Campus Violence

Below is a timeline in FULL from the oddly named, but very helpful, Geelong Advertiser:

A history of American shooting massacres

17Apr07

At least 33 people have been killed at Virginia Tech University in the deadliest campus shooting in US history.

Until today America's worst school shooting incident was at the University of Texas campus in Austin on August 1, 1966, when Charles Whitman went to the top of a tower and opened fire.

He killed 15 people, including his mother and wife the night before, and wounded 31 others.

Here's a chronology of some of the major shootings inside US schools and universities in more recent years:

* March 1998 - At Westside Middle School in Jonesboro, Arkansas, two boys aged 13 and 11 set off the fire alarm and killed four students and a teacher as they left the school.

* April 1999 - Two student gunmen killed 12 other students and a teacher at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, before killing themselves.

* January 2002 - A student who had been dismissed from the Appalachian School of Law in Grundy, Virginia, killed the dean, a professor and a student, and wounded three others.

* October 2002 - A failing student out for vengeance opened fire inside the University of Arizona's School of Nursing in an attack that claimed the life of three of his professors, then he committed suicide.

* March 2005 - A 16-year-old high school student gunned down five students, a teacher and a security guard at Red Lake High School in far northern Minnesota before killing himself.

He also killed his grandfather and his grandfather's companion elsewhere on the Chippewa Indian reservation.

* Sept 27, 2006 - A drifter took six female high school students hostage in Bailey, Colorado, molested them and then shot one dead and killed himself as police closed in.

* Sept 29, 2006 - A 15-year-old student killed his school's principal in western Wisconsin after telling another student ``you better run''.

* Oct 2, 2006 - Charles Carl Roberts, a local milk truck driver, entered the West Nickel Mines School in Pennsylvania and shot 10 girls aged 6 to 14 before killing himself. Five girls died.


These are HUGE stories because there were many victims, but a short Internet search or conversation with anyone who has recently graduated college, will yield many more incidents of campus violence ranging from verbal harassment to murder, with just about everything in between.

This is the scariest thing about working on a college campus. This is the nightmare every teacher has to think about. It comes up during our professional development, usually as a dark aside to other more useful issues, like class size and parking--things we can get a handle on, control.

The fact that we come into contact with hundreds of people every day, that there are tens of thousands on campus every week, and that many of them are mentally ill and have access to weapons is too much for even our faculty to wrap their minds around.

I have wondered if a student is going to get violent after earning a low grade.

I have wondered if a student who has told me he is schizophrenic and abusing drugs is going to stay under control for the whole semester.

I have wondered if any number of students who failed a class quietly over the last five years may come back, having finally snapped.

I have wondered if the students I do not know, but see walking around with angry or vacant expressions or apparently high are going to lose it.

Even if I do everything right--am always respectful and fair, what about the other hundreds of professors? Even if we are all perfect people with no bad days, what about the students who are psychotic and bound to snap, all on their own? What about the students angry at their lovers, friends, parents?

These are the dangers of being in a public space in any city. The thing about working at a school or government office is that we know people are going to be upset or dissatisfied regularly--there are always going to be a certain number of people who fail the driver's test, lose the appeal, or fail an exam or class. At a school there are also a number of people walking around thrilled by what they are learning who are enjoying their educational experience. They are not the ones that scare me and make me wonder if it wouldn't be better to be a full-time writer and avoid such angst-ridden public spaces.

Humans are violent. Even a fleeting familiarity with history confirms that. However, I do sense that we are currently not so much violent in the way that animals are violent--for survival, but that the type of violence we see in the news is the symptom of a great social sickness.

I wonder why so many Americans a depressed, but I suspect it has something to do with how much time we spend earning money just so we can spend hours shopping for useless junk to spend it on. We buy all this stuff, bring it home, and it sits there until it's boring and we want more new stuff. We buy huge houses we don't have the time to clean or hang out with our family in. We buy gas guzzlers so that we can commute for two hours every day and obliterate the environment.

We spend very little time walking outside breathing unconditioned air. We spend little time doing things that do not involve shopping or spending. We spend little time playing in the grass with a child or an animal. We vacation very little. We work more than 40 hours a week, often for corporations that do not care if we feel spiritually fulfilled. We are obese. We have diseases like diabetes, cancer, depression, heart disease, and anxiety.

I suspect there is a connection between the way we live our lives and our health. I am not a scientist, but this seems so obvious, even a poet can't miss it!

What makes my stomach hurt even more is the fact that the medications so many people take for anxiety and depression can sometimes escalate their disease and lead to things like--shooting your ex and anyone else who happens to be around.

I hope that as things like climate change come into vogue, that people will start to make healthier choices. It comes as no surprise that what is good for the planet is good for us--walking instead of driving, reading instead of watching TV, eating organic and local produce instead of pesticide laden food from two states away, and eating vegetables instead of animals.

I will pray for the many dead today, and for the sick person that was so angry at the world and himself that he did his best to destroy them. I feel so sad for all the families, (and for his family, who has to live with the knowledge of what their loved one did,) all the bereaved and scared.

I will pray that all educators and students can be safe as they do one of the best things people can do--seek and develop knowledge of the world around us.

Please, be aware of the people around you. If someone seems sick, get them help. I have always done that and will do that. I also try to be kind--sometimes it seems like the only power I have.