The past week’s events hopefully will serve as a sobering reminder that college students aren’t immortal.

It’s not a soapbox statement. During the past week, everyone in their early adult years got a little reality break. Young people die. Simple fact.

Look down south. Some lunatic bopping around the Keys spurned enough terror so seemingly anyone that can look over a counter is trying to buy a gun instead of a beer. Before you know it, terrified students will be shooting each other. What a way to start a semester.

But the horror in Florida is good. Although a hideous crime, it might be the thing to jar others into realizing the dangers of most activities people engage in without a passing thought.

Students still getting settled in DeKalb will naturally find releases to vent their frustrations. Drinking and socializing are without question the two top legal choices. And everybody knows they possess insurmountable problems.

But everyone knows their limit. Everyone should be a spokesman for those stupid “know when to say when” commercials. Everyone always makes sure a ride home is just a phone call away.

Everyone has this childish attitude. Undoubtedly, there were five funerals in Florida last week for similar people with similar attitudes.

Sick? Maybe. Needed? Absolutely.

The “I’m OK, I can take care of myself” philosophy simply doesn’t hold water. No offense, but guys are simply bigger than girls. Brains might be better than brawn, but try tackling with your medulla.

But it doesn’t matter, women say. I never accept rides home from people I don’t personally know, she says. I can tell what kind of a guy would do that anyway, she insists.

Tell that to the scores of women who were raped and are fighting for the courage to just carry on, let alone going to get some help.

Besides, everyone knows college parties are so quiet a scream would be easily heard a block away. And total strangers routinely break up fights between totally drunk, totally huge individuals.

Guys are in the same boat. For some reason, sticking rubber tubing on a funnel to inhale as much beer at one time is needed for a complete weekend. That system must have zoomed to the top of the popularity chart after the first dozen or so deaths of drinking a raw egg in a beer while standing on your head.

But, as any woman will tell you, guys are dumb. Guys do these things to prove their masculinity. If she is a psychology major, she’ll say you have something against your father.

Either way, people have to take a step back from the immature, “nothing bad ever happens in DeKalb” mentality. How soon everyone forgets the fights outside the residence halls with students wielding baseball bats or the so-called fictitious stabbings in last year’s comic-book-like darkened alleys.

Call the DeKalb Police Department or the University Police Department. Do the AT&T thing and ask them to put it in writing. They wish they could. They understand mortality.

New semester. Out of sight, out of mind.

Thank God for Florida.