At 8:18 p.m. February 13, there was an active shooter at Michigan State University in Berkley Hall. Three students were killed and five were left in critical condition.
2022 WHS graduate Lauren Schutter, who plays volleyball at Michigan State was on campus when the shooting happened.
Michigan State sent all of the students home to give them time to recover from the incident. MSU paid for all the students’ travel expenses to return home.
Lauren returned home along with two of her teammates from Turkey: Selin Aslayan and Nil Okur.
At the basketball game against Riley County February 17, Schutter gave a speech bringing awareness to the situation.
“As I sat in my apartment mindlessly writing a paper for my literature class, I looked at my phone to see that our volleyball group chat was blowing up. The most recent text was from our team captain, who asked for all of us to confirm our location and say if we were or were not safe,” Schutter said.
At the game against Riley County, I got a chance to talk to Laurens teammates about the shooting.
“I used to think that college towns were super safe, like we would be out walking home at 1 a.m. because we thought it was a safe place,” Asalayan said
In other countries, school shootings aren’t as common as in America.
“It was my parents’ greatest fear when I came to school in America,” Okur said.
Every time there is a school shooting that receives media coverage, people care for a few weeks and then go back to acting like nothing ever happened.
It’s time for a change in culture. No one should be afraid to go to school. No parents should have to worry about seeing their kids for the last time ever dropping them off at school. No teacher should have to worry about protecting their students and losing their lives for them.
Seeing a shooting in the news is something we’ve all become numb too, but the incident at Michigan State was the first time where I actually knew someone at the school. It was an awful feeling, and our country needs to take whatever steps it can to stop these incidents from happening again.
The Charger 
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