Andrew Careaga over at Higher Ed Marketing has a piece up listing his opinion as to which moments have been the decade’s most significant events in the realm of higher education. He very democratically states at the end of the post that he’s open to comments and suggestions regarding event placement on his Top Ten list, as well as which incidents should or should not have been included.

Careaga has Virginia Tech in the #1 spot. It’s not where I would have placed it as far as higher-education-changing events go (the implications of digital media in higher ed and 32% tuition increases seem pretty important), but it should certainly be included on the list. That the tragedy should not be forgotten is a given. But when looking beyond what happened to the victims, there is still the raft of new questions about safety, the illusion of control, and the high-tech emergency-response policies that were subsequently brought up.

First of all, the idea that someone could just lose it and open-fire on his fellow students is a fairly recent development in mankind’s history. The fact that it happened at all reinforces the theory that mankind has turned a new and very dark corner. The aftermath of Virginia Tech illustrated how in control and safe everyone had assumed they were, especially on idyllic college campuses.

Secondly, the technology humans have at their disposal is completely different now than it was 20 years ago. A campus-wide alert in the 1980s would have involved disconnect-able phones, and maybe a PA system that would probably have ended up alerting the attacker and just pissing him off even more. These days, 9.9 out of 10 college students, staff and faculty are wired to the hilt with digital technology. It’s possible to alert an entire campus all at once that unless the gunman is within firing range of your person, it would be prudent to get the hell out of there.

I’ll admit to the full-on fascination I felt a few weeks after the incident while witnessing the frenzy initiated by students, parents and administrators to figure out a way to have in place such formidable emergency alert systems that no college student would ever again lose their life while matriculating (excepting idiotic drinking game-related deaths, which involves a whole argument about evolution that I don’t have time to get into right now).

Watching the parents and the administrators battle it out and overcompensate served to illustrated a few key points I think everyone needed to realize:

(1) Most Americans do not exist in a state of constant mortal danger;

(2) While the odds of meeting one’s maker after a run-in with a gunman who has lost his sh*t have noticeably increased as of late, they’re still incredibly low;

(3) There is only one way to be completely in control of when and where you meet your maker, and I am unwilling to spell it out for a slew of higher-ed types during finals;

(4) It turns out that it’s possible to over-do it when designing and implementing a emergency response system, thereby creating a false sense of security;

(5) Even The Great Wall is penetrable.

Posted by Alexa Harrington