Is security to blame?

In light of the Virginia Tech shootings, I'm going to try and keep this as non-political as possible. However, I feel that I should voice my opinion about the events and what most analysts believe to be a sure-thing fix for the future of universities.

Like every other college student I know, I have been glued to my television and computer screens for the past two days just waiting for more developments on the Virginia Tech "Massacre". As the investigation is steadily slowing down in the way of recent developments, FOXNews and CNN have resorted to interviewing students, parents and faculty of VTech, as well as political and disaster analysts.

The general consensus is that VTech officials should have done more between the time of the first shooting and the second. As much as I agree with this statement, I really don't know what else could have been done. If they would have sent an email out sooner without first going into the investigation of the first shooting, it would have induced mass panic and perhaps given the shooter more targets to aim at. In fact, the shootings could have taken place outside where there were more students and less opportunities to escape.

Also, putting a university on lock down is not something that a university administration and security force can physically carry out. Virginia Tech is not a small school and to rope off the entire campus would have taken 20 times the amount of people that were on hand.

Another "great idea" people seem to have is that of putting metal detectors in the buildings to make them secure. Here is where my rant begins:

- Firstly, yes, I believe that metal detectors are necessary for security purposes IN HIGH SCHOOL OR ELEMENTARY SCHOOL SETTINGS. I do not think putting a metal detector in a college lecture hall will prevent anything from happening. Okay, so what if someone sets the metal detector off with the gun they have inside their coat? While Mr. Security Guard is busy patting the individual down, that individual whips out the gun and takes ownership of the situation. That metal detector sure helped out.

- Secondly, if we keep upping the technology of security, people who want to commit these sort of crimes are just going to up their technology to commit them. WE CANNOT STOP THEM. For example, let's take into account the car bombings that happened at the World Trade Center in 1992. So, that was a big deal and we upped our security to make sure it would never happen again. Less than ten years later, two planes smash into those same two buildings. What are they going to do next, put a repelling forcefield around the buildings to make the planes bounce off of them if they try to come too close?

- Thirdly, if we really want to eliminate school shootings and terrorism, PAY ATTENTION TO THE SIGNS. Cho Seung-Hui was a troubled student. He wrote a terribly graphic and disturbing screenplay for a creative writing course and was referred to campus counseling. Did anyone make sure he went? Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were members of the "Trenchcoat Mafia" and did really strange things. Why didn't anyone tell them it wasn't okay to be involved with this stuff? Timothy McVeigh was a meth-addicted head case. Did anyone try to help him cope after his years in Desert Storm? And for God's sake, there are thousands of WELL-KNOWN terrorist organizations in the world - Why aren't we taking some kind of action to stop them directly?

My bottom line here, readers, is that if we all do our part and pay attention to our surroundings, WE can prevent these things from happening.

So I challenge you, as my reader, to do something nice for someone - at least once a day. Because if we all just helped one another out, this world wouldn't be so difficult to fathom. No one would fight, no one would hurt and no one would suffer.

I put my faith in a lyric written by Garth Brooks:

"As long as one heart still holds on, then hope is never really gone."

My heart, soul, prayers and thoughts go out to everyone truly suffering from the VTech shootings. Perhaps one day, we may all be at peace. Keep holding on.