Dean Gail Steketee Responds to Tragedy in Orlando

We are horrified to learn of this weekend’s tragedy in Orlando in which more than 50 people have died and many more are injured. Our thoughts are with the many who have died, the injured, and their families. We are mindful of the needs of the many traumatized bystanders, police response team, first responders, and those who face the challenge of tending to the physical and emotional needs of all involved in the aftermath of this horror.

As fellow dean Sandro Galea of the BU School of Public Health notes today in his Boston Globe editorial, we have in this country a “deadly merger of access to weapons and senseless hate.” Now is the time to press our case, shared by the majority of the public at large, to call — at the very least — for elimination of the sale of semi-automatic weapons and any weapon that can cause mass destruction.

Even as we try to make sense of this senseless tragedy and seek to help the Orlando community cope with this disaster, let us work together on prevention. I hope you will join me in reflecting and acting on what we as social workers can do. Let us move forward with solidarity to take guns off of our streets and out of our communities, to reduce the chances that those who are radicalized to hate cannot easily engage in these horrific acts of violence.

— Dean Gail Steketee