Are universities safe?

A year ago that question was tested at Virginia Tech, and a few months ago at Northern Illinois University. University administrators, faculty, parents and students are naturally raising questions of campus safety. Some obvious measures are increasing the on-campus presence of university police and improving mechanisms to identify troubled or violent students. This, however, is much more complicated than it sounds.

What we do know is that simply declaring a campus a “gun free zone” doesn’t protect anyone. Take, for instance, the Appalachian School of Law shooting, where a killer was stopped by armed students. Allowing guns in the hands of permit-holding students and faculty could be a viable solution to improving safety.

Of course, it isn’t an infringement of rights if guns remain banned from the hands of individuals on campus. Universities, like any private entity, can restrict activities of those on their property. But allowing faculty and staff, at least, to carry guns, could result in safer schools.

As shown time and time again, a shooter can bring a weapon very easily to campus; the question is whether law-abiding adults will be armed or not. Naturally, situations differ across universities; what works for a small-town school in Texas may not work for an inner-city school in Los Angeles. But universities should honestly consider this option, which has been ignored or belittled as an extremist cause.

However, 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.