Students Wary Whether De Anza at Risk for Mass Shooting

Students Wary Whether De Anza at Risk for Mass Shooting

In 2001, police arrested Al DeGuzman, a De Anza College student who had been planning a mass shooting and bombing to take place in the campus cafeteria. 17 years later and school shootings are still a problem on the minds of a number of students at De Anza College, who want to know what strategies the school district is using to safeguard its campus from this type of gun violence.

Meera Kohli, 18, computer science major, said that there have been times on De Anza’s where she has felt unsafe, and that the school should take extra precaution to make sure a school shooting doesn’t happen here.

“The more I hear about mass shootings, the more concerned I feel like that sort of thing can happen anywhere, at any school,” Kohli said. “Maybe there should be a little more security on campus, especially at night in parkings lots.”

According to De Anza College’s 2017 Annual Security Report, available online, there were three incidents of on-campus weapons violations in 2016. The statistic doesn’t specify whether they were firearm violations or what the intention of the violators were.

The campus police department declined answering any questions on the subject.

Mental wellness is a factor many news outlets correlate to gun violence. The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia Research Institute has reported that among ways to prevent school shootings, schools need to make sure that “Students feel safe to talk to each other and to staff” and “There is adequate support training and resources for school staff.”

De Anza wellness counselor, Siew Kuek, said that the campus psychological services has one full time clinician and one half-time licensed clinician between 22,000 students.

“This is the time of the year when we are inundated with requests for services as it is the end of the year and heading into finals,” Kuek said.

De Anza’s student newspaper, La Voz, ran an opinion piece called ‘Should we arm teachers?’, which addressed the problem of mass shootings, and compared possible courses of action. Since the story ran on March 19th, 2018, there have been seven school shootings, according to an archive kept by CNN titled ‘School shootings so far in 2018’.

Locations of the last seven school shootings since March 19th (As of 6.20.2018)

Journalism major and La Voz editor Jack Molmud, 21, said that it’s the media’s responsibility to bring attention to the problem, but covering an issue isn’t the same as solving the problem.

“Lately as these shootings are becoming almost a weekly occurrence, most of the coverage seems cookie cutter, neglecting the human aspect,” Molmud said. “The vice with most media facets is that once people stopped caring, it's on to the next one.”

 After the recent Santa Fe High School shooting, Texas Gov. Greg Abbot reported a number of proposals aimed at improving school safety at the local level, from increasing the presence of law enforcement on school campuses, to requiring mental health evaluations before purchasing guns.

While in some ways, gun violence seems to be an eminent danger to the well-being of De Anza students, some students said that it is a danger they just have to live with, and don’t let it overwhelm their lives.

“The school should definitely find a balance between making their students feel safe but not making it seem like safety is something they need to constantly worry about,” Kohli said. “De Anza shouldn’t feel like a prison but also shouldn’t be care free about the possibilities of a shooting.”

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