<p>That is horrific. Isn't this the same college where the students who were brutally executed in Newark recently were going?</p>
<p>How terrible, I hope they both survive and aren't permanently injured.</p>
<p>Yes, soozievt, it is. So many of those kids are trying to escape their violent high school world, but sadly it is following them to college.</p>
<p>sticker...</p>
<p>so true.... will our campuses ever be safe again?</p>
<p>They were never safe. </p>
<p>
[quote]
April 16, 2007
A gunman kills 32 people in a dorm and a classroom building at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va. The suspect then dies by gunshot himself.
bullet holes in car windshield
Shel Hershorn / Getty Images</p>
<p>Aug. 1, 1966
Charles Whitman points a rifle from the observation deck of the University of Texas at Austin's Tower and begins shooting in a homicidal rampage that goes on for 96 minutes. Sixteen people are killed, 31 wounded.</p>
<p>July 12, 1976
Edward Charles Allaway, a custodian in the library of California State University, Fullerton, fatally shoots seven fellow employees and wounds two others. Mentally ill, Allaway believed his colleagues were pornographers and were forcing his estranged wife to appear in their movies. A judge found him innocent by reason of insanity in 1977 after a jury was unable to reach a verdict and he was committed to the state mental health system.</p>
<p>Nov. 1, 1991
Gang Lu, 28, a graduate student in physics from China, reportedly upset because he was passed over for an academic honor, opens fire in two buildings on the University of Iowa campus. Five University of Iowa employees killed, including four members of the physics department, one other person is wounded. The student fatally shoots himself.
National guard troops at Kent State
Reuters via Corbis</p>
<p>May 4, 1970
Four students were killed and nine wounded by National Guard troops called in to quell anti-war protests on the campus of Kent State University in Ohio.</p>
<p>Oct. 28, 2002
Failing University of Arizona Nursing College student and Gulf War veteran Robert Flores, 40, walks into an instructor's office and fatally shoots her. A few minutes later, armed with five guns, he enters one of his nursing classrooms and kills two more of his instructors before fatally shooting himself.</p>
<p>Sept. 2, 2006
Douglas W. Pennington, 49, kills himself and his two sons, Logan P. Pennington, 26, and Benjamin M. Pennington, 24, during a visit to the campus of Shepherd University in Shepherdstown, W.Va.
Peter Odighizuwa
Jason R. Davis / AP</p>
<p>Jan. 16, 2002
Graduate student Peter Odighizuwa, 42, recently dismissed from Virginia's Appalachian School of Law, returns to campus and kills the dean, a professor and a student before being tackled by students. The attack also wounds three female students.</p>
<p>Aug. 15, 1996
Frederick Martin Davidson, 36, a graduate engineering student at San Diego State, is defending his thesis before a faculty committee when he pulls out a handgun and kills three professors.</p>
<p>Jan. 26, 1995
Former law student Wendell Williamson shoots two men to death and injures a police officer in Chapel Hill, N.C.
Jonathan Rowan
AP</p>
<p>April 2, 2007
University of Washington researcher Rebecca Griego, 26, is shot to death in her office by former boyfriend Jonathan Rowan who then turned the gun on himself.</p>
<p>Aug. 28, 2000
James Easton Kelly, 36, a University of Arkansas graduate student recently dropped from a doctoral program after a decade of study and John Locke, 67, the English professor overseeing his coursework, are shot to death in an apparent murder-suicide.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>As terrible as these are, consider: these dozen incidents span 40 years at 1,500 colleges and universities that might average - what? - 5,000 students each? Of course these aren't the only violent crimes over that period at the nation's college campuses, but the amount of violent crime per capita on college campuses is just a fraction of what it is in the larger society. Though an airplane crash is a horrifying event that generates a tremendous amount of media atention, air travel remains the statistically safest mode of travel. Similarly, while campus violence is particularly shocking to us, I have no doubt that college campuses are among the safest public places in our culture.</p>
<p>D's college has just announced (after extensive debate) that they will allow campus security to be armed for the first time.</p>
<p>Is this the norm on most campuses now?</p>
<p>k- we have inner city kids shot daily, we have women raped, we have old people mugged, and I have a college student, do college students get special attention over all the others murdered daily?</p>
<p>why?</p>
<p>why not focus on the darn guns fallng into the wrong hands</p>
<p>kind of sad to me we get all excited ONLY when it happens to some college kids, but let slide the other DAILY horrific things that happen to young people all over the country</p>
<p>and this is horrid, but I wonder about the coverage awarded this while so much is ignored</p>
<p>ummm...because this is a college forum</p>
<p>CGM....other crimes and murders and the issues surrounding them get lots of coverage.</p>
<p>I think when there are school shootings, there is another element involved in that schools should be safe havens. One should be able to go to school and have some level of security that they are safer than in the outside world. It may not be possible but there is an aspect about a school shooting that differs from the many shootings that are also horrific in general society. Both are covered for different reasons. Did you not see the enormous attention given to the brutal execution style shootings of the young students in Newark (not on their college campus which happens to also be Delaware State)? So, attention is focused on these terrible crimes that exist outside of schools as well. It is not an either/or proposition. This story makes sense to discuss on a college forum, however.</p>
<p>I don't agree with you that people only get "excited" about crimes that happen to college kids. </p>
<p>I don't know your point here....should we not get concerned about this crime because there are other worse ones out in the world? It is not one or the toher. Both are big issues.</p>
<p>"...other crimes and murders and the issues surrounding them get lots of coverage."</p>
<p>When a young black kid gets shot in the inner-city here, believe me, it does not make CNN. Sometimes it doesn't even warrant a newspaper article in our local paper. No huge search or lock downs take place. Actually, no one really cares at all.</p>
<p>The news feeds on the mistaken belief that people who are wealthy, or white, or in college won't be victims of crimes, or that there is something inherently "worse" when they are.</p>
<p>The other element here is that we have entrusted our kids to an institution that is expected to ensure, as much as possible, a safe environment. We pay for that expectation along witht hose of a good education. We expect schools to inspect for fire hazards, to control access to the dorms, etc. Safety is a big issue in the information sessions during Q&A. With the number of incidents around binge drinking, suicides, shootings, rapes, fights and assaults, the image of college as a safe haven is changing and that is newsworthy. I was listening to something on the radio about how to improve safety at colleges and I keep wondering why we don't go back to having housemothers or resident assistants as we had (married and in graduate school). Please don't tell me that kids should be independent at l8. I just read another article about how kids today are far less independent and mature at l8 than they were 30 years ago. Kids do not separate fully from their parents now until 25 or 27 according to this article. Seems to me having an adult figure in place in living areas, not as a mother/father figure but as a presence and a resource, would go a long way to helping with the social and safety issues plaguing schools today.</p>
<p>News, by its very definition, focuses on the unusual. Young black kids getting shot in certain neighborhoods is, unfortunately, not "newsworthy" because, among other things, it happens so often. It's just "business as usual." </p>
<p>When murders occur in places in which they usually don't, involving people who usually aren't involved, it becomes news.</p>
<p>Rileydog, I applaud your suggestions and would love to see them implemented. An RA barely a year older than my d is not terribly comforting.</p>
<p>Rileydog, my college has a system like you're describing. We have RAs like most schools do, and then we have Resident Heads, who are graduate students who live with their families in every "house" on campus--houses range from about 30-110 students, with most houses around 60 or 70 students. They have a large presence in the house; they talk to any students they have concerns about, help students who are having personal problems, lead weekly House Meetings, go with students to the ER or hospital, help students who are overly intoxicated, etc. They are not there to police students at all. Everyone feels really comfortable with the RHs because they're there to support and help students. There are also Resident Masters who preside over an entire building; they're usually professors or senior staff members, and they play a smaller role in everyday issues. I do know of a student who was exhibiting very strange behavior who was taken to the ER and mental hospital by his Resident Master. Anyway, the system is really fantastic, and I think it works well. It's very comforting to know that the Resident Heads are down the hall in case you break your foot, are worried about a friend after a party, have been harassed in some way (you can go to someone who knows you and maybe both of you instead of calling up some strange dean), feel unusually depressed and anxious, hate your roommate, or anything else.</p>
<p>corranged - Sounds perfect - what a great system and I am sure you are not alone in feeling comforted that there is a resource available to you for all of these issues. If you don't want to name your school would you PM me the name? I think this is just what S2 needs. Is there engineering there? If not, I might get him to switch to physics if I have to (smile). BTW, I do apologize for my grammar and spelling. I never check before posting.</p>
<p>Corranged - The features you describe have merits to be sure and I agree that in general, smaller and more personalize is better. But can you honestly say that they prevent all violent incidents? Colleges have a responsibility to provide all due diligence possible to promote - not ensure - the safety of their students. But the incident at Delaware State now sounds like the aftermath of an argument that occurred off-campus. The emerging story seems to be one of an angry person getting a gun and shooting at two students from a distance under cover of darkness while the students were outside a building. Once the perpetrator in this case made the decision to carry out the act, the likelihood of any campus authority being able to prevent it would have been virtually nil - a frustrating aspect of the times in which we live, but unfortunately true.</p>
<p>
[quote]
But can you honestly say that they prevent all violent incidents?
[/quote]
Um, no. That's why I didn't say that--or even come close to implying it. </p>
<p>Rileydog, I go to the University of Chicago. I don't always include the name of my school in my posts because I don't want to come across as a salesman, but there are many things I love about my college, so I find myself posting about them fairly often. :) We don't have engineering, though physics and, especially, math are supposed to be excellent, I've heard. It's not a school for everybody: for the core, your son would need to take nine courses in the humanities, social sciences, civilizations, and arts; six courses in math and the sciences, which shouldn't be a problem; and fulfill a language competency requirement. In short, if your son wouldn't want to study the Iliad or Aristotle or Freud--or be around students who want to study those texts--he should probably pick another school.</p>
<p>I am not familiar with the details of this case but perhaps one of the students would have gone to a resident adviser with concerns or fears, maybe another student would have heard comments or threats and reported them to an available adult figure, or maybe someone would have anonymously tipped the adult figure that a student had a gun on campus, if that was the case (maybe all of this happened off campus, don't know). I do think the college should ensure my kid's safety as much as reasonable btw. I am paying a fair amount of money, frankly, for that environment to be reasonably secure. My son is at a Southern college and he saw kids with guns in the dorms - apparently some kids are quite used to having a gun with them. This was shocking to us and I surely expect the school to monitor for that, for access to the dorms, etc.</p>
<p>Pye:</p>
<p>Many campus police are now sworn law officer officers with arrest powers. They are armed.</p>
<p>Here at UW, the UWPD has over 125 civilian and sworn employees.</p>