Threats to Education

A friend of mine has a painting in her office. Two of the corners of the painting are labeled "Rock" and "A Hard Place," while the other two, diagonally positioned across the canvas, read, "Devil" and "The Deep Blue Sea." In the middle of the painting is a big "X" labeled "You are here." To some degree that's how campus security types must be feeling these days. With horrific shootings in Virginia and Illinois over the past twelve months, they can't afford to take lightly any sort of threat. That's why semesters have been interrupted recently at two schools: "Threatening Graffiti Leads College to Cancel Classes."
What are you going to do, if you're the decision maker at a school where threatening messages show up above the urinals? Probably the writing is the ranting of somebody with a dreaded exam on the date in question, but you can't take that chance, can you? Time was when campus security only had to contend with rowdy partiers and sloppy drunks. Today they have to worry about gun-toting psychos and harmless but frightening cranks. I don't envy them their job.