The anxiety over guns in campus life has been a reality since the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007. But what do we do as a society except wait for another incident to happen?
Texas Southern in Houston. Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon. Delta State in Mississippi. Three new additions to higher ed’s dishonor roll highlighting the places where gun violence has shattered the image of academic tranquility.
By my count, there have been seven such instances this year. And as shocking as that number sounds, it’s actually lower than the 17 times guns were a major issue on campus in 2014.
So, problem solved, right?
Hardly.
To get a perspective from the classroom, I contacted a former colleague of mine at NPR, Benjamin Davis. During my tenure in the late ’80s and early ’90s, Davis was one of the leading African-American journalists in America.
Just this semester, the career newsman made the leap to his new full-time role as an assistant professor at California State University, Northridge.
