Gunfire at elementary school shatters Chapel Hill’s feeling of safety

Last Friday the quiet tranquility of Chapel Hill on a warm spring afternoon was pierced by the sirens of emergency vehicles rushing to the scene of a crisis. Through my office window, I saw a parade of fire trucks, police cars, and ambulances drive by in quick succession. Something was clearly going on, more than a fire drill, I thought, but nothing prepared me for the news that there was a shooting at the elementary school only two blocks away. That was all that we knew at first: there was... Read more

Ohio School Shooting: How Can We Empower and Protect Our Kids?

On February 27, five high school students were shot when a classmate started firing in their school cafeteria in Chardon, a small community in Ohio. The alleged shooter is now in custody. Two students died, and the others were injured. Students spent hours huddled in their locked down classrooms, texting and trying to understand what was going on. The lives of those shot and their loved ones will never be the same. And, the community is traumatized. As one high school student asked poignantly,... Read more

Jared Loughner shooting: how did the system fail?

As details emerge about alleged shooter Jared Lee Loughner, who opened fire at Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords’ community event in Tucson, the tragedy paints an emerging picture of a failed system that needs to work beyond individual action. This situation is particularly tragic because it seems as though enough was known to prevent this mass shooting. I think about the anti-terrorism message, “If you see somthing, say something.” And in Doing Right by Our Kids, we are... Read more

The shooting in Arizona: what does it mean for “Safety at All Levels of Society?”

Today the nation is reeling from the news about the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in a gun rampage that killed six people, including Federal Judge John Roll, and wounded 14 others. I just read that the 9-year old girl who was killed in the gunfire, Christina Green, was actually born on September 11, 2001. As a mother, and human being, that is heartbreaking to the core. And I am feeling this incident on a more personal level than you might expect, given that I live across the... Read more