Colleges and universities in the Philadelphia area this past week were on heightened alert after the FBI issued a warning that there was an anonymous terror threat released on the Internet to “a university near Philadelphia.” This came just two days after the shooting on the Umpqua Community College campus in Oregon. This threat also came just merely days before the shootings at Texas Southern University and Northern Arizona University, which marked the 52nd shooting on school grounds and the 23rd on a college campus this year alone.
While, luckily, so far there has not been an act of terror within the Philadelphia region, the universities and colleges in Philadelphia are definitely not alone in remaining in constant alert of something horrific happening on their campuses. This fear of danger and terror remains strong for many students, teachers, and school staff members, as well as parents and families, even with the Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990 in place.
The issue at hand has become less and less about politics of gun control, however, and more and more about what is psychologically different in the minds of the people who feel the need to victimize and kill young students, let alone people, with their whole lives ahead of them.
School grounds are supposed to be a safe place for all students, no matter if they are in pre-school or their final year of graduate school. During the school year, students spend more time with their peers and teachers than they do with their own family. A school should have the feeling of security as a home does. However, now, students constantly feel vulnerable to acts of terror, specifically mass shootings, and the warnings from the police and FBI only serve to as justification behind their fear.
So how have we reacted, as a country to all of this?
Firstly, for some people, this will be the first they are hearing of this threat in Philadelphia, and possibly, even the shootings in Texas and or Arizona. Fifty-two shootings in one year is a lot and with everything else going on in the world and in our own everyday lives, we have started to overlook some of these occurrences now. The question, “Did you hear about another mass shooting in a school today?” has become such a frequent question and it lacks the disbelief it should have. This means we have normalized the events and have made it part of our culture that schools and public spaces that were once thought to be completely safe are allowed to be vulnerable places. We have routinized threats and attacks and have made these events into other issues other than the horrific matters at hand.
How do we, as a country, from here change what has become a disgusting norm and promise safety and security in a place where safety of one’s life should not be a concern during any lecture or class?
