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A school district in New Hampshire canceled a planned eighth grade class trip to D.C. yesterday, citing security concerns in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings, reports the New Hampshire Union Leader:

“We feel there are safety concerns with our students being in the District of Columbia at this time,” school board Chairman Trisha Korkosz said Wednesday night.

Korkosz said the board was concerned about the trip following Monday’s bombings in Boston, in which three people were killed, including an 8-year-old boy, and 176 were injured.

She said 107 students and 11 chaperones were going to go to the nation’s capitol today and come back Sunday. Several cities, including Washington, placed themselves on heightened states of alert after the bombings.

Korkosz said the board understands parents and students will not be pleased by the decision.

“It was a very difficult decision,” she said. “We certainly appreciate that families are very upset about this and students are very upset.”

In response, D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier would only say the she understood the concerns and that MPD was adapting to the changing security conditions in the wake of the Boston incident.

“During this heightened state of alert, we understand the concern that many people have, at this time. The Metropolitan Police Department has increased security, as a result of the events in Boston. We monitor situations that occur in other jurisdictions and we adapt as necessary. We are urging the public to remain vigilant and report suspicious behavior and activity,” she said in an email.

We’re of two minds here. On the one hand, the Boston Marathon bombing was a wake-up call for many that yes, terrorism and violence can happy anywhere and to just about anyone. Especially for a place like D.C., whose residents live with and often mock the many “suspicious packages” that close off roads, parks and buildings, the fear may have become a little more real.

But on the other hand, as awful as the Boston bombings were, the chances of being the victim of such an attack are incredibly low. We’re all more likely to be in car accidents, for one, but we don’t stop getting into cars. Additionally, once you give into such fears, when would they go away? Will D.C. be any safer two weeks from now? Two months from now? Is there any good way to tell?

Either way, it’s a depressing state of affairs when security becomes the reason that a class trip to the nation’s capital—a rite of passage for many school-aged kids in this country—is called off.