On Wednesday morning, August 27th, children attending a worship service at a Catholic School in Minneapolis were attacked by a shooter. The Catholic school shooting left 2 children dead and 18 others (15 of which were children) injured. The FBI is investigating 23 year old Robin Westman, the shooter identified from the attack.  The two children who passed away, 8 year old Fletcher Merkel and 10 year old Harper Moyski, will leave behind a legacy of pain as the community mourns this immense loss. Both families have started Go Fund Me pages. The sad truth is this is not the only recent incident in schools across the United States. 

On Thursday, August 21st during the orientation mass at Villanova University panic spread through the campus when students received the following alert: “ACTIVE SHOOTER on VU campus. Move to secure location. Lock/barricade doors. More info to follow.” The response was hundreds of police and SWAT immediately arriving on scene. An hour and a half after the initial wave of panic the Villanova University President, Rev. Peter Donohue, announced that it was a hoax and there was no active shooter or evidence of firearms on campus. In the hours that followed heavy investigation began to find the culprits behind the horrible hoax. Delaware County District Attorney, Jack Stollsteimer made a statement that they would be hunting whoever was behind it. 

On the following Sunday there was another report of a shooter at the university. Around 11am a call came in claiming there was a threat of shooting in one of the dorm buildings on campus. However the call was determined to be fake within the next hour. The buildings were still evacuated and police were deployed to secure the campus, but it was confirmed there was never a real threat on the campus. 

Villanova University junior Simon Weber was on campus during the time of the second alert. Upon being asked to recount the feeling of receiving the notification from campus security he recalled that he “wanted to pretend it wasn’t real,” describing the experience as “a stark reminder that the issue of gun violence is prevalent throughout the country”. He admitted that “it’s easy to fall into the mindset that it ‘won’t happen to me’ but the sad reality is that no one is safe from the threat of gun violence in the United States”.

The two events are what is known as “swatting incidents”. The term describes fake calls meant to create mass police responses. The two at Villanova University are not the only ones that have recently occurred. University of South Carolina and University of Tennessee at Chattanooga both had swatting incidents within the last 2 weeks. On August 25th, six universities received active shooter alerts and all six were found to be hoaxes. While it is good that no one is being harmed, there is a question that remains unanswered: why is this happening? 

Swatting isn’t new in the United States. Documented swatting incidents date back two decades. Regardless of whether law enforcement believes it is swatting or not, they will always give 100% when reports are made. Despite the first incident at Villanova proving to be fake the response to the second call was every bit as thorough as the second. Parents of students attending any university and students who are at the schools, can be assured that the authorities will make continuous efforts to protect them. 

It is clear that any school can be subjected to threats from elementary through college level education. The reality is that gun violence has not been reduced and in fact has increased over the past decades. It is apparent, given the reported incidents in the past month alone, that actions need to be made to crack down on this violence.