I can still recall discussing the nuances of my day at school when my mom suggested that I sign up for a self-defense class before college. A self-defense class? Really? My 17-year-old self-considered the idea absolutely absurd and a waste of precious teenage time since being 108 pounds wet with twig arms and maybe my tennis racket in hand would fully equip me to knock someone out. Right? Wrong. But I did not, whatsoever, like the thought of having to prepare myself with roundhouse kicks and MMA style punches because certain little boys are raised with the mentality that women are objects to be quested, conquered and bestowed upon them. Rape statistics, so what? How will they ever learn what is wrong if they're aware we are fighting in preparation, expecting the inevitable to occur to everyone, somewhere, sometime?
This is the hardest pill to swallow, having to surrender to statistics. Facts and figures are indeed black and white, and we can't deny their happenings in spite of their nightmarish wrongdoings. In every corner of ethics, we must continue educating to enact change, but we also can't show up without armor.
Rochester Institute of Technology recently declared that they will be deploying specially trained officers with access to firearms in an effort to proactively protect the campus in the event that there is an imposed violent threat. According to FBI data, approximately 24 percent of all active shooter incidents between 2000 and 2013 occurred at educational institutions. In 2015 alone, 23 shootings occurred on college campuses.
Students immediately reacted to the initiative, many feel threatened and worried that RIT was providing public safety officers with too much power to rightfully possess, potentially fueling the ammo to act on biases and racial profiling. One student issued a petition stating that "to allow guns on a college campus is the opposite of progress. If safety is the priority, why bring firearms on campus? To respond to guns with more guns does not fix anything. It just allows for more reactionary responses, putting students in danger."
Parents, however, flooded social media thanking the university for taking precautionary steps for their student's sake.
Hearing about an active shooting on the morning news is beginning to be as predictable as the cup of coffee that goes with it, and assuming that we won't have an attack because we haven't before is inexplicably ignorant. No one ever thinks a tragedy will happen to them until it does, and I applaud my university for choosing to be safe rather than sorry.
