On any given school day, one can feel the fear that consumes children in a classroom. It can be almost peaceful, a silence made by fear, until it’s interrupted. It is always interrupted. Whether it’s by five shots or three, two screams or four, the silence becomes imbalanced. Children are forever trapped in the place that was supposed to help them grow up, but instead forced them to stay silent.
America’s children are taught from a very early age how to run, hide and stay alive. It is believed important to stay aware of these techniques to survive, just “in case” of a threat. Villanova University placed a memorial for lives lost to gun violence in the center of campus on the Rowan Green during the week of March 23rd. Every T-shirt placed on a stilt was “One Soul Lost to Gun Violence.”
The memorial was put in the very place where countless kids and families were rushed away by the threatening notification of an armed individual on campus on Aug. 21, 2025. They ran, like they were taught. Some people at the mass that day heard shots, some heard screams, but they all ran.
Freshman Emma Darrow, who was at the Opening Day Mass, expressed her fear of the event.
“Everyone just started running,” Darrow said. “It wasn’t calm at all. I think it was the scariest day of my life, and it wasn’t even real.”
The instinct to run is conditioned in each American child the second they set foot into an education setting. Go, run, duck in there, stay quiet, turn off the light, hide, make yourself small, be quiet.
Is that what the educational system was meant to teach American children all along? Not the ABCs, not their times tables, not who they want to be when they grow up, but a survival guide on how to be a grown-up, and especially how to run, because if they don’t, they’re dead.
Most of the drills in primary school and high school are fake, just like the hoax that occurred at the beginning of the school year. However, the people there didn’t experience a hoax. They experienced a shooting. They ran for their lives, ducked from shots. They had tears in their eyes, no voice in their throat and their hearts beat rapidly.
Is it impractical for children to wish for a world without violence? Is it impractical for children to wish for a world without fear? In American society, maybe it is. Why does the world focus on bad people? It’s because they have to grow up and live their lives, while the kids who are being educated against all evils are shot.
Darrow further highlights the fear and urgency felt by many Americans, especially students.
“Something has to change,” Darrow said. “Kids shouldn’t be afraid to go to school, or pushed and shoved into storming the altar at mass to hide like I was. It’s just wrong.”
The memorial shown on the University’s campus is inspiring in light of what is currently happening in America: the overwhelming threat of active shooters on college campuses and primary and high school grounds.
In the past week alone, from April 13 to April 17, an alarming number of schools have been threatened or impacted by gun violence. These include Troup High School, The Brooklyn High School for Law and Technology, McCluer South-Berkeley High School, Hill Country College Preparatory High School, Bedford High School, Bradley Central High School, Sumter Christian School, Opal Smith Elementary School, Lane College, Hayward High School, Glencliff High School, Nathan Hale High School, Tulane University School of Medicine, Saint Joseph School, Suitland High School, Thomasville Senior High School, Kentucky State University, Florida A&M University Pine Grove Elementary School, and so many more. Did you skip over the number of schools on that list to get to this sentence? Go back and read them again, say their name. Do you hear the beating now, this time of your own heart? The danger American people face comes from the very people they surround themselves with. Maybe parents aren’t thinking about the threat their children face before they go to school, but maybe they should.
The world needs to be more aware of what is happening to learn how to stop it. It’s time that the people of America stop covering their ears and emerge from their hiding spots. The privilege to be alive is great, not threatened yet by the constant chaos that a firearm in an educational setting brings. There has to come a time when that violence should be stopped. That time is now. In the meantime, though, make sure your backpacks are bulletproof.
