According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, tragedy is "a very bad event that causes great sadness and often results in someone's death." For me, a tragedy does not necessarily have to involve death, but can simply involve heavy destruction or an overwhelming loss of something. Tragedy could be the loss of one's purpose or the fall of one's greatness. It could also be the fatigue of one's journey in search of happiness. No matter what anyone's definition of tragedy is, I think we can all agree that 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and the April 27 tornado are all terrible tragedies. With all the tragedies mentioned above there has been a cycle of recovery, reconstruction and restoration. The cycle of each tragedy varied based on the depth of damage, but one thing was so sad, but I eventually came to the conclusion that it was a warning to help people in the future. Yes, New Orleans and many other areas of cities/towns were completely devastated, but what would have happened decades later if the affected areas had been more populated and no one had known that the levees were faulty? Could many more lives have been taken? Should we be grateful that the error was noticed and corrected sooner rather than later? I don't know the answers to these questions, but seeing so many people killed, injured and left with nowhere to go made my heart ache. The government should have done more to help people before and after. Perhaps if the affected areas had been evacuated earlier, more people would have survived or perhaps if the government had better plans for a disaster, more people could have been saved later. These are the questions that bother me about the situation, so I hope the government is trying to learn from its mistakes and create a solution. I got hit by the tornado and to be honest I didn't know much about it until I got to the University of Alabama. I lived in Presidential Village I on campus my freshman year and there was some kind of memorial there in one of the hallways. The memorial was made of wood pulled from the devastation of the tornado and the water that flowed past it. It's pretty cool, but it's not marked, so it's often defaced because no one knows its meaning. I proposed putting up a commemorative plaque there with the six students who lost their lives on that devastating day. Even though it has never happened, the importance of ensuring student safety during tornadoes still concerns me. At Capstone we are proud to say that we have over 30,000 students, but what is being done to ensure their safety. Tornadoes are recurring events in our area. We should take precautions to adequately protect our students, so that they can not only be safe, but feel like the university actually cares about their well-being. I remember in 2014, when we had a tornado in Tuscaloosa, students weren't given much notice to leave class and take shelter. Additionally, students who decided to stay on campus for shelter did not have adequate shelter or guidance on what to do and where to go. Some students were released by the “security” of the University Recreation Center after about 10 minutes