Aural Sects

Shooting Reported near Texas A&M University School...

herlovewasajoke:

calystarose:

jennifermatarese:

cartoongoblin:

champagneattitude:

vindikateor:

Shooting Reported at Texas A&M University

School shootings make me feel so sick and immediately take me back to 2008. I lived on campus during the shooting at NIU, and some of my very best friends avoided the whole thing (same building, same fucking classroom) just by a few…

I was also on a school campus during a shooting. It was horrible and has never left me.

We seriously need to have stricter gun laws in the US.

For anyone counting, we’re eight days from the Wisconsin Sikh gurdwara shooting and twenty-four from Aurora. That’s three in one month’s span.

For anyone counting, we’re eight days from the Wisconsin Sikh gurdwara shooting and twenty-four from Aurora. That’s three in one month’s span.

I tried to write this as a reply to Caly but it was too long, so here it is.

I remember going to school while there were cops patrolling our hallways, because someone had made threats against teachers and students. 

I switched high schools 3 times, plus had to do a summer semester at a forth in order to graduate.  To say I had bad experiences is a given, but that one school was so amazing that even thinking about it makes me teary and nostalgic.  I had to move in with my sister long enough to be put on her lease, so I could qualify for the school district variance, after the Board denied my application.  Apparently threatening to drop out due to trauma wasn’t a good enough reason. My parents couldn’t afford to move across town in order for me to actually be in that area.

Confed was everything a school was supposed to be - warm, accepting, and it had an actual school community, as long as you weren’t a douchebag.  One of my bullies followed me there and quickly found the tables turned.  That was actually a nice outcome for me, if only because he was forced to live what he’d put a lot of girls through.  He grew up pretty damn fast.  I don’t know if the lesson stuck, though.  I didn’t go to my reunion, and as neither of us ended up graduating from that particular school (it closed when we still had a year to go), we wouldn’t have crossed paths anyway.

So the point of this trip down memory lane - anytime shootings / school shootings are brought up, it always brings me back to being in grade 11 and seeing armed police officers walking up and down the hallway outside my chem class.  The kids in the art wing weren’t allowed to paint in the hallways anymore, which was where we’d all end up when we were skipping class.  (I had a math teacher come get us once.  It was his thing.)  We weren’t allowed to hang out in the basement (where my locker was) and play cards like the ten of us did ever day at lunch or during spares.  We all had to stay in designated classroom areas which were well supervised.

It made me so angry.  This was OUR place, our community, that someone had disrupted.  Our home was being invaded, and someone was making us afraid to be there.  It cast a pall over everything, and it was never quite the same for us after that.

We were very lucky that nothing came of those threats, but they never found out who made them, either.  Something like that changes you, the environment, and the way you feel about both.

It’s a shame that this is what reality has come to.  I’d very much like it to change.

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