It is really sad to admit that after the last four years that I have been at Grambling State University, I have not really seen much progression in campus safety.
Ever since the death of Earl Andrews, we still don’t care how important it is to maintain campus safety. We still go to kickbacks without a care in the world that someone has a gun.
I will never forget those times as a freshman and sophomore when they used to make us students attend mandatory meetings at T.H. Harris Auditorium about campus safety.
The chief of police at the time was really emphasizing the importance of campus safety, of reporting people who are putting students in danger. Around that time, everybody was talking over them, and I’m thinking to myself: So I’m at a college campus surrounded by people who are not taking stuff like this seriously.
It is really sad to admit as a senior that after four years, this campus is still not safe. The fact is that there were police officers at an event last fall at the Assembly Center and yet somebody was able to manage bringing a gun inside. Why wasn’t everybody checked thoroughly? How many more lives do we have to lose on this campus to realize we need to amp up security?
Near the end of last semester, I had a conversation with some of the girls from the soccer team. One of them said she was leaving because of the events of the shooting incident last semester.
When we do not take the initiative as a whole to protect one another, we fail. We fail because we treat these situations like this is only the responsibility of campus police.
We also have to remember that it is not just the responsibility of campus police to secure safety and security. It is also the responsibility of us as students.
Yes, the police should have done a better job with security that night, but this is our campus too, and we are all grown adults. What is stopping us from ensuring that our friends, brothers, sisters, and cousins are safe? What actions do we take as students to ensure safety? It is by simply taking the time to stop and think.
By being situationally aware of your surroundings, looking for places to go if a shooting was to take place, looking for exit doors, and making sure your phone is charged up in case you need to call 911. Of course these are a few out of many safety tips that we need to implement. Overall, it is important to remember that just because we have campus security, does not mean we cannot take the initiative.