The shooting that took place in Oregon recently is raising concern among college students all over the country.
The shooting took place on Thursday, Oct. 1 at Umpqua Community College. Gunman, Christopher Harper-Mercer, 26, targeted Christians as he entered classrooms ready to shoot.
Harper-Mercer ordered everyone to get down and then for those who professed to be Christians to stand. To those who stood he said “Good, because you’re a Christian, you’re going to see God in just about one second,” and then shot them.
A total of 10 people were killed and seven were injured. Harper-Mercer had 13 weapons, six of which were at his disposal and seven at his home. According to CNN, Mercer started in one building and then made his way into the science building.
To take care of the situation, tactical teams and bomb squads were evacuating people from buildings and vehicles from the parking lots. Harper-Mercer committed suicide in the process of shooting at police.
Business major Ben Kenis, 19, called this shooting a tragedy and said it “just proves you can never be too safe.”
He said he would hope that if threats were to happen closer to home, there would be police on campus and an increase in security.
An anonynous online threat was made on Monday, Oct. 5, claiming that an attack would happen on a university near Philadelphia at 2 p.m.
While the threat was not carried out, schools and students in and around Philadelphia took precautions. Some students skipped class and some schools brought police on campus and asked students to show their id’s before entering.
Communications major Tia Truchel, 22, also related the Oregon shooting to the recent threat towards universities in the Philadelphia area. She said that the craziest thing was that it was related to the same website as the other shooting and wondered why the FBI couldn’t track where these posts were coming from.
She said she wanted to feel safer and said, “I guess it makes you feel like we need to step it up a little bit.” Truchel also noted how “everything lately has been based off religious threats.”
Brooke Bailey, an undecided major, 19, from Warrington noted that these people lost their lives because of their beliefs. “The shooting made me look at where I am in life,” said Bailey. “It made me question my faith. I look at the victims in the shooting as heroes because even though they sadly lost their lives, they led me and hopefully others to the Lord.”
Bailey goes on to say that she thinks Bucks handled Monday’s threat well: “If Bucks got a threat, they should have security and cops… if there isn’t a threat… security should always be alert and able to contact the cops quickly.”
She believes we should not live in fear despite the sad reality.
In response to this tragedy, President Obama said, “Our thoughts and prayers are not enough. It’s not enough. It does not capture the heartache and grief and anger that we should feel, and it does nothing to prevent this carnage from being inflicted someplace else in America – next week, or a couple months from now.”