Colin Goddart pushed through the chill in the dreary Blacksburg morning air, across the quiet campus toward his morning French class in Norris Hall. Moving quickly, Goddart ran up the steps since he was late.

He peeled through the empty hallway and tried to sneak into the classroom unnoticed since the lecture had already started. As he flopped down in a seat, the professor’s lecture was interrupted by, “Pop. Pop. Pop.”

The class was immediately taken out of its work by the unmistakable noise coming from just outside of the door.

Goddart’s professor, Jocelyne Couture-Nowak, went to the door to see what was going on. She turned back to her class, her face suddenly pale.

The next few moments were a blur. Couture-Nowak, with the help of a few students, attempted to barricade the door, but it was to no avail. The door swung open, and the man in the doorway started shooting.

Goddart was one of the few to survive the massacre of 30 students in Norris Hall on the Virginia Tech campus last week. Goddart was shot three times, twice in the leg and once in the shoulder.

Goddart told his story to his close high school friend and current DU junior, Jarrod Beckstrom. Goddert’s story, like so many from the day of the Virginia Tech massacre, exemplifies the tragedy of the worst mass shooting in U.S. history.

In the days that followed the shooting, students at the University of Denver reacted with shock, sadness and concern for their own safety on campus. DU administrators responded by promising a quicker and better way to notify students of emergencies than the current mass e-mail notification.

“When I first heard about [the shootings], I went pale,” said Beckstrom, who is a journalism major. “You just never think something like that can happen to someone you know.”

Similar sentiments were echoed by other students, even though they have no friends or acquaintances on the Virginia Tech campus.

“It was a shock,” said Yodal Ghebremeskel, a senior majoring in international studies. “It’s unbelievable at the beginning but the more time you have to think about it the more real it becomes. It was a similar thing to 9/11, in that it was just unimaginable that something like that could happen.”

Others wondered how safe the DU campus is.

“I feel pretty safe on campus,” said Mary Pearly, a sophomore majoring in theater and English. “I know that if something were to happen, the word would get out. We are such a close knit community here, that we would be able to protect each other.”

Sophomore Christina Lohman agreed. “If someone is feeling threatened by you, they are gone,” she said. She is a resident assistant in Nelson Hall.

Though many students do seem to feel safe on campus, others feel improvements in campus security are needed.

The DU Critical Incident Response Team, made up of various university administrators, has already begun a review of campus security systems. According to the Director of Campus Safety Don Enloe, the university is focusing on improving the line of communication between the faculty and the students in an emergency. Campus Safety is looking into using cell phone messaging as well as public address systems in order to inform students of an emergency.

Enloe also said that the university works extensively with the Denver Police Department in order to provide the necessary muscle to handle any situation involving weapons.

Provost Gregg Kvistad said that DU would be able to adequately protect the safety of its students if a situation similar to that at Virginia Tech were to occur.

“Obviously, we can not plan six hours in advance for such a situation,” said Kvistad. “However, with the help of DPD, we can have a fully-operational SWAT unit on campus within 15 minutes if the unthinkable were ever to occur here.”

With the story of the killer at Virginia Tech now widely known, people wonder how a school could possibly go about trying to prevent such a situation from occurring. Some students, such as Lohman, believe that prevention starts with inclusion.

“I really feel like DU needs more traditions in building up more of a community,” said Lohman.

She emphasized the need to reach out to students who are having personal problems. “There really aren’t a lot of things that bring the kids together. Having that would be really helpful in figuring out the kids that are really left out. It is really hard for us to get people involved and feel like they are a part of a bigger community,” said Lohman.

Others say there is no way to stop someone intent on doing harm.

“If someone really wants to do something horrible, they are going to find a way to do it,” said Kvistad. “We at DU will do our absolute best to act quickly and efficiently to protect our students, but there is no way for us to guarantee anything.”

Kvistad said that the DU community should do their best to learn from these events and should not let them overpower them with worry, which DU graduate student David Shuster firmly agreed with.

“I generally don’t feel that life is safe, but I am not going to do anything out of the ordinary because of [the recent event],” said Shuster. “I feel really terrible for the people that died and for their families, but it doesn’t make me look at the world any differently. You still have to continue to live your life.”