Over the past couple of years, school shootings have become very prominent in the United States. At the time this article was written, there have been 53 school shootings in 2025 to date. 

Due to the concerning amount of incidents, society has begun to consider them almost a “social norm,” something that, due to repetition, may or may not even make headlines at this point. 

History Department Chair Patrick Whelan commented that events only grab our attention when they feel out of the ordinary, if we “can’t imagine them happening.” He explained— “if it happens regularly, it no longer feels like news.” 

And I never exactly thought about school shootings myself, considering them to be just as normal as frequent war. That was, until it affected my family personally. 

One of the most recent schools afflicted with a shooting was Evergreen High School, outside of Denver, Colorado, a school that two of my cousins attend. 

The shooting took place on September 10th, and the attacker was identified as sixteen year-old Desmond Holly, who was attending the school as a sophomore at the time. 

Deputies claimed Holly fired at least twenty rounds of ammunition, injuring two students, before taking his own life. 

One of my cousins, Keegan Cox, is a freshman at Evergreen who was with his friends at the school’s tennis court when they first heard the shooting was taking place. A friend ran up to them and told them to go to the on-campus pool, which they debated until they realized it wasn’t an option. 

“A bunch of kids came running up on their way to the Rec Center near our school,” Keegan said. “That was when it kind of hit us that something was wrong.”

They immediately followed the crowd and found shelter at the local Rec Center. Keegan explained that they were in there for around three hours with no sense of what was going on until an hour in. 

“We had a bunch of prayer circles,” Keegan said. “But nothing exactly made us feel safe; it just made us feel connected.” 

Eighteen-year-old Judah Cox, Keegan’s older brother, is a senior at Evergreen, and since the incident, Judah’s outlet has been connection, just like his brother. 

“Just being around people helps — it brings back that sense of community we lost that day.”

Unlike his younger brother, Judah started his day at the music class he attends every morning, off campus. Then he went over to his girlfriend’s house, which is where he heard about the shooting. 

Judah waited for about three hours before returning home, with the only sense of what was going on coming via text with his mother and brother.

Later that night, Judah wrote a song, “Hometown,” about his experience about the shooting and how it impacted him, causing him to look to his faith. Within twenty-four hours, the song had gone viral, garnering 2.4 million views to date. The song and Judah’s performance was so powerful that news outlets from Fox , the New York Post, and CBS picked up the story.  

“I felt like it [writing the song] was what God was calling me to do that night,” Judah said. “[The lyrics] were just kind of like, ‘boom’, in my face.” 

In the song, Judah writes: “I don’t believe it’s about a conclusion / Lord I pray it’s about reunion with you someday,” emphasizing that faith was one outlet for Judah in the wake of the shooting. 

Afterwards, he sang his song at Flatirons Community Church in Lafayette, CO, in front of a crowd of nine thousand people– most of them families from Evergreen. 

Judah explained that the song was his way of “letting go” of the experience and offering it as someone else’s burden—in this case, God’s. 

Meanwhile Keegan found his own way of recovering, and spoke in a podcast called “Surviving the Evergreen Shooting: One story, many warnings – a conversation with mom and son.” In it, Keegan shared his personal experiences and how he’s moving forward from it. 

In the wake of incidents like this, according to Director of Student Support & Wellness and psychologist Mrs. Danielle Perkins, the road to recovery depends on the person; it varies. 

The path for an individual’s healing process depends on where they are in life, what’s going on currently, what their past experiences are, and how they respond to different situations.

For Perkins, acknowledging and deciding how much control you have over the situation is crucial.

“Thinking about what you have control over, both immediately and in the future, is really powerful,” Perkins said. 

Nevertheless, we do have control over how we can move forward from such tragedies and come together as a community after they occur. Just because school shootings have become normal, doesn’t mean we have to treat them as such.  

For Mr. Whelan, the importance of helping each other heal, no matter the distance, is what matters because we are all one community.  

“We need to stop and not treat these tragedies as routine,” said Whelan. “Even if we aren’t directly affected, one person’s loss is the community’s loss.”

Whelan quoted poet John Donne to emphasize his point: “No man is an island. We are all connected, and what happens to one affects us all.” 

In the aftermath of these tragedies, instead of searching for something to fall back on, we need to be the pillars that hold each other up, like my cousin Judah and Keegan.