“The Youth Voice” is a periodic opinions feature where top student columnists from around the nation take a stand on a topical issue.
In the wake of the Virginia Tech attack, which occurred one year ago, university administrators across the nation reevaluated campus safety measures and instituted policies in an attempt to prevent future large-scale tragedies. Do you think schools have taken adequate measures to improve safety?
Read the responses and comment on which perspective you agree with most.
Mental health services an unglamorous money pit, our best defense
By Kristin Butler, Duke University
If we’re going to prevent large-scale tragedies like the one at Virginia Tech, we need better gun control and mental health services – not text-message alerts and concealed firearms.
The case of shooter Seung-Hui Cho bears this out: Cho, who was once declared “an imminent danger to himself or others,” might still be alive if he’d actually received court-ordered mental health treatment in 2005. Alternatively, his well-documented psychiatric problems should have barred him from owning a gun.
Virginia Tech administrators could have responded much more aggressively to Cho’s increasingly unstable behavior, which included threats against professors and classmates and three reported incidents of stalking.
But no one took advantage of those opportunities, and now 33 people are dead.
Safety and reality
By Daniel Barbero, Harvard University
The uniqueness of school shootings means we can’t prevent them all. There is no universal “profile” for the school shooter, as numerous investigations have learned. Each university shooting in America has been different, each one an outlier to the norm. The grand schemes and policies of governments and universities will one day fail.
And then, stories like Virginia Tech become stories about the people who are there. There will be more heroes like Liviu Librescu, and more murderers like Seung-Hui Cho. They exist in every human society. And perhaps part of the answer to campus safety is this: we do our best to protect ourselves and build a safe, just environment.
At the end of the day, we must now recognize that we are adults entering the real world. In that world, there is tragedy.
‘I don’t feel safe’ on concealed weapon campus
By Nicholas Pappas, University of Utah
Our campus, which allows students to have concealed weapons, is notorious for gun carriers. We consider campus safety in the same light as the arms race: the more guns around, the safer we’ll all be.
I don’t feel safe at school. I consider education my religion, yet, while guns are not allowed in churches in the state of Utah, they roam free in classrooms.
Since the Virginia Tech shooting, the university has set up a campus safety task force. So far, they are the equivalent of the students sitting in the back. We’ve heard nothing from them, and I’m not sure they’re paying attention anyway.
Our university needs to do more to make the students feel secure, regardless of the cost. After all, flip-flops don’t make much sense when you’re wearing a bullet-proof vest.
We’d be safer with better mental healthcare services, not better locks
By Cathy Wilson, Ohio University
Instead of focusing on preventing the violent acts from occurring by preventing the feeling of anger or frustration, we brace ourselves for the impact instead.
We need to stop protecting ourselves from each other and look to the roots of these problems. These aren’t just people who want attention and like to play with guns – these are people with significant mental instability which needs to be addressed before it gets out of control.
Often, these people attack their peers because they themselves feel like strangers in their world, which is why I’d feel safer with a stronger mental health care system as opposed to an extra lock on my door.
Schools shouldn’t bear burden for preventing attacks
By Nathan Bloom, University of Chicago
I am puzzled by the expectation that universities bear the entire burden of improving campus security in the wake of the Virginia Tech massacre. The job of the university is to provide an education for its students, not to shield them from mass murderers.
The ultimate responsibility for protecting students lies with the local police, and it is they who should bear the lion’s share of the cost of implementing safety upgrades called for by the Virginia tragedy.
That would require taxing local residents somewhat more heavily, but so what? As things stand now, residents of college neighborhoods already benefit from the additional security provided by universities’ private police forces, free riding on universities’ security largess at what is ultimately student expense.
Token security upgrades unnecssary
By Jesse Hathaway, Ohio University
Here at Ohio University, the administration reacted to the Virginia Tech tragedy with all the nimbleness of a stampeding wildebeest.
Meetings were held, opinions were heard, minutes were taken, and after 10 weeks, the head honchos sprang into action.
Instead of locking the outside doors on dormitories at night, they were now to be locked at all times. A public relations campaign was started, warning students about the dangers of letting strangers into the dorms. As with almost every other public relations campaign, this was generally ignored and scoffed at. Now, a campus-wide siren system is in place, and some students signed up to receive text messages in case of danger.
It’s my opinion that the campus was secure as it was, before the token gestures at security.
Leave guns in the hands of capable police
By Abid H. Mujtaba, Texas A&M University
The creation of law enforcement in a society is a milestone in the evolution of a civilization. It signals that people recognize the need for protection against dangerous elements within but also the higher need to provide a mechanism for dealing with those with criminal intent.
The police exist to ensure a judicious manner of dealing with criminals. They are trained to read chaotic situations and react appropriately and responsibly. Let us leave our security in their able hands.
The solution is not transforming our campuses in to the Old West. We should better equip campus police, speed up response times and, more importantly, change national perception so as to make the use of violence repugnant.