Three students were killed and five others were critically injured by a shooter at Michigan State University on Monday.
“Our campuses, churches, classrooms and communities should not be battlefields,” Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer told mourners on Wednesday.
James Alan Fox, a Northeastern criminology professor who studies mass killings, says the tragic event puts a focus on student safety.
“There is no denying the horror of the Michigan State University shooting,” says Fox, author of “Violence and security on campus: From preschool through college.”
But we shouldn’t lose sight of the very low risk of such tragedies,” he told Northeastern Global News.
Since 1990, Fox says, there have been 26 shootings on U.S. college campuses resulting in two or more victim fatalities.
“Twelve college students, on average, are fatally shot per year while at college, and that is out of 16 million enrolled,” Fox says. “One-tenth of 1% of all gun homicides in the U.S. involve college students on campus.”
