All in all it's just another brick in the wall.
--Pink Floyd


Like everyone else, I'm grappling with the senselessness and sadness, which comes and goes in waves as more details surface.

I also mourn the sense of safety that millions of college students across the country have lost. I genuinely enjoyed undergrad - maybe not that 18th century lit class or that stupid astrophysics course disguised as "Modern Astronomy" that wrecked my GPA - but I can't imagine adding those lingering "what-if" fears most students must be feeling now. It's as if college has been ruined. And although the fears will diminish, this has created a grim, terrible, historic milestone that doesn't go away.

I wonder where we go from here, culturally. In the wake of Columbine, kids dealing with typical teenage issues became, to a certain extent, the hidden enemy - further ostracized in the fear of a comparable incident. "Trenchcoat mafia" entered the lexicon, and students entered schools as they would federal court buildings.

So what happens to the U.S. college campus now? How will the inevitable heightened safety measures change things? For better, for worse - both?


And I was just reading the guy's warning-sign "screenplay" excerpts on AOL. My understanding is some teacher(s) defended his right to stay in class on the basis of free expression, while the department head pulled him from the class, tried to instruct him personally, and recommended counseling. Could this spur subsequent higher education free speech issues? Campus witch hunts? I hope not.

I mean, you read those pages and you see something was truly wrong. A good writer can still shock and provoke and outrage - maybe think Bret Easton Ellis. But there's a profound lack of maturity in these pages coupled with the violence. The warning isn't that his work is disturbing - it's that it's both disturbing and disturbingly bad for a college English major. You'd expect that material from a high school freshman or sophomore, I think. You can read his inability to adjust, to develop - partnered with the rage.

I think that's what the department head recognized, and I hope we can distinguish the sociopaths from the harmless free-spirits without sacrificing the liberties that make college so strange and special. As we emerge from unspeakable tragedy.

Anyways.