The Broken Promise of Campus Safety

You know what’s messed up? I saw the news about Brown University, another shooting right during finals. Two kids dead, nine hurt. One was a freshman who wanted to be a neurosurgeon. Gone. Just like that.

We do the drills, we get the alerts on our phones. They tell us college is safe. But a student at Brown said it herself: she thought when you got to a place like that, you were finally safe. What a joke. The fear doesn’t leave, it just follows you from high school to college. This was the 389th mass shooting this year. 389! We’re not shocked anymore, we’re just tired and angry.

They’ll give us thoughts and prayers. They’ll review some “safety plans”. But let’s be real: if a gunman can walk into an Ivy League school and do this, nowhere is safe. We’re not protecting our kids. We’re failing them, over and over. When does it end?