Trigger warning: this article contains references to violence.
Two college students were killed in Mississippi last weekend. John Sanderson, 21, was shot to death in a Mississippi State University dormitory Saturday evening, and Nolan Ryan Henderson III, a 19-year-old freshman at Jackson State University, was shot and killed at an off-campus apartment pool party.
Details of what occurred in both events were sparse and the police were left without motives or suspects.
Additionally, seven more people were killed in a shooting at a college in Oakland, Calif., over the weekend.
“Those perpetuating these crimes will be apprehended and held accountable,” said Phil Bryant, the governor of Mississippi. “Mississippi does not take these instances lightly, and rest assured, we will continue to provide a safe learning environment for students at all our Mississippi college and university campuses.” According to the Associated Press, Bryant has spoken with the university leaders and instructed the state public safety commissioner to assist in the investigations.
Although incidents like these and the infamous mass shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado and at Virginia Tech have reinforced a perception that schools can be dangerous places, Dewey Cornell, a clinical psychologist and education professor, argues otherwise. “I know on the heels of any school shooting, there’s the perception that violence is on the rise,” Cornell said in an NPR interview. “It’s not. In fact, there’s been a very steady downward trend for the past fifteen years.”
According to the National Center for Education Statistics, school violence in the United States reached a peak in 1993. That year, there were 42 homicides by students and 13 “serious violent crimes” – rape, sexual assault, robbery and aggravated assault – per 1,000 students at primary and secondary schools. By 2010, the latest figures available, those numbers had decreased to two homicides and four violent crimes per 1,000 students.
Additionally, a 2005 study by the Bureau of Justice Statistics took a broader look at violent crimes committed by students at college campuses and found that some 93 percent of all violent crimes against university students ages 18 to 24 occurred off-campus. A leading expert and author on several books on school violence, Stephen Brock of California State University, Sacramento states, “Not only are rates of school violence going steadily down, but it’s clear that schools are the safest place for a student to be.”
Hank Bounds, Mississippi’s commissioner of higher education, agrees that college campuses are one of the safest places despite the recent deaths of Sanderson and Henderson. Bounds said in a statement last Sunday that both deaths were “senseless tragedies and our sympathies go out to each of their families.” But Bounds stressed that university campuses are “very safe, with many precautions taken and systems in place to protect students.”
Students like Angeli Ylanan-Agarwala ’15 agreed that school campuses usually evoke a strong sense of security. “I feel safer on-campus just because of the sheer number of people and security patrolling the grounds every few hours. I think the school violence that we see appearing on news are just very rare, extreme cases.”