How many times have you read about some disaster happening due to incompetency? When the disaster happens, the news reports about all the past incidents, and how the people in charge changed absolutely nothing (or learned absolutely nothing). You think to yourself, "wow, how could it be that they learned nothing from this? This was honestly waiting to happen. It could've been prevented, or at the very least mitigated, if we had someone competent on the top." I feel like we are, right now, in that phase - where these small incidents happen which really reflect that things could go seriously wrong, but we do nothing about it - a phase which people will look back on and have the same thoughts as when they read about, say, the submarine window being rated for only 3km, or Boeing not revealing information about their new plane to the pilots, or condominium building owners not listening to problems with building supports.

It pains for me to say it but it seems like the price for any change in security from the university administration is paid in blood rather than foresight.

It's not like the university could prevent the stabbing in the first place - let's be honest, something like this could happen anywhere. But the fact that I wasn't even notified over what was going on until 3.5h later when I received a notification on learn(!), and that people in the actual building didn't even know what was happening until police arrived, makes me think this could've been so much worse if the suspect had a firearm. And, yes, we are grateful that we live in a country where acquiring a firearm is incredibly difficult, but certainly not impossible.

I come from a European country where shootings, stabbings, etc. are obviously incredibly rare, but even we practiced lockdown drills very regularly and prepared for a scenario like this. As far as I am aware, the average UW student would have no knowledge of what to do and how to react in such a situation unless you specifically look up what to do. And in a situation where seconds count, that is not something you are really able to do.