Monday, April 2, 2012

Trying to make sense of it all

This morning a disgruntled (ex?) student walked into a classroom at
Oikos University and opened fire on the people in the class, resulting
in seven dead, three wounded at the time I write this post.

Several thoughts and emotions flit through me. Shock, anger, fear,
and, why? Why would he feel the need to do this? What made him snap?
What did these people do to him that he needed to play the role of
executioner for them?

To be honest, until today I had never heard of Oikos University, so I
had to look it up. It is a small independent college near the Oakland
Airport area, which has academics in theology, music, nursing, and
Asian Medicine. Sounds like a nice, peaceful place to expand your
education, not the breeding ground of violence that would cause
somebody to snap and start killing people.

The part that is a little scary for me is I used to teach graphic
design at a vocational college a number of years ago. I had one
student that I always had a little residual fear that one day he would
snap and kill us all. Luckily he never did, but even having that
little bit of fear in the back of your head is not grounds for restful
sleep.

Now that I work at a small newspaper, I am watching how the bigger
news publications, stations and sites are handling it. First question
in my head—how do they deal with it? I'm so new to news writing that I
wonder how they can maintain journalistic neutrality when reporting on
something so horrific.

I don't get it.

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