I'm white, female, and Catholic; I have never felt unsafe or truly discriminated against in my life.

Why? It's because I'm "The norm."

This past month has been tragic, to say the least. The world lost eleven peaceful souls to senseless violence. I can't even begin to understand what was going through this evil person's mind when they chose to end the lives of the people in the synagogue. I will say, I believe that fear was apart of it.

We're all so afraid of each other's differences. We would be more willing to be prejudice than educated in other people's religions/cultures. I truly think that this senseless violence was because of religious intolerance. There is absolutely no reason to not educate our students in religious tolerance. When we don't have concrete answers, we assume. We assume that other religions are wrong, or immoral, and hateful. Your beliefs do not make another person's differing beliefs invalid.

In addition to teaching religious tolerance, mental health awareness education needs to be mandatory in schools. The people performing these violent acts are ill.

I believe we let too many people go undiagnosed/untreated. I believe that educators need to be able to recognize when a person needs help. We need to abolish the term "kid stuff" when students display hateful/violence tendencies, it needs to be addressed right then and there. Dangerous children usually grow in to even more dangerous adults.

We need to own up to the fact that we all have so much to learn. We need to be willing to have open and honest conversations about our beliefs. There is no way to justify the tragedy in Pittsburgh, but there is a way to prevent more senseless violence. We need to stop being uncomfortable with each other and start educating each other. Religion is a set of beliefs, not a set of individual characteristics; meaning a person's religion does not define who they are as a person.