2008 Woodie Awards
School shootings too prevalent
Heather Cosson
Issue date: 3/31/08 Section: Voices & Times
What has our world come to? Schools no are longer safe places. It seems as though every time I turn on the news, someone else has been shot at another school.
It started with Columbine in 1999. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, students who had been bullied, decided to take their revenge on the rest of the student body. Then, a few months later, a seventh-grade student in Oklahoma followed suit and went to school with a gun, where he shot and injured four students.
For a few years, it calmed down, and schools seemed secure.
Schools should be safe. Many students spend more time at school than they do at home - that's how it was for me. Between work, extracurricular activities and hanging out with friends, I was at school far more often than I was at home.
School becomes a second home for many people. When you reach college, this certainly is the case for many, as well.
With the majority of freshmen and sophomores living on campus here, school really is home. Homes are meant to be a haven, a sanctuary - somewhere you go when you need a safe place, when you need a place to relax.
It's much more difficult to do that now.
On April 16, Seung-Hui Cho shot students and teachers at Virginia Tech, killing 32 people. On Valentine's Day, a Northern Illinois University graduate shot and killed five students in a lecture hall on campus.
On March 4, Lauren Burk, a freshman at Auburn University, was murdered near the campus. Three days later, Eve Carson, the student body president at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, was murdered about one mile from campus.
What kind of world do we live in, where people murder innocent people for no reason?
This is supposed to be the land of the free, the home of the brave. Yet, all I see are cowards - people who are too afraid of their own obstacles, and instead of getting over them, they drag other people down with them. I just hope people start thinking more - about both their lives and about others' lives.
We need to get back to the point when schools were safe places.
When schools make the news, it should be for feats they've accomplished, not for tragedies that have occurred.
It started with Columbine in 1999. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, students who had been bullied, decided to take their revenge on the rest of the student body. Then, a few months later, a seventh-grade student in Oklahoma followed suit and went to school with a gun, where he shot and injured four students.
For a few years, it calmed down, and schools seemed secure.
Schools should be safe. Many students spend more time at school than they do at home - that's how it was for me. Between work, extracurricular activities and hanging out with friends, I was at school far more often than I was at home.
School becomes a second home for many people. When you reach college, this certainly is the case for many, as well.
With the majority of freshmen and sophomores living on campus here, school really is home. Homes are meant to be a haven, a sanctuary - somewhere you go when you need a safe place, when you need a place to relax.
It's much more difficult to do that now.
On April 16, Seung-Hui Cho shot students and teachers at Virginia Tech, killing 32 people. On Valentine's Day, a Northern Illinois University graduate shot and killed five students in a lecture hall on campus.
On March 4, Lauren Burk, a freshman at Auburn University, was murdered near the campus. Three days later, Eve Carson, the student body president at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, was murdered about one mile from campus.
What kind of world do we live in, where people murder innocent people for no reason?
This is supposed to be the land of the free, the home of the brave. Yet, all I see are cowards - people who are too afraid of their own obstacles, and instead of getting over them, they drag other people down with them. I just hope people start thinking more - about both their lives and about others' lives.
We need to get back to the point when schools were safe places.
When schools make the news, it should be for feats they've accomplished, not for tragedies that have occurred.
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