Editor:
I was almost too afraid to go to class today. Not because I hadn’t prepared for my math test or because of the latest crime statistics in Philly. It was because the door to my building opened so easily.
No one so much as glanced my way as I walked into my classroom full of students. That door opens just as easily for everyone else, including the troubled souls who continue to shoot up high schools and college campuses.
As a survivor of a high school shooting, my well-suppressed memories smack me in the face whenever I hear of another incident. News stations covered this story as if it was nothing out of the ordinary, and the part that hits me the hardest is the realization that it isn’t. Campus massacres are becoming a tragic norm, a nauseating concept we all now live with.
Shootings are covered like your run-of-the-mill crime story, and smaller-scale incidents receive little to no national coverage at all. It seems there are too many to talk about in the time allotted for a newscast.
That said, this is not a critique on the media. I don’t blame them for decreasing the time spent on an event that is, in reality, becoming “old news.” This is an expression of sadness at that fact.
Unfortunately, no student can walk into a class building without knowing that it could happen here too. That is an awful thing to have occupying the back of your mind. That inherent knowledge every student now possesses really makes attending classes a lot less desirable now, doesn’t it?
Laura Standley
Journalism
Class of 2011
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