The recent spate of tragic slaughters on campuses across the country, including the spree killing near the University of California – Santa Barbara, has Chapman University student Haylee Barber reflecting on a potential historic analogy.

At age 21, I recently watched the 1939 film Gone with the Wind for the first time.

That specific scene, after the Confederate Army decimates the town of Atlanta, hit me like a ton of bricks.

For days, I thought about the absurdity of the Civil War. The concept of Americans brutally slaughtering their fellow citizens, destroying their own towns and ruining the lives of families and children, I still ponder how this was ever possible.

And yet, as I watched coverage this morning of the Seattle Pacific University shooting, with the recent shooting at the University of California Santa Barbara fresh in my mind, I could not help but wonder if a new type of Civil War is upon us.

As a Southern California college student, I, like many of my peers, found it difficult to watch the coverage of the UCSB shooting. Most Americans now have a similar scene that makes them shiver.

And thus, I am carried back to that same scene with Leigh, observing the slain bodies of the soldiers, and I wonder if we, as Americans, must consider what it would look like if this same scene existed for the lives lost in shootings across America over the past decade.

….As a student preparing to enter the work force, I am forced to question what has gone wrong in the psyche of those my age to force them to take the lives of their peers and often of themselves. Perhaps it is the overstimulation of media and technology, the desensitization occurring through violent video games, the “maybes” and “whys” span an endless list explored by many.

Regardless of the reason, it is time for something to change.

Perhaps the strategy of approaching this situation should shift from questions of gun control toward a military strategy to end a war. Perhaps the conversation between students, parents and school administrators must be constant about the state of our adolescent mental health.

The Civil War left the city of Atlanta in ruins. Despite the 200 years of technological progress since this war, I wonder what, if any, moral progress has been made.

The question must become — do we wait for another mass shooting, or wait for our generation — like Atlanta and the soldiers — to simply be gone with the wind?