report this terrible and violence massacre, but to be honest, I didn't feel extremely emotional about the entire event. It happened so far away from where I was, and it felt so foreign to me. I almost felt numb to the violence.
Just 14 days later, I found myself laying in bed when I received a text message from 'Orange Alert' the pre-downloaded emergency alert system. The only texts I had ever received from this number previously were trial texts that immediately got deleted. This text, however, was not a test. It simply read, "SPD investigating crime off campus, shelter in place. Remain in doors, don’t let anyone in, stay out of Oakwood Cemetery, report suspicious activity.”
I sat up in bed. Text messages began pouring in from my friends, colleagues, peers. I scrolled through twitter, trying to get a sense of what was going on. My eyes flashed across startling phrases: "shooting," "one dead," "suspects on the loose," What had happened in Oregon, what has happened countless times on college campuses, was no longer hundreds of miles away. It was here, at my school.
And yet, while I sat in bed and listened to the horn blasting throughout the campus, which sounded eerily like the siren in that horror movie "Silent Hill," I wasn't feeling scared. In fact, I felt almost ambivalent about what was happening. I felt entirely safe perched on the fourth floor of a nondescript dorm on the other side of campus. The likelihood of this shooter coming into this particular dorm and wreaking havoc seemed unlikely. I began to hear sirens overhead. I face-timed with my parents, watched Netflix. I thought about the Graphic Design project I had tomorrow. I decided to use the lockdown as an excuse for turning the assignment in late.
Two and a half hours later, the lock-down was lifted. My friends came home, grumbling about getting stuck in the basement of Archibold or the lobby of Life Sciences. As we sat around our common room and watched the new "American Horror Story," I thought about the lockdown.
In reality, it was a very scary situation in which something could have seriously gone wrong. I realized that it's hard to understand a situation like in Oregon or at Virginia Tech until it happens on your campus. This event seemed to make all the other events more real. The morning after, I saw our school on the news, instead of just another college an entire plane ride away. It's true when they say "It could happen to anyone," because truly, it can.
