For the first time in my life, I’m living somewhere other than Philadelphia. I’m now a freshman at Yale University, in New Haven, Connecticut. It’s exciting yet scary to be living somewhere new and unknown. But preparing for college and moving away has also been an eye opening experience. It’s made me realize that some of the things I consider normal are not normal to other kids my age. Like the constant anxiety that a shooting could happen at any moment at or around school.
School shootings have sadly become all too normalized. There have been at least 104 school shootings in Pennsylvania from 1970 – 2024, impacting rural, suburban, and urban communities. Some may tell us to accept this as a fact of life, but we shouldn’t — look at my new home of Connecticut, one of the states with the strongest gun laws and the lowest rates of gun violence.
Last year, while at Yale for a two-week summer program, I remember walking through the streets of New Haven with my friends, when I suddenly heard loud popping sounds. I quickly pulled them around the corner and yelled “get down.” It was a natural – but sad – survival mechanism I’ve developed growing up in Philadelphia. But they and others around us looked at me in confusion. The popping sounds I heard were not gunshots, as I was accustomed to at home, but rather fireworks, harmlessly lighting up the summer sky…