By Nina Payne
Trinity Times Correspondent
Trinity Washington University’s counseling program officials are encouraging members of the school’s community to seek them out as they cope with more gun violence during the summer of 2023.
Trinity students, staff and faculty were confronted with the July 5 shooting death of a Kentucky school teacher, who had been staying on Trinity’s campus while attending a conference.
This was one of several deadly shootings in the Baltimore-Washington area around the 4th of July holiday.
Maxwell Emerson, 25, was shot on the neighboring campus of the Catholic University of America and was pronounced dead at an area hospital after his arrival, Metropolitan Police said.
Following a six-day investigation, Metropolitan Police charged a 22-year-old Washington man with first-degree felony murder in connection with the Emerson case, and the Trinity community is dealing with the shock of gun violence, this time associated closely to the university.
When gun violence happens within a university community, students, staff, and faculty can be impacted emotionally and possibly traumatically by this occurrence, said Lunae Oprea, associate professor of Counseling in Trinity’s School of Nursing and Health Professions.
Students and other members of the university community may experience emotions such as shock, fear, powerlessness, depression, anger, or grief, Oprea said.
Members of Trinity’s graduate counseling program, along with Trinity’s Health and Wellness Center, can provide a support system for students during times like these, she said.
This summer’s shooting is another example of how gun violence has impacted the Trinity community in 2023.
The Trinity campus went into lockdown April 13 during a fake active shooter alert, known as “swatting,” which caused armed police officers to sweep through the school grounds, creating a traumatic experience for students, staff, and faculty.
The Trinity community gathered in February for a planned candle-lit vigil for the fifth anniversary of the Feb. 14, 2018, mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, but that event had a greater urgency because it followed another mass shooting the day before, this time at Michigan State University.
The Emerson killing at CUA followed another shooting in Washington earlier on July 5 that injured nine people, and at least 17 mass shootings occurred throughout the U.S. during the 4th of July holiday, killing at least 18 and wounding more than 100.
Understanding the July 5 killing of the Kentucky school teacher was a traumatic event for the communities of both neighboring universities, CUA’s campus ministry held a prayer service July 6 at the site of the shooting.
Dominican Father Aquinas Guilbeau, chaplain and director of campus ministry at CUA, quoted from 2 Corinthians 5:6-8, to offer healing for those impacted by the gun violence.
“So, we are always courageous, although we know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight,” Father Guilbeau said as he quoted the passage. “Yet we are courageous, and we would rather leave the body and go home to the Lord.”
His prayers and words provided the Trinity and CUA communities with solitude and faith.
Gun violence in Washington has drastically increased in the last five years.
By June the District of Columbia had surpassed its 100th homicide, which is a 19% increase from the same six-month period in 2022.
Notwithstanding safety initiatives, prevention programs and gun laws, D.C. has been struggling to get a handle on gun violence.
“We have too many guns and too many violent people on the street,” said D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, during a July 5 press conference in Washington to talk about a spat of gun violence in the city during the July 4 holiday.
In June 2022, amid mass shootings around the country, President Biden signed the first major gun safety legislation passed by Congress in the past 30 years. The bipartisan Safer Communities Act gun safety bill invests in programs to help institute safety measures in primary and secondary schools.
Additionally, the new law expands mental health services and provides additional support for schools to create a safer environment for students, educators, and school staff.
Washington also just recently passed an emergency crime bill as violence soars within the District of Columbia.
The D.C. Council passed the emergency public safety bill July 11, which increases penalties for offenses such as firing a gun in public, carjacking, and other crimes on the rise in the nation’s capital.
D.C. Councilwoman Brooke Pinto, who supported the bill, told Fox News that Washington is in a “state of emergency.”
“Like in any emergency, we have to act like it,” she said, “and we have to act urgently as a government to address the problem that we’re seeing.”
Every death related to gun violence in the U.S. adds to the collective trauma felt by everyone, said Cynthia Greer, associate professor of Counseling in Trinity’s School of Nursing and Health Professions.
“Most people do not realize that the anxiety that they are feeling when they are just going about their business and everyday life is collective trauma,” Greer told Trinity Times.
“We are all looking for safe spaces, and when we are not at home, our next best safe space is work (or) school,” she said. “With the recent murder of (Emerson), a visitor to the nation’s capital, we are reminded, or we question, whether any space is safe.”
The national stalemate concerning gun regulations is another area that creates fear and anxiety, Greer said. “We do know that access to guns is the real issue,” she said, “and in my opinion some of our legislative bodies refuse to deal with the gun issue, which adds to our frustration.”