At Risk of Being a Fanboy
Amanda has a good post on the VA tech story. The fact is that from what we know now there is very little that can be gleaned from this story. With all due respect to my coblogger Eli, spree killers are an aberration. As Amanda notes they tend to be angry loners and they tend to be male. Other than that it just seems that a certain (teeny tiny) percentage of people go on killing sprees. Some are mentally ill. Some are sociopaths.
The Columbine story was a good example of one that got completely out of control. When something with no meaning happens everyone grasps at straws that probably say more about the culture than the spree killer did. In Columbine the first storyline that these were crazed goth kids bent on revenge for bullying was a great story with good staying power. Unfortunately it was just a story that turned out to be completely untrue. We will not know the whole story of this killing for some time, and I suspect that we will never really know or understand why.
April 18th, 2007 08:35
Again, I was not arguing for a causal explanation of the VATech tragedy that relates it to the violence in Iraq. I insinuated that someone could do this, but then I went on to say that I am more interested in framing the story in a way that leads us to reflect on the parallels (not causal links) between the tragedy we are experiencing on our own soil and the tragedies the Iraqi people are experiencing everyday, such as TODAY when suicide bombers killed at least 157 people! I’m just trying to draw attention to the narrowness of our circles of compassion. I think that it’s very considerate that the VA Tech victims get NYT frontpage profiles and candlelight vigils and coverage on all the major networks for the next few months. But why do the Iraqi victims not get any individualized attention? This contrast of relative concern is what I would like us to reflect on.
April 18th, 2007 22:18
Following-up on my own comments about framing the VA Tech tragedy… I don’t mean to divert the focus from domestic problems. In addition to calls for increased discussion of gun control, another productive way of framing the event is to call for increased reflection on issues of mental health at universities. Although universities are legally limited in how much they can tell parents about their children’s mental problems (see this NYT article), university communities can do a lot to support students’ mental health, such as through making it a continual part of their institutions to have discussions, forums, and protocols about what mental illnesses are, how to talk to people about them, and how to get treatment. An organization with a good website on this is the National Alliance on Mental Illnesses on Campus, but every campus has (or should have) helpful mental health counselors also.