Last week’s shooting at Northern Arizona University brought home the fear of a mass shooting like the ones we have witnessed over past years, most recently at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Ore., that left nine dead and nine wounded on Oct. 1.
The NAU shooting was unlike mass shootings at Umpqua, Oikos University, Northern Illinois University or Virginia Tech or the dozens of others over the last few decades, as this was a suspected lone gunman who allegedly shot students following an altercation between two rival groups rather than a premeditated assault on unsuspecting, unarmed students. The suspect reportedly waited at the scene for police to arrive rather than engage in a shootout.
The death of Colin Brough, and the wounding of Nick Prato, Kyle Zientek and Nicholas Piring by the alleged gunman, Stephen Jones, is a tragic event in and of itself, but the shooting could have been much worse.
A majority of Verde Valley high school students who head to university do so at our three in-state public institutions. NAU’s proximity means a disproportionate number of our local youth head to Flagstaff and most Verde Valley residents know at least one local student if not dozens who are or have attended NAU. None of the four victims nor the suspect were from Sedona nor the Verde Valley, however, that is mere happenstance.
Firearms are banned on Arizona university campuses by the Arizona Board of Regents, and NAU’s Standards of Residence specifically bans students residing in university housing from possessing weapons, ammunition or explosives in their dorms.
Many of our Verde Valley alumni posted on social media their reactions to the incident with a few adding they heard what sounded like gunshots around the time of the early morning shooting.
If compared to a major city, Arizona’s college system is relatively safe from violence. Since 2001, there was only one on-campus murder on Arizona State University’s Main Campus in Tempe, in 2002. There were three murders on the University of Arizona’s campus in Tucson in 2002, one in 2007 and one in 2011. Over those same years, there were no murders on the Northern Arizona University campus. Given that there are roughly between 125,000 and 150,000 students attending these colleges per year, the rate is statistically quite low, actually lower than Cottonwood’s rate when adjusted for population.
What is a bigger concern is that a text message warning system designed to alert students, faculty and staff of an active shooter on campus alerted only 700 of the roughly 20,000 students who live on or attend school on the Flagstaff campus. A second text message warning reached a few thousand more but not until more than 90 minutes later. That failure highlights the need for a fast and accurate warning system in case of any future tragedy.
We can hope that this fatal shooting was an isolated one, but our students need better protection and better leadership from our university system.
