By DEBORAH CORRAO / L’Observateur / April 25, 1999

Can it happen here? The answer, unfortunately, is a resounding yes.

In light of the most recent massacre at a public high school, we are all struggling to make sense out of the senseless.

I talked with Lt. Vernon Bailey, the resource officer assigned to East St.John High School.

“If anybody thinks it can’t happen here,” says Lt. Bailey, “they haveanother think coming.”As authorities in Littleton, Colo., try to piece together the events that ledup to the slaughter at Columbine High School, children in our own communities once again must face the fact that they cannot even feel safe in their own classrooms.

When my 7-year-old granddaughter saw the images on the news last night, she said, “I don’t want to go to school tomorrow.”How can I try to allay her fears but, at the same time, be truthful with her? I was at a loss for words. Before I could say anything, a graphic popped upon the television screen – “25 Dead/20 Injured” (figures have since been revised downward).

“How many is 25 and 20?” she asked.

“It’s 45,” I answer numbly.

Even one child is too many.

The reporter goes into a litany of previous school shootings, replete with graphic video and staggering numbers.

What can I say? I am confused and angry and overwhelmingly sad.

And our children are scared.

We may never know exactly what made two young men embrace a belief system and lifestyle that eventually led to violence against their classmates.

At high schools in the River Parishes students are subject to sporadic searches with metal detectors and, according to Bailey, many students now seem to be more willing to report a weapon on campus or someone making violent threats. But is it enough?”As long as we have open campuses, there’s a chance it can happen here,” says Bailey.

Do we have to make our campuses into prisons to ensure the security we usually take for granted? Columbine High School seems so far removed from East St. John HighSchool or Destrehan, Hahnville, West St. John, Lutcher or St. James highschools that it takes on an aura of unreality viewed from a distance.

Our children, however, don’t see it from a distance. All they see is aschool campus strewn with bleeding bodies.

For the sake of our children, I pray it will never happen here, that we might somehow be protected, that we’ll be among the lucky ones.

But I know that it can – and so I pray for the children, yours, mine, all of the children.

Copyright © 1998, Wick Communications, Inc.

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