Bloody students fleeing in terror. Bodies carried out on stretchers. Candlelight vigils and makeshift shrines. Another campus, another deadly attack with a sickening senselessness that now borders on routine.

Despite a national push to secure schools after the Virginia Tech shootings, the rampage at Northern Illinois University this week proves a gut-wrenching reality: Unless colleges are willing to turn themselves into armed camps, they’re helpless against these kinds of attacks.

As word of the shootings rippled throughout the country, students and authorities alike reacted with frustration and – tellingly – resignation.

“I don’t think there’s anything that could be done,” said Brittany Dornack, 21, a sophomore at the University of Minnesota.

“People do what they feel like they need to do, and I don’t think anyone is going to be able to stop them. People will just have to either learn to live in fear … or they’ll just have to not think about it.”

The gunman this time, Stephen Kazmierczak, a 27-year-old NIU graduate, opened fire Thursday afternoon in a lecture hall, killing five students and injuring more than a dozen others in a rapid-fire assault that lasted just a few minutes. He committed suicide on the stage.

Authorities responded quickly; the first 10 police officers were on the scene in 90 seconds. NIU launched its emergency alert system – a carefully rehearsed plan developed after Virginia Tech – sending out e-mails and messages on Web sites to notify students that a possible gunman was on campus and they needed to find a safe area.

“We had a plan in place,” said NIU President John Peters. “We did everything we could to ensure the safety of this university … Nothing is perfect, but I believe it did work.”

The plan will be reviewed, he said, but it and others like it are response plans, meant to limit the damage a shooter can do rather than stop one from invading a campus.

As NIU Police Chief Donald Grady said, there is no foolproof way to prevent this type of tragedy.

“I wish I could tell you that there was a panacea for this kind of a thing, but you’ve noticed that there’s been multiple shootings all over this country within the past six months,” he said.

“It’s a horrible circumstance, and as much as we do, it’s unlikely that anyone would ever have the ability to stop an incident like this from beginning.”

That assessment weighed on the minds of NIU students who piled suitcases and laundry into cars Friday and left campus, apprehensive about their return.

Associated Press writers Don Babwin, Ashley M. Heher, Elizabeth Dunbar, Kathy Matheson and Philip Elliott contributed to this report.