NFL
By: Brock Vierra
For those who have read some of my work in the past, I have referenced my affinity for UNLV, and the love that I have for my alma mater remains true today. So it came as a surprise when my beloved school was trending on social media. For as much success as the football team has had in 2023, I didn’t think it would garner much attention.
Perhaps it was someone shouting out the 1989-1990 National Champion UNLV Running Rebels basketball team, perhaps it was something that aligned with my prior searches, or perhaps it was a famous alumnus making the news. That would’ve been nice, that would’ve been normal.
Maybe it is the new normal because UNLV was the site of a mass shooting. Now mass shootings are nothing new to America, they’re nothing new to society. Columbine is so ingrained into the American fabric, Lil Yachty made light of it in DRAM’s 8x platinum song Broccoli.
Alex Jones, the conspiracy theorist was sued for saying Sandy Hook didn’t happen, people were afraid of watching movies after Aurora, Colorado and it seems that mass shootings grab the attention of the nation for about 72 hours until things go back to the way it was and business resumes as normal.
It’s different when you have a connection to the incident. Yesterday, that connection for me became all too real. My school, UNLV made the headlines because a disgruntled coward made the conscious choice to take the lives of three people. Three souls whose entire lives ended because they made the controversial decision to go to work. That is the world we live in.
Where that cowardly gunman decided to shoot was a building in which I had multiple classes during my time as a student. Where many people have had classes as students. Yet we get to go home because of chance. That is the world we live in.
And you know what? The response to the incident went flawlessly. A report of a shooter went out, police responded within minutes, and the gunman was down within seconds of the confrontation. Students and staff were instructed to shelter in place, mass warnings went out within a minute of notification of the incident, and Las Vegas Metropolitan Police and their S.W.A.T. division were on the scene within a reasonable time frame.
In every category for which you could judge the response to such an event, the proper authorities acted hastily and without error. Yet, why does this feel like a failure? Because this shouldn’t have happened. Because the family members of the victims shouldn’t have to substitute pictures for the person. Because the job of being a grief counselor should be a calling instead of a career. Because it shouldn’t have happened.
UNLV should be a place of learning, not a graveyard. Parents should feel comfortable sending their kids off into the real world, not scared. That is the world we live in.
When I went to school, we didn’t worry about being the victims of school shootings. We didn’t think it could happen to us. The current group of students will never have that mindset again. Now UNLV is no stranger to managing the fallout of a mass shooting.
I was a freshman when the Route 66 shooting, the deadliest mass shooting in America occurred. When another coward decided to play God to the destruction of so many, it was a somber event, class didn’t feel the same but eventually, we all moved on because it didn’t impact us personally.
Now there are calls for added security, to make UNLV a closed campus, for gun reform, and for the other topics that come up after an event like this. The sad part is no matter what we do, things will never change. Madness will happen and we will never be safe.
And I can accept that. It’s the world we live in. Maybe things will go back to normal, maybe this is the new normal. I don’t know anymore. What I do know is that I’ll be damn sure to hug my girlfriend a little longer now before she goes off to teach first grade, something the loved ones of three hard-working, beautiful people never got to do and will never get to do again.
