I turned on the TV recently and put CNN on to catch some news before class when I found that I was staring at the breaking news headline of another deadly shooting on a university campus. This time the tragedy occurred at Northern Illinois University, a mere 10 months after the Virginia Tech Massacre. The first thing that went through my mind was, “This can’t be happening again, Virginia Tech still feels like it was yesterday.” I really couldn’t believe that we had to face another tragedy of a school shooting and the loss of young people with their whole future ahead of them, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that this is something that is always going to occur.

The sad truth of the matter is, as incredibly rare as it may be, school shootings are an inevitable thing in our society, and there is very little that can be done to prevent them. In the days following the event in Illinois where Steven Kazmierczak entered a lecture hall and shot and killed five students and then himself, it was discovered that he used the same Web site to purchase the weapons for the incident as the Virginia Tech shooting perpetrator, Seung Hui-Cho. Unlike Cho, who was known around campus as an outcast, anti-social and had erratic behavior, Kazmierczak was described by his peers and the NIU administration as a “revered, award-winning student.” He was considered a committed student who was involved in after school activities and even wrote his graduate paper on peace and social justice. Kazmierczak simply stopped taking his medication, became erratic and ultimately took the lives of five people. Other than that, there were no warning signs. A difficult thing that universities become involved in directly and in the following months of school shootings is the policy of campus security and campus safety. Kazmierczak hid his weapons in his guitar case for two days before he walked in the back door of the building where he ultimately committed the shooting. As with the aftermath of Virginia Tech, questions arose: Should metal detectors be implemented in administrative buildings? In dorms? Should campus security be beefed up around campus to check on any strange behavior in students? Should classrooms be locked from the inside once classes begin to prevent people from entering? Should someone have seen the warning signs regarding Cho’s and Kazmierczak’s erratic behavior leading up to the shootings? Ultimately, there is only so much that can be done, and it is never enough to fully erase and prevent future acts of violence occurring on campuses in colleges around the country. There’s simply not enough money to fund safety features like metal detectors in dorms and administrative buildings and locks on doors. There’s not enough manpower to up security around campus to monitor dorms and classrooms, and it’s impractical to keep track of every single student who may be reported to be “behaving erratically,” or check to make sure that they’re keeping up on their medications. It’s also impractical to go through such dramatic changes because events that occurred at Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois are so rare that money can be better spent in other areas around the school. Unfortunately, as rare as school shootings are, they are going to happen. College campuses do everything they can in their power and their budget to make sure that their students are kept safe while they attend school. And for their part, 99 percent of the time they do an outstanding job of creating a safe and healthy environment. I have never felt unsafe or fearful for my well-being during my years at the University of Massachusetts, and the same can be said for students who attend college all over the country. I’m sure the victims of Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois would have said the same thing all the way up to the fateful days at their schools, because while the threat is always there, it is so rare for a school shooting to occur that it’s nothing worth worrying about. In the end, it is the responsibility of one’s own mental health and the appreciation for human life to make sure that college campus shootings do not happen. Seung-Hui Cho and Steven Kazmierczak chose to stop taking medication; they chose to disregard the help they needed and did not care about other people’s lives. They felt compelled to do what they did, and when someone is compelled to do something so drastic as to take a life away, there is little that anyone, including college campuses, can do to prevent it. Evan Powers is a Collegian columnist. He can be reached at [email protected].