Therese Sheridan | The Montclarion
With the rise in gun violence and the recent massacres in Las Vegas, Nevada and Sutherland, Texas, there is one question that lingers in many students’ minds: is Montclair State University’s campus safe from shooters?
Montclair State’s Emergency Preparedness Coordinator Matthew Gallup recently spoke with Wired Jersey saying, “There aren’t any changes, as of now, to campus procedures but a heightened awareness. It is now a matter of gaining resources, which we have available to us. It’s a scary world that we live in, but if we work collectively, we can get through this together.”
According to Business Insider, the number of mass shootings in the United States in 2017 reached 307 on Nov. 5. Their article on mass shootings reads, “Americans are more likely to die from gun violence than many leading causes of death combined, with some 11,000 people in the U.S. killed in firearm assaults each year.”
It seems to me that the most obvious reason why these shootings happen so often in such large numbers is the lenient gun laws. Yes, of course, everyone wants to take advantage of their second amendment rights, but there are those who are unfit to have a right to bear arms because of mental illness or other obvious reasons.
When walking around this campus, it never occurred to me to think about how few police officers I see walking and driving around or the lack of security cameras I find within the buildings. Now that I have become more aware of my surroundings, I have begun to notice how vulnerable this campus can be to harm.
With that being said, I generally feel safe on campus, but with the amount of open space and lack of security cameras around campus, I feel that Montclair State could be susceptible to harm. If the university added more security cameras around campus and heightened the number of patrol officers around campus, I would feel safer than I do now.
