New to the curriculum at many colleges this fall will be instruction for students in survival skills. The training material will not be like Clemson University's "College Survival Skills" Web site, which features useful advice on note taking, studying for exams, and dealing with professors. Rather, a new security DVD, Shots Fired on Campus: Student Version, demonstrates tips and techniques on how to survive an "active shooter" attack on campus, like the deadly episodes at Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois University ("The Chronicle", June 27). Apparently, many colleges are buying the message, quite literally. Thus, as with the usual preflight ritual on the plane, a few simple instructions at student orientation on escape strategy during a shooting would be sensible. However, overpreparing students unreasonably risks intensifying their fears and anxiety. There are those, of course, who insist that one can never be too well prepared, even for a rare event like a campus shooting. That may be, but there is an additional and critically important difference between preparing passengers for the unlikely crash and readying college students for an improbable shooting. Airlines do not inspire dangerous ideas by reciting crash drills. By contrast, there are a few students for whom the notion of wreaking havoc on their schoolmates may seem like an exhilarating idea. Obsessing over the unlikely possibility of a campus shooting can unfortunately serve to inspire potential copycats and inadvertently raise the chance of tragedy.