Kind of interesting monitoring twitter and the news through the day. It's kind of nice to see a student say "Wear something red tomorrow to support Chardon and this terrible time." Other tweets are continuing to play the blame game. As I reflect back on my own blog, I reviewed "From Columbine To Virginia Tech To Tuscon," written January 10, 2011.
Also I re-read my posts from the 2007 Virginia Tech shootings including, "Mental Health Care Delivery In The US," "Depression=Murder?", "Privacy Laws Need Scrutinized," In looking at the news and twitter through the day, the same questions come up again, with still no resolution. Here are some buzz words that are always thrown around:
- Bullying (ie - blame the bully): Since this is an election year, I predict the politicians will pass more bullying laws this year. Will they work? Probably not...
- How was his home life? Did he play video games? (ie - blame the parents): Some have said that his parents should also serve jail time.
- How safe are public schools (ie - blame the school district): Metal detectors in public schools has already come up in the discussion today. The home school people have also been talking today
- There are too many guns out there (ie - blame guns): The gun control people are out again advocating for passing more laws that may or may not be enforced
- Was the child mentally ill (ie - blame the doctor): I haven't read anything on this yet, but I predict that news stories will start covering this in the next few days
- Did you see his Facebook page? (ie - blame social media): I see a knee jerk reaction to prohibit and/or heavily monitor students social media use. Could that have prevented this? It's debatable.
Unfortunately, what usually happens is that the small community of Chardon will be in the spotlight for a few days. The usual pundits will debate the above issues. Again, no resolution will occur. And, then, again, another school shooting will take place. But, I will again post a quote from my 2007 post named, "Can The Cycle Be Broken?" All I can hope is that something will happen to change...
Of course, people are outraged by this situation. I'm outraged by what happened. But, I've seen this too many times. We are shocked by what happened, we mourn the victims, we blame whomever we need to blame for what happened, then we go back to our apathy until the next tragedy happens.
Well, I'm sick and tired of this useless cycle. Instead of outrage turning into apathy, let's turn outrage into action. And, I'm not talking about knee-jerk reactions like firing some university official somewhere or a more strict student visa process or permanent resident visa process - like what's being talked about now.
Um, uh, wait a minute. As I think about things now (a couple of hours after starting to write this post), I'm thinking about what realistically can happen? Would it mean a radical change in American culture? A culture that celebrates violence? A culture that makes celebrities out of people like Eric Harris, Dylan Klebold, and Cho Seung-Hui [and now TJ Lane]