Last week, a close friend of mine who is currently in school back home in Chicago posted an article on Facebook about a 17-year-old boy, who on his death bed, would not give the name of the person who shot him.

Robert Tate was outside on the Westside of Chicago, when somebody walked up to him and shot him in the chest. As he laid in his hospital bed with severe wounds and not much time left, one of the investigating officers asked him if he knew his shooter and he replied, “I know, but I ain’t telling you Sh**.”

When I first read that I was completely baffled. My brain could not grasp the fact that the name of the person who killed him was a secret this 17-year-old was prepared to take to his grave. Then, I thought how many others have operated in this mindset?

The infamous code of silence; I understand it was initiated into the black community as our attempt at protection against police departments and other public officials who were blatantly using the law to hurt us, but how many senseless murders and shootings are we going to have to hear about before we unanimously decide that silence is not our only weapon any more.

When my friend posted the article she said “silence is going to be the end of our generation,” and it saddens me to think she may be right. Guns are glorified in the entertainment industry, from movies to video games to music, but especially in the neighborhoods many of us come from.

Many of those people do not see an end to their current devastating situation and continue to operate in a mindset where wanting and feeling the need to have an active “thug card” is a necessity; and getting a gun is the easiest way (at least in Chicago) to prove how tough you are. Therefore, when you have so many young people walking around, inexperienced and packing ‘heat’, accidents and poorly thought out decisions result in teddy bears and candle-lit memorials popping up on corners at an alarming rate.

One of my biggest fears is getting that dreaded phone call where “God-forbid” someone close to me, friend or family, is the victim of some idiot allowing his gun to settle a discrepancy, simple or complex.

However, I realized the flaw in my fear. Whether I act to prevent gun or any type of violence should not be contingent on how that person’s death would affect me personally, because the big picture shows us that any death in our neighborhoods hurts the black community as a whole.

One of our families are left to grieve the loss of their loved one, while his friends may attempt to get revenge which will continue the cycle of violence, and that unsolved murder will increase negative statistics enforcing stereotypes and the list goes on and on.

It is my hope that we, as college students, can use this summer to speak up in our hometowns against whatever violence is most common. I know Chicago is not the only city where the death tolls are steadily climbing and the summer has not even begun.

We don’t have to wait until we have a secure job and the financial security to write a check to make a difference. All it takes is a conversation. Help the young people around you see the harm in those actions and where those roads will lead them. Let them know there are alternative options to improve bad situations no matter what it is and if possible go with them to get the information.

Most importantly, just show them you care. If you take a minute to listen to the young people and even some older people, their biggest complaint is that people “make it” and never come back. Aggies we do not want generational gaps to become the norm, so it is our responsibility as the talented tenth, to reach out our helping hands.

• LaRia Land