Virginia Tech Shooting Tragedy

Copied&Pasted directly from Xanga Webpage.

I think that I may seem callous about the brief mention I made of the Virginia Tech shooting yesterday. I do care, and deeply. However at the time, I wasn't aware of the facts, of the death toll, and the situation, as I hadn't been online more than long enough to check my email and write a few sentences here on Xanga.

I think it is disgusting, disturbing, and absolutely horrible that anyone would consider opening fire on anyone else outside of a war zone (and even in war, I'd err on the side of diplomacy first). Personally, I want to keep my statements clean and precise. I don't want to make erroneous and global statements such as "this is happening with increasing frequency" because it's not. Nor do I want to say that "it's due to violent video games and crime dramas on the silver and small screens" because it's not. Nor do I want to say that we "should get rid of the second amendment because it leads to things like this;" while the ability to get guns does increase the likelihood of gun-related deaths, a large majority of those crimes are in poor neighborhoods, accidental shootings, and such. If I had time (i.e., did not have 2 10-page term papers due next week) I'd spout off statistics, show research articles, and the FBI's crime data for the last several years regarding violence, guns, and the decreasing number of gun violence among adolescents and young adults (18-24).

Perhaps one concern that resonates largely with me, is that of my fellow college students here at USC and across the nation: the lack of prompt and timely response of campus police and safety officials to assess the situation and lock the campus down earlier rather than later. USC is an open-campus. We do have gated entrances, but they don't close until late at night, and even then at least one gate is open 24 hours, 365 days because people need to get in and out of campus for various reasons (i.e., go home from 24hr library, go to the hospital, etc). We don't have safety officials checking each person who walks onto campus, that would be impossible. In most cases, this is just like any other college campus. We're relatively safe, and we're not actually located at the epicenter of South Central Los Angeles; we're closer to the nice and safer area with the sports areana, the Los Angeles Downtown business section (including a huge jewelry district), and museums. These businesses don't exist in the more rundown areas of the city.

It's all well and fine to lock down campus and sequester students in their dorm rooms, unless you're a commuter. There are more than 4,900 undergraduate commuters and nearly all graduate students here at USC are commuters as well from as far away as Chino or Newport Beach (2+ hours one-way trip). USC might think they have it all planned out, but I as a commuter have not been made aware of what they would do concerning my safety. I don't know where I would go. I often don't have more than $20 on me, so I could only feed myself for so long on campus if an emergency such as a shooting or an earthquake should occur while I am on campus. I have not been made aware of what provisions would be made for commuters in such circumstances. I'm not sure many other students who live on or near campus are aware themselves of the univeristy's plans for emergencies either.

What about other students? I'm guessing you feel and think along the same general lines?

~*~

Regarding Daniel's comment: I don't think something like this can be planned for, and I'd certainly swap staying in a dorm room waiting for a killer to go away for commuting on another LA freeway any day.

I had a jumble of thoughts in my mind this morning as I commuted to campus, and I just kept thinking that USC wouldn't bother to have thought of our safety yesterday if this tragedy had not occured. It was the same when Columbine occured. My teachers and principle did not care about my friends and I getting bullied day in and day out (I'm not exaggerating here) until after Columbine's shooting occured in 1998. By the time my teachers bothered to care, the damage was done. I had been depressed, I had been suicidal and no one gave a fuck, because its just "teasing" its just "fun and games." I understand the hindsight is 20/20. Let that not be your excuse.

Events like this cannot be planned for, but precautions should be taken before hand, not afterwards. It's foresight that would save us all from a lot of grief and pain