By Jennifer Brown
For the Daily Titan

The lecture begins and you’re in school mode, totally focused on the professor’s lips and the subject at hand. Or maybe your mind is wandering off thinking about the Snickers bar you want to grab before your next class, or about how you could really use an iced Starbucks coffee right about now.

In any case, you’re unprepared for what you’re about to experience in class. You suddenly hear an unfamiliar and pained cry and see crimson colored liquid splatter onto the off-white tiles below. Your classmate has just been stabbed.

Last Thursday, Oct. 8, a 20-year-old UCLA student was attacked by a fellow student in a chemistry lab while class was in session. The Los Angeles Times confirmed that Damon D. Thompson, a 20-year-old senior from Belize, was charged with premeditated attempted murder and is being held on $1 million bail on suspicion of attempted murder.

This incident follows closely behind the death of 24-year-old Yale student Annie Le found on Sept. 13, who was stuffed in a basement wall of her lab. These two gruesome lab attacks are challenging students and faculty to consider how safe they feel on campus.

Cal State Fullerton’s campus crime statistics are available on the campus Web site and state that from 2006 through 2008 there are zero reports of murder on campus.

Statistics show six aggravated assaults on campus between 2006 and 2008. UCLA’s crime statistics also show zero reports of murder on campus from 2006 through 2008 and list 14 aggravated assaults over the last three years.

Unless one has a vivid or overactive imagination, maybe from watching too much “CSI Miami” or “Dexter,” attacks occurring during regular day-to-day routines may be the farthest thing from a student or faculty member’s mind.

Finance real estate major Elaine Timoteo, 25, confidently conveyed that the UCLA-type of incident does not affect her.

“I don’t feel danger anywhere I go,” Timoteo said.

Timoteo expressed, however, that there is not enough information yet as to why the attack occurred last Thursday and that a lab attack is, “kind of odd,” she said. “Kind of scary.”

In further discussing ways to possibly avoid these types of incidents from occurring, the use of bringing in metal detectors was mentioned.

However, “No one likes to feel like going to school at a prison,” Timoteo said.

So are violent attacks like this foreseeable and does location matter? Attacks like these may be as unpredictable as the Southern California weather forecast.

“Acts of violence on campuses are extremely rare; thus, they are hard to predict with any real accuracy,” said Amy Cass, professor of criminal justice at CSUF.

Not everyone gets personal enough with their classmates to notice if something out of the ordinary will occur with them.

Cass advised that some red flags to be aware of are students who are withdrawn, might have a substance abuse problem, can be confrontational or argumentative and those that typically find fault in others rather than themselves.

Biology major Christian Loafau, 17 expressed that he is not very trusting of people in general.

“Anyone’s capable of anything,” Loafau said.

Loafau did not voice fear of an attack occurring in his classes but rather made a point that he should know how to defend himself and mentioned he should be able to aid others as well.

“I would get up and whoop his ass and see how he likes it!” Loafau said about the offender.

Cass said that CSUF offers “Shelter-in-Place” training seminars to students and faculty to instruct the campus community in the event that an emergency should happen on campus. The guidelines can be found on the campus Web site, which offers instruction on what to do in the event of an active shooter or other extreme event.

A tip listed on the Web site states that if you are unable to leave the area where an attack occurs, “Work to remain calm and develop a plan to escape should it become necessary.”

“One of the best steps a campus can take to avoid violence is to take all threats seriously. Do not assume that a student is joking around or their threats have no merit: Report them,” said Cass.

Christine D. Scher, professor of psychology at CSUF said, “The most dangerous people are not strangers.”

Scher added that acts like this are “relatively rare” and that’s “what makes it news.”

Of course it would be easier if we could see things like this coming before they happen, but just being aware may be an extremely helpful piece of knowledge.

“We would like to think that these incidents are preventable because it makes us feel safe,” Scher said.