Stopping college violence at roots

Media Credit: MIKE LOCK / THE EAGLE LIGHTING THE WAY - Candles illuminate the inside of the Kay Spiritual Life Center during a vigil Monday honoring victims of the NIU shooting spree.

The mass shootings committed by Steven Kazmierczak at Northern Illinois University last week and by Seung-Hui Cho at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University last April have left experts rushing to prevent such unforeseen acts of violence from occurring in the future.

Though many colleges have re-evaluated their safety policies, many experts feel there is little that can be done to prevent violent thoughts and actions.

Predicting violence is hard, said Amy Bowers, a licensed psychologist and assistant director for outreach and consultation at AU's Counseling Center.

"It can be done to a degree, but there's no perfect way," Bowers said. "The goal is to be as thorough as possible, knowing that you can never be 100 percent effective."

Maggie Abraham, a junior in the Kogod School of Business, said her friend recently committed suicide. Being close to a person is like wearing goggles - it is more difficult to realize someone's problems if you don't want to believe that he or she has any, she said.

"Being friends is, 'I'm going to go [get help] for you even if it means ruining our friendship ... making sure you have someone to help manage what you're going through,'" Abraham said.

Between the shootings at Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois University, there have been four high-profile cases of fatal campus violence. Three of the cases resulted from apparent robberies or previous altercations. A fourth incident, the most recent before NIU, occurred Feb. 8 at Louisiana Technical College. In that incident, a 23-year-old woman shot two students in a classroom before turning the gun on herself. Police are still attempting to determine why the shootings at the college occurred, according to CNN.com.

Previously seen as a high school phenomenon, copycat spree killings are becoming more frequent on college campuses, Gary Pavela, director of judicial programs at the University of Maryland, College Park, and author of "Questions and Answers on College Student Suicide," told The Chronicle of Higher Education last week. The most striking evidence is from Virginia Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho, who referred to the April 1999 Columbine High School shootings in the videotaped manifesto he released to the media, Pavela said.

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