I remember the first time I heard about a school shooting. I was in the fifth grade and I heard on the news that a man went into a Amish school in Lancaster, PA and shot multiple children. At that age I didn’t fully understand what was going on. I was convinced someone was going to come into my school that day with a gun because I thought that was how those things worked, so I was scared.
I remember when I was a senior in high school and I found out there was an active shooter on Wayne Community College’s campus. I also remember finding out I had been sitting in a doctors office waiting room with the shooter the day before, he was picking up his Grandfather from an appointment. That event was a little too close to home for me, which was quite frightening.
I remember experiencing the fear of thinking there was a shooter on my college campus. I woke up at 6 a.m. to the emergency siren going off and a text from my best friend that someone robbed the BP Station and had run on campus with a gun. None of us knew whether this person was on campus to hurt us or to run from the police. It was scary to think that what you see so often on the news can happen right in your back yard.
Last week there was a shooting on the campus of UCLA. When I found out I was horrified that yet again, someone was killing in order to seek “justice.” Having friends at UCLA I was very concerned for their safety. Luckily they were alright, but two people passed away in what is now being called a murder suicide, a graduate student killing his professor and himself. It has been speculated that this event was due to the student’s unhappiness with a grade. To me, this is horrifying.
It is crazy that so many people are dying at the hands of others all over the world in places where they are suppose to be safe. What is extremely horrifying about the events of UCLA is that a student could have been so upset over a grade that he decided to kill his professor. I can’t help but ask myself if this event could have been prevented. I also continuously ask myself if so much pressure is being put on grades now a days that it is literally driving students to do crazy irrational things. I’m not saying this has to be pressure brought on by an outward force, but it could be the pressure that the person is putting on himself or herself. I remember a few years back when a college track athlete at the University of Pennsylvania committed suicide due to the amount of pressure she had put on herself. Emotions can make people due crazy irrational things. I just honestly wish we could all stop taking ourselves so seriously and just choose to love people where they are at. As cliché as that sounds, love could change the world.
