Last week, the campus of Michigan State University was hit by a shooting which resulted in three killed and five others wounded. This comes as the whole country has dealt with 82 mass shootings so far this year, even though only two months into the year. These numbers, along with the victims of all these shootings should be raising many alarms. 

For this specific shooting, the gunman opened fire at Berkeley Hall, which is the university’s home for social science, in the evening. The gunman killed two students there, and he killed a third in the Michigan State student union. The gunman was later found dead by police, but the damage he caused had already been done. 

For some, this is not the first time being in a school shooting. Jackie Matthews, a Michigan State senior, was a 6th grader at Sandy Hook Elementary back in 2012 when another mass shooting took place. For someone like Matthews, having to go through a shooting once should have never happened to begin with, but having to go through it twice is almost unthinkable. 

It’s a problem that the United States and the United States alone has. School shootings are far too prevalent here, and little to nothing is being done to stop them. The innocence that has been lost for so many students, not just at MSU, but all over the country, this is something that has to be fixed as quickly as possible.

With classes starting again soon, asking these students to return to the place where so much trauma was endured will be a mighty ask. It shouldn’t be though. College,or any school, is supposed to be the protective environment that students deserve, yet it was all stripped away last week. The focus now, must turn to protecting students.