News of the Navy Yard shooting in Washington, D.C. rung through the University of Tampa campus on Monday morning. Many students felt the emotional effects whether they were in Washington, D.C. or in Tampa. The attack left people feeling confused as the Boston bombing did just four months ago.
Samantha Pfaff, an international and cultural studies major, is living in Washington, D.C. this semester for an internship through The Washington Center. Her housing is about two miles away from the Navy Yard.
“It was really more of a surreal experience for me rather than fearful,” said Pfaff, a junior from Monroe, Mich. “Others I live with were more tentative about how secure they felt.”
During the time of the shooting, Pfaff was at a meeting at the World Bank, which is closer to the Navy Yard than her internship offices based in Arlington, Va., where she would normally be on a weekday.
Pfaff stayed inside for most of the day for various meetings, but she noticed a larger amount of police officers on duty at the metro stations on her way back home later that evening.
“I would have gone jogging last night or across town to the store, but I just stayed in as a precaution,” Pfaff said. “More so in caution of societal responses/reactions to the shooting than fear of the actual event itself.”
Meanwhile, junior Terry Preston waited at the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport to fly back to Tampa. He visited Washington D.C. for the weekend to attend his nephew’s christening.
To be safe, the Reagan National decided not to let any planes fly in or out of the airport until police had contained the gunman, Aaron Alexis.
“The only major difference was my plane sat on the runway for half an hour,” said Preston, a double major in advertising and public relations and writing from Bristow, Va.
Junior Joshua Hernandez, a veteran of the U.S. Army, has lived on several U.S. Army bases and has never personally experienced suspicious activity before. However, bases have specific procedures to follow when events like the D.C. shooting occur.
“[None of these procedures encourage] soldiers to engage the suspicious person or do anything that could escalate a situation from suspicious to violent,” said Hernandez, an international business and management major from Irmo, S.C.
Hernandez said faulty security is less of a problem when preventing violence on base.
“It [faulty security] would be a small factor compared to the greater issue of identifying and treating people with mental illnesses, should that be the case of the shooter,” Hernandez said.
Despite Alexis’ motive, the shooting brought up issues of gun control and public safety yet again.
“The shooting served as a chilling reminder that I’m living in a high-target city, especially early on when the details were still unclear,” Pfaff said.
Natalie Hicks can be reached atnatalie.hicks@theminaretonline.com