It seems there are no safe places these days. Not churches, not schools, not offices, not theaters.

All have become the scenes of fatal shootings and the chaos that follows, with Delta State University the latest. A professor was killed in his office at DSU Monday. Bolivar County Deputy Coroner Murray Roark said history professor Ethan Schmidt was killed inside an office in Jobe Hall.

Schmidt directed the first-year seminar program and specialized in Native American and colonial history, said Don Allan Mitchell, an English professor at the school, who called him “a gentleman in every sense of the word.”

“Dr. Ethan Schmidt was a terrific family man, a good friend, a true son of Peabody, Kansas, and his beloved Emporia State University,” he said.

The lockdown began about 10:45 a.m., with the university advising students, faculty and staff to take shelter and stay away from windows.

It was similar to the scene that unfolded at Mississippi State University last month, except no one was injured at MSU.

After an intense manhunt, authorities said the man wanted in the deaths of Schmidt and a woman he lived with died of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound as police closed in on him. News of Shannon Lamb’s death late Monday night brought to a close a chaotic, frightening day during which students and faculty at Delta State University hid in their rooms as authorities scoured the campus looking for Lamb.

There seems to be a cultural shift of late. Instead of working to resolve problems, people are simply resorting to gunfire when they feel they have been wronged. Maybe it’s just us, but there seems to be more of these incidents in public places today.

That leaves parents worried about sending children to places where they should be safe. The small campus at DSU would appear to be the last place you would expect a fatal shooting —  except that we now expect them just about anywhere. That says something about the culture in which we live.

Schmidt may have been targeted because of a personal connection to the shooter. But when it happens in such a public place, it places hundreds, if not thousands, in harm’s way. Something has to change. If not, no community, including our own, will be immune to this type of public violence.