Students, graduate students, and staff of St. Petersburg university are unanimous in their opinion: the tragedy that took place at PSNIU must not be repeated.
On Wednesday, September 22, at 11:30 a.m. a minute of silence was held on all campuses of St. Petersburg Mining University to the pulse of the blockade metronome. Thus representatives of Russia’s oldest higher technical educational institution honoured the memory of the victims of the monstrous, by its scale and inhumanity of the crime, which is so contrary to common sense that the mind simply refuses to believe in the reality of what happened.
Exactly two days ago, Timur Bekmansurov, a student at Perm State University, entered his university with a hunting rifle in his hands and opened fire on his classmates. As a result, six of them were killed and 43 were injured, many very seriously. The best Russian doctors are fighting for their lives now. The seriously injured were taken to Moscow, 12 more people remain in local hospitals and the man responsible for the tragedy is under guard.
“On behalf of the staff of St. Petersburg Mining University I would like to express my deepest condolences to the families and friends of the young people who died in Perm,” said the university’s rector Vladimir Litvinenko after a moment of silence. “It’s unfortunate that this accident happened on the university campus, where parents send their children for knowledge, not to mourn their untimely deaths. Every higher education institution in Russia, every one of our staff members and students is experiencing this tragedy today, along with their colleagues from Perm State University and the entire city of the Urals, and, of course, with the entire country. The safety of young men and women in universities and dormitories is one of the top priorities of our educational institution. As sad as this is, the incident must force our entire education system to thoroughly test the work of the security services.”
Students who participated in a minute of silence noted that the news of the shooting at Perm State University shocked them so much that they still feel completely devastated and can’t come to their senses from the shock. In their opinion, the security system at Mining University is quite reliable; there are metal detectors at the entrances to the university, and the posts are equipped with security buttons so that armed people are unlikely to enter the campuses. Nevertheless, according to young people, to prevent such tragedies from recurring throughout the country in the future, it is not enough just to improve the security of educational institutions. Each of us must play a role in the prevention of such accidents, given the level of development of communication media and social networks in the modern world. This includes signalling calls for violence by individuals or groups.
