OC2: School Shootings. Do I as a student feel safe?

Recently as you may have heard their was yet again another school shooting. This time at the Northern Illinois University. These shootings make me wonder what brings these kids to do such things, do they have something mentally wrong with them or do they have a conscience but are so angered about something they use violence at school for their answer. The more and more I hear about these shootings I start to be more worried about what could possibly happen at my very own schools.

But what scares me the most is how these shootings are happening in a college environment where students don't have their parents to watch over them, keep them safe, or give advice to the kids on how to deal with their issues. If you think about it, college campuses really aren't that safe, you have roomates (if you live in a dorm) whom are usually total strangers when you first get to the college. You also have classrooms, open campuses and personal life issues to deal with and without proper guidance of how to defend yourself as well as the guidance to work through your problems and feel like your a safe environment at your school things can go terribly wrong. I also wonder if the admissions of these colleges researches enough information on each person applying to their college in order to make sure that the applicant and possibly future student of the univerity is mentally stable and a very good and kind person.

The sad thing about these college shootings is that college is suppose to be the time of your life, where you grow the most as a person and a student, but for something to happen that would ruin that experience, would be dreadful and turn that great experience into a terrible experience.

To learn more about the NIU school shooting you can go to http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23200851/ for more info.

Also in another article which can be found at http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/02/15/university.shooting/index.html?iref=newssearch the writer says that the Virginia Tech shooter and the NIU shooter were both supported by this same website. Sorta creepy huh? Well sometimes the online world really does scare me and sometimes I wonder if we as people would be better off if the internet never existed. Yes we would not have as easy of access to everything but more crimes and controversies then ever before have been caused just because of the internet.

--KP