One last thought

By JODI WEBER

It was a nice day early last October when I returned to my o ce a er lunch and checked the national news. Two dreaded words stood out in bold red across the top of the CNN homepage: SCHOOL SHOOTING. Another one. Like it does each time this happens, my heart sank. e reporters didn’t know much at the time. ere was an active shooter at Umpqua Community College in Oregon and an estimated 10 people were dead, an unknown number wounded. News teams were not on scene yet and all they had for a visual was a Google Earth image of the campus. For me, that image was a powerful one. You see, I work at a college that looks just like Umpqua Community College. at grainy satellite image of a remote college in a state halfway across the country from where I sat was like my school; a small, rural college with about 3,000 students. A cluster of buildings surrounded by lush green forests. ough I had never even heard of Umpqua Community College, in that moment, I knew that we were virtually the same. ose talking heads on CNN could have just as easily been reporting breaking news about a shooting at Northeast Texas Community College. And had that happened, no doubt, folks at Umpqua Community College would be feeling the same as I did in that moment as they watched the reports. Helpless. Afraid. Relieved it was happening somewhere else. Guilty because they felt relief.

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