Just 50 days into 2026, there have already been approximately 80 gun-related incidents across schools in the United States, according to Gun Violence Archive, raising questions about students’ psychological well-being.

“Even when a student is not directly involved in a shooting, their nervous system is still taking in the message: ‘Nowhere is guaranteed safe,’” said Felipe Mercado, a Fresno State faculty member in the Department of Social Work Education.

Since 2021, the United States has seen a significant rise in school shootings. CNN reported that as of Dec. 13, 2025, there were 75 school shootings: 43 on college campuses and 32 on K-12 schools, leaving over 100 people injured and 31 dead, in 2025 alone.

Just a day after that report, on Dec. 14, 2025, a shooting at Brown University took place — only a day before the 13th anniversary of the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting. The Brown shooting broke national headlines and reopened a lot of conversations about gun violence in the United States. 

This incident at the university level left Fresno State students shaken.

Victoria Abila, a student majoring in kinesiology with an emphasis in exercise science, doesn’t feel safe on campus at all. 

“I wouldn’t know where to go, who to talk to,” Abila said. “All I know is like, get my keys and run. I don’t even live here, I live in Visalia. If I were to get shot on campus, who’s gonna come get me? My mom’s an hour away.”

And Fresno is no stranger to such incidents. 

In August, Wilson Elementary School experienced a shooting threat from one of its own students. The sixth-grade student arrived on campus with a fake handgun, which resulted in the lockdown of the elementary school and the neighboring Cooper Middle School.

In September 2023, Fresno State received a bomb threat targeting the residence halls, the University House (official home of the university president) and a professor’s home residence. The threat led to the evacuation of the residence halls and the student dining hall. 

The Collegian reached out to the university for a comment regarding students feeling unsafe on campus, and Dean of Students Terree Stevenson said that the university will provide whatever assistance students may need.

But Mercado said that a student does not always necessarily look like they need emotional or psychological support, or know that they need it.

“Students may look ‘fine’ on the surface while struggling with hypervigilance, panic symptoms, irritability, sleep disruption, emotional numbing or a quiet dread that doesn’t have words yet,” Mercado said.

These local incidents bring up safety concerns, as several students have no idea what to do during a campuswide emergency.

“I have no clue what I would do,” said Brenda Gutierrez, a student majoring in anthropology and city planning. “That is something really scary to think about.”

In grade school, students undergo lockdown drills, fire drills and earthquake drills to teach them what to do if any of those situations were to occur. But what is available at the college level?

Many colleges and universities in California, in fact, do conduct active-shooter drills and exercises, such as Cypress College, the University of Southern California and California State University, Long Beach. Some, at least, have extensive protocols that are specialized to meet the individual criteria of specific crisis situations.

However, Fresno State’s Emergency Procedures and Preparation website extends only this information to students: Contact Fresno State Police, call 911 or use one of the blue emergency phone booths.

But even these are unreliable.

“Right now, I feel like the only thing that’s really been shared is like the little blue boxes around campus,” said Jorja Helms, a student majoring in chemistry. “And even then, sometimes they’re out of order, they don’t work.”

Abila said that it’s been years since she watched any safety videos about campus, the last time being during her Dog Days orientation. She wishes that the school would instill more routine and proactive measures for students regarding school shootings, such as practice drills, training modules or awareness guides. 

Mercado said that a clear plan of action is critical to students’ neurological systems and their being able to feel safe on campus.

“When fear becomes part of the learning environment, it disproportionately burdens students who already carry higher levels of stress because of racism, poverty, disability, immigration stress or prior community violence,” Mercado said. 

Not only does this constant state of uncertainty affect a student’s mental health, but it also impacts their learning and, in turn, their grades. 

“Fear taxes the brain,” Mercado said. “When the nervous system is scanning for danger, it steals resources from attention, memory and executive functioning. That’s not a motivation problem, that’s biology.”

In the event of a school shooting at Fresno State, the procedure website is confusing and it would take far too long to access if something were to occur.

If a student can manage to navigate and jump through the hoops of Fresno State’s almost inaccessible procedures, all they would find for what to do in the case of an active shooter is to immediately contact police, to secure the area they’re in and to not leave the “safe zone” until instructed. 

These procedures fail to include where or what the safe zones are.

“We understand that news of violence on college campuses across the country can be deeply unsettling,” Stevenson said. “It is natural to feel concern when incidents elsewhere affect communities like ours, and we recognize that some students may be experiencing anxiety as a result.”

Stevenson also provided a list of resources, including counseling and health services, the Fresno State Police Department and the Bulldog Alert emergency notification system.

However, although Fresno State provides links and websites with lists of resources, the underlying issue is that it isn’t practiced, and it isn’t regularly announced. The only way a student would know about these resources is if an emergency happens and the university then sends a campus-wide email with the support available. 

Mercado said that if campuses want to rebuild trust so that students truly feel safe on campus, they need to be properly educated in a way that provides stability.

“Safety has to be more than a protocol,” Mercado said. “It has to be a relationship.”