To be honest, I have always heard Americans to be ultra conscious of their safety. Just imagine spending trillions of dollars on a war effort for homeland security. However, coming to the issue on hand; How do we, as students or prospective students, perceive our safety in USA. After all there have been multiple cases of murder seemingly directed against international students (mostly Indians) in campuses there! So what is it that is happening and how should this alter our plans if at all they should? I feel that we ought to feel comfortable. I think the reason is pretty obvious. We have read multitude of articles telling us how peace-loving, the Indian community is in USA and we also know for certain that in most cases, the universities did rise upto the challenge and made necessary changes in the campus wide security structures. I got a newsletter from ets yesterday and read a very interesting article on campus safety in USA. I decided I ought to share the same!
link: http://www.toeflaccess.com/articles/ETS/us/living/fitting/safety.html
Please provide valuable feedback! After-all, safety is our basic right. It is tantamount to our right to live and therefore must be our topmost concern. I believe that if need be, it should also feature in our questions to prospective universities (be it faculty or students) with whom we interact, so as to get a clear picture as to how safe the university is for prospective students. After all, no one wants to be in the middle of another Virginia or Louisiana.
Here is a listing from AP of all the recent cases of campus shootings!
Fatal shootings at U.S. colleges or universities in recent years:
-
Feb. 14, 2008: Stephen Kazmierczak, a 27-year-old former student opens fire in a lecture hall at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, killing five people before he commits suicide.
-
Feb. 8, 2008: Latina Williams, 23, opens fire during an emergency medical technology class at Louisiana Technical College in Baton Rouge, killing two before killing herself.
-
Dec. 13, 2007: Two Ph.D. students from India are found shot to death in a home invasion at an apartment on the campus of Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. I had covered the same in a december 14th post!
-
Oct. 1, 2007: University of Memphis football player Taylor Bradford, who had been rumored to have won more than $3,000 at a casino, is fatally shot on campus in a botched robbery.
-
Sept. 21, 2007: Two students are wounded at a late-night shooting at a campus dining hall at Delaware State University in Dover.
-
April 16, 2007: Cho Seung-Hui, 23, fatally shoots 32 people in a dorm and a classroom at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, then kills himself in the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.
-
April 2, 2007: A 26-year-old researcher at the University of Washington in Seattle is shot to death in her office by her ex-boyfriend who then kills himself.
-
Sept. 2, 2006: Douglas W. Pennington, kills himself and his two sons, Logan P. Pennington, and Benjamin M. Pennington, during a visit to the campus of Shepherd University in Virginia.
-
May 9, 2003: A 62-year-old man with two handguns and a bulletproof vest fires hundreds of rounds during a seven-hour shooting spree and standoff at a Case Western Reserve University building in Cleveland. One student is killed and two others are wounded. Biswanath Halder, who authorities say was upset because he believed a student hacked into his Web site, is eventually sentenced to life in prison.
-
Oct. 28, 2002: Failing student and Gulf War veteran Robert Flores, walks into an instructor’s office at the University of Arizona Nursing College in Tucson and fatally shoots her. A few minutes later, armed with five guns, he enters one of his nursing classrooms and kills two more of his instructors before fatally shooting himself.
-
Jan. 16, 2002: Graduate student Peter Odighizuwa, recently dismissed from Virginia’s Appalachian School of Law in Grundy, returns to campus and kills the dean, a professor and a student before being tackled by students. Odighizuwa is serving six life sentences.
-
May 17, 2001: Donald Cowan, 55, fatally shoots assistant music professor James Holloway at a dorm at Pacific Lutheran University in Parkland, Wash., then turns the gun on himself.
-
Aug. 28, 2000: James Easton Kelly, a University of Arkansas graduate student recently dropped from a doctoral program after a decade of study and John Locke, the English professor overseeing his coursework, are shot to death in an apparent murder-suicide by Kelly.
-
June 28, 2000: Medical resident Dr. Jian Chen kills his supervisor and then himself in his supervisor’s office at the University of Washington in Seattle.
