Tuesday, January 22, 2013

You've got to be effing kidding me....

...yet another campus shooting What the hell, people? Why are there so many screwed-up people deciding to take out whatever resentments they feel in such a permanent way?

At least at that shooting, no one has died (yet.)

If I got really, really POd at someone, I might get up in their face and yell at them. Or I might just freeze them out, refuse to work with them, refuse to communicate with them, other than to say how angry I was over what they did or said, and that if they want to apologize, I'd consider forgiving them. Or I might go and talk smack about them with one of my friends. Or if it was an ethical breach, I'd report them.

But I wouldn't ever hurt them. As I've said before: the only time I'd physically hurt another human is if my life was in danger. Or the life of some smaller weaker person dependent on me. Or if I were fairly certain that I was about to be raped, and there was no way for me to get away and run like hell to the nearest cop.


As I've said before: I don't like having to keep a plan in the back of my head aimed at "what would you do if...."

I'm just waiting for the calls to close down college campuses, because they are CLEARLY dangerous places. Feh. (In my bleaker moments, I think, "Just close 'em down. Shut the colleges for 15 years and re-form them at some future date." Of course I'd have to find alternate employment, but....there are a lot of campuses with a lot of broken things)

I don't know. I hate emotionalism in the news. But stories like this make me lose my perspective a little because I can imagine it happening here. I've had  a few very angry students in my office. We had some kind of ill-defined "incident" a couple weeks ago. There are a few students who have been noted as "behaving strangely."

I don't know what, if anything, we can do. Probably nothing, short of allowing faculty and staff with CCW licenses in good standing to carry on campus and being damnsure the campus police are armed and prepared to use force if necessary. Other than that, I guess, you live every day the best you can and accept that some day, it just will be "your time," earlier or later.

Though, dear God, I hope "my time" is much, much later, and that it doesn't happen in a violent way.

1 comment:

Heroditus Huxley said...

Did you notice that all of the mass shootings have been in gun-free zones? The shooters see gun-free zones as safe places for them to commit murder: no law-abiding gun carriers, so no chance of them being shot before they've done what they planned to go out in their fifteen minutes of fame.

If there is one at my university, I'm going to sue the administration for wrongful death.