sound bites

The tragic shootings that took the lives of 32 students and faculty at Virginia Tech have forced all of us who work on campus to question whether this kind of bloodshed could be prevented from happening again. That's the question UCLA Today editor Cynthia Lee asked some in the campus community.

Eknath Ghate, visiting professor of mathematics I don't think it should be so easy for someone that young to be able to purchase a gun with a minimum of [background] checks. And I don't think the solution is to have professors carry guns either, as some have suggested. I was in Arizona yesterday, and one of the letters to the editor suggested that. That's certainly not the way to go.

Danielle Ryan, second-year English major I don't think there's anything that any school or any one entity can do. It's really the entire society that's gone wrong. I don't know what's wrong exactly, but obviously something's wrong because we seem to be the only society that experiences things like Virginia Tech and Columbine.

Myrna Jacobson Meyers, oceanographer, ecologist and visiting lecturer There were many signals beforehand that this young man was very troubled, as there were in Columbine. We need to know when we have the power to remove such an individual from the community at large. I know there's a very delicate balance between academic freedom and pathology. But some clever people — psychologists and administrators — should talk to each other and figure it out.

Ya-Hong Xie, vice chair and professor of materials science and engineering It's a very tragic event, a freak accident of the society. You will always have people who are mentally somehow cross-wired. But in order to prevent this kind of thing from happening again, we will have to sacrifice so much in terms of financial resources and personal freedom. I don't think we're willing to do that.

Robert Duncan, administrative analyst for the physiological science department Having better PA systems in the buildings — that's the No. 1 issue. If older buildings don't have them, they could retrofit them and maybe get some federal money to do it.