I was watching The Early Show this morning on CBS. It tends to normally be more fluff than news so I don’t feel that it is a bad way to start the morning as my 12 year old is getting ready for school. Recently, Lou Dobbs – who has a show on CNN – has become a contributor to The Early Show. There recently seems to be a big crossover of CNN personnel doing pieces on CBS but that is for another blog.
Lou Dobbs did a commentary this morning on violence on college campuses. He did not belittle the shootings yesterday at Virginia Tech. He did, though, point out some statistics that most parents and few college students will know.
The statistic involving rape on college campuses is in the tens of thousands. The statistic involving suicide on college campuses is between one and two thousand. The statistic involving death due to binge drinking rivaled that of suicide on college campuses.
These statistics and the violent acts that they represent are merely brushed over in the media. They have become common place on college campuses and are very seldom covered by more than the media in that particular college town. The acts of violence on college campuses have become so common place that almost every college tour I have been on in the past four years (I have four college-aged students and each visited well over five colleges so you do the math) actually points out the “blue” lights that are used for emergency communication throughout campus.
To put this in a more personal light, one of my daughter’s is an RA in an eight floor dorm. This is not a large dorm by any means. This year, her first as an RA and her second at university, there have been more than five incidents of students that the RAs and campus safety have had to call ambulances for due to alcohol abuse.
My other daughter spent her first semester at university on a Division 1 women’t soccer team. She called one day to tell me something she thought was “funny.” I found the revealed information to be sad. She said the older girls – juniors and seniors on the team – had told the seven freshmen to steer clear of the members of the men’s basketball team because they beat their girlfriends.
I have to say I agree with Lou Dobbs. This country needs to look at what we are raising our children and our students feel is normal. We need to be sure that there is no tolerance for violence on in our world and definitely not on our college campuses.
