School Shootings: Not A Distant Fear

One month into 2020, there have already been eleven recorded school shootings; if this rate continues, the projected number of shootings looks to surpass the amount of the previous years of the decade.

Gun violence is an ever-present issue that haunts the United States.  Considering the rate of shootings in K-12 schools today has immensely grown over the past decade, with 100 more shootings in 2018 than in 2011.  The upcoming generation has a weighty connection to these acts of violence. Since the infamous Parkland Shooting on Feb. 18, 2018, the United States has averaged a school shooting every 11.8 days.

School shootings, though tragic to hear about, can feel like a distant fear to many students who have never directly dealt with the act of violence. Many students acknowledge that school shootings are extremely real and terrifying, but they feel a disconnect from the actual possibility, as they think ‘it could never happen at my school or to someone I know.’

However, the violent mass act changes the lives of exponentially more people than were directly part of the shooting. No matter the number of people directly involved, the event significantly affects every student attending the school, those within the district, families who live in the area and alumni to the school. Therefore, even though there has never been a shooting on the St. Lawrence University campus, for many St. Lawrence students the fear of school shootings is a reality.

For me, my life changed on Nov. 14, 2019, when Saugus High School student Nathaniel Burhow pulled a handgun from his backpack and shot five fellow students and eventually himself. Not only am I a Saugus High graduate, but my brother and underclassmen friends were on campus during the incident.

The shooting occurred minutes after 10:30 a.m., the beginning of my FYP class, so I exited the classroom at noon to find over 200 texts on my phone, the first one I read being from an old friend asking, “Is your brother ok?” 

Scrolling through the texts as I walked to Dana, I gleaned information from the messages, my friends around me conversing cheerfully as I read my hometown friend’s texts she had sent during the shooting about how much she loved us and how scared she was.

Walking into the dining hall, I was greeted with the usual chaos of Dana. It was hard to fathom that my family and friends’ lives would never be the same — so many people I am close with are now diagnosed with PTSD and receiving medical help — and that my brother, sophomore Saugus student Addison Hill, hid in the darkness for two hours before being escorted, hands up, to the two and a half hour process of evacuating students off campus once the shooter had been brought to the Henry Mayo Hospital in critical condition. 

My brother detailed the emotional experience he went through: “I felt utterly scared for my life being trapped in the room hearing all these sounds, watching the news and seeing my classmates brought out on a stretcher.”

Yet, while thousands of students were experiencing similar traumas, and I was dealing with the fact that my brother faced a trauma darker than I could ever imagine, the majority of the St. Lawrence population was going about the day as usual.

My brother also touched on the staggering after-effects: “Even after three months, loud bangs bring up memories of that day; sirens remind me of the police cars crowding the front of my school; helicopters make me think of all the news choppers flying over campus; anytime I see the news, I recall the hundreds of newscasters shoving cameras in everyone’s faces that day; walking past the spot where it happened, the visuals of the event invade my mind. So much about day-to-day life will remind me of the trauma. This will be my way of thinking for years and years, but there is nothing I can do about it.”

St. Lawrence students gave attention to such issues as school shootings on Mar. 14, 2018 when there was a walk out to protest gun violence, but since then there has been a lack of attention to the fears students face about being safe on campus despite the fact that the rate of school shootings is on the rise. Similar to the lack of knowledge about the Saugus High shooting, there has been a lack of discussion on campus regarding the eleven shootings that have already occurred in the first month of 2020.

The political reaction to the increase in shootings is perhaps just as alarming as the lack of reaction at the St. Lawrence Campus. Though there are politicians fighting to make schools safer, such as U.S. Senators Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy, both Democrats from Connecticut, who were advocating for universal background checks when news of the Saugus High shooting broke. Blumenthal incorporated the tragedy into his speech, saying, “As I speak, on the floor right now, there is a school shooting in Santa [Clarita], California. How can we turn the other way? How can we refuse to see that shooting in real time, demanding our attention, requiring our action?” Yet no action is being taken, and no laws are being passed.

As the 2020 elections approach, hopefully views on gun violence, especially regarding safety in schools, are a prevalent issue that voters consider as they enter the new decade.