I feel so very sad for everyone at Northern Illinois University and the families and friends of those who died or were injured. It's impossible for me to imagine what they are feeling or what motivated the shooter. It's utterly unfathomable.
I'm surprised at how few bloggers (in my circle) are writing about this. I guess because it's hard to know what to write.
13 comments:
You've hit the nail on the head.
It's difficult to write about because I want to say something intelligent and all I end up doing is ranting over the ridiculous ease by which you can get hold of guns.
And I just learned about what happened. Too much time in the lab.
But I, too, have a hard time figuring out what to say.
I just have no idea what to say - and I feel so sorry that it was a grad student who not only had mental health concerns, but also was such a rising star. For me it is just too easy to see how grad school + an underlying vulnerability could lead to something like that, given the way the majority of grad students seem to get treated during their education.
Also, I think a lot of people did write a blog post after VA Tech, and there's just not much more to say on the topic. It's still horrible. It's still senseless.
There are no words, no sentiment, no arguement, no consolation that can be phrased or said. The only thing any of us can do is to reach out to the people around us, be more compassionate and not let students fall through the cracks.
Of all the incidents that lead up to this individual taking this action, I suspect that if one or two had been different, the net result would have been different.
And it was one of many school shootings this week. I wonder how many schools were threatened this week? How many academics, students and staff at somepoint in the last couple of weeks were told to remain where they were, told to stay in their office until given a password by a heavily armed police officer?
This is a cultural problem that blogging alone cannot solve.
I agree with all of you.
I also dislike the reaction that often surfaces of, what can we do to prevent this in the future? Of course everybody wants to prevent this kind of horrible thing. But increasing security is not going to do it. Increasing security to the level that would prevent this kind of attack would also prevent anything getting done at a university. This is a social and cultural problem, not a security problem.
I agree with what everyone else has said about not knowing what to write. In addition, I also think that not everyone responds to something like this by wanting to write about it publicly, and that people tend to write about events that, for some reason, feel particularly personal to them.
As Propter Doc points out, there have been many shootings recently at schools as well as other places such as the shopping mall in Utah. There have also been other tragic events such as the sugar refinery explosion in Georgia, political violence such as the explosion that killed former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, or ethnic violence such as what is happening in Kenya. There is more than enough tragedy to provide full-time content for hundreds, if not thousands, of blogs.
I'm not saying that the frequency of senseless violence and death decreases the tragedy of any given event, merely that we do not write about every tragedy that occurs. And not writing about a tragic event isn't necessarily an indication that someone is ignorant of it, or doesn't care.
This is the first I've heard of it, I had to google to find out what happened.
I was astonished to see "graduate student" and "no motive."
Um, HELLO??? Clearly we're not doing enough to draw attention to the problems.
I'm with the person who said it's all too easy to see how this could happen, and I agree that it's a cultural issue, not a security problem!
If anything, I'm amazed this doesn't happen in grad schools on a daily basis.
A lot of things need to change.
I'm afraid I tend to deliberately shy away from writing about anything like this. It's especially difficult as foreigner (I'm a Brit in Canada) who has a mostly American readership. At a time when your country is grieving, I don't like to be the outsider looking in and condemning your gun control policies. That's for you guys to figure out yourselves. Someone like me, who didn't even see a gun in my own country until I first went to an airport at the age of 17, doesn't have much to contribute to the debate...
It is so hard to find anything to say. I also feel a bit like CAE, although, as we've had shootings at German schools despite stricter laws on weapon accessibility, it goes beyond that. It is a big cultural problem, and there won't be a quick and easy fix.
Your blog was the first I heard of this incident, that said I wouldn't have blogged about it, not b/c I'm not horrified and saddened. I am.
I think my post didn't convey what I was thinking very well. I wasn't passing any judgement at all about the lack discussion in the blogosphere of this incident. I had expected to see a lot about it, nothing more nothing less.
There are many thoughtful comments on this post. I respect and agree with just about all of them. Thanks, everyone.
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