The Red and Black

Issue date: 4/2/08 Section: Opinions

ALLIE BYRD

Shots ring out. You army crawl on the floor. A man in black fires toward you. Blood is everywhere, and you struggle to dodge bullets. Wounded bodies surround you as you fight to survive.

Iraq? No. This could be your classroom.

School shootings, campus lockdowns and more Virginia Tech-style massacres are joining alcohol poisoning as threats at colleges everywhere.

And there is not a single thing stopping it from happening to us. The University is not immune. This terrifies me.

Sitting in class in recent months, I have thought about how I would feel if a student fired shots. What would I do? How scared would I be?

It happened at Northern Illinois. Everybody there knew about Virginia Tech. But it still happened to them. I don't want it to happen here - to us.

None of us really can be sure what leads a student to act violently against classmates. What are the signs? How could we predict it?

I don't know. But what I do know is that I do not like feeling unsafe in my own school. I am afraid, and I want that feeling to stop.

The openness we once celebrated in our classrooms now makes them a target for senseless violence. Debate, learning and enlightenment are oppressed as we fear one day, a disgruntled classmate will walk in and take out his or her frustrations on us.

We can blame many factors: glorification of violence, psychological disorders, lack of security on college campuses or absence of gun control. But it is hard to know why campus violence happens and why the idea of shooting up a school even exists.

But, there are ways we can be better prepared and safer if a crisis were to occur.

The Red & Black reported recently that only 7,300 students are registered for the UGAAlert system. With about 33,000 students on campus, little more than 20 percent of us will be warned if a shooter were to begin a rampage.

The UGAAlert system cannot prevent a tragedy from happening, but it certainly can inform people of danger and presumably save lives.

Every student - each one - should register for UGAAlert at www.ugaalert.uga.edu. It takes a matter of minutes and truly could make a difference amid horrifying violence.

For its part, University police should assure all of us they have procedures in place to prevent, or at least quickly handle, such an event. I commend the University police for enforcing its no-weapons policy, and I encourage students to help by reporting any sightings of weapons on campus, in the dorms or in classrooms.

All of us also must watch our friends, neighbors and classmates for signs they may explode in violence.

If we stay aware of the people around us, we may be able to help and stop them from acting out.

I hope, I pray an event such as Virginia Tech never happens on this campus. But I also know the worst could happen.

There is no perfect solution to the troubling question of why shootings on college campuses occur, but students need to take advantage of every opportunity to protect themselves.

If we all work together and make a conscious effort to prevent a tragedy from happening, we are taking a step in the right direction and can be part of a real solution to stop school shootings altogether.

- Allie Byrd is a senior from Fayetteville majoring in newspapers.

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