On Thursday, 21 students were shot and five were killed by another student at Northern Illinois University. According to most people he knew, Steve Kazmierczak was a normal student interested in social work. He made the Dean’s List.
Then he legally bought two handguns and a shotgun, hid in a lecture hall, walked out from behind a curtain, and killed five students. Then he killed himself.
In another civilization, one less perfect, we’d line up thousands deep to collectively piss our insides onto the lifeless blown out face of the assailant. Gut up the phlegm of our stomachs to his stained corpse. Curse and sneer and strike at his fucked brain, rip it out of his skull.
Leave thousands alone, together, with him, to display his final resting place, above ground forever, as a reminder. But, then, so many others would die for such a monument. Anyway, I don’t think that’s really the way to lead by example. But it’s the way that so many university students feel in this country. Schools always feel a little smaller after things like this happen.
Remember last year when we all screamed “What if it happens here?” at Virginia Tech as we freaked the fuck out at the little Korean kid with the backwards hat in his pathetic, posturing Lara Croft pose. Now, at universities like UB, the question seems to be when. When will CNN converge in front of our student union and talk to our president? When will other schools sign bedsheets for us? And when will we first use our lauded text message alert systems?
In the past few years these new alerts have become the standard in university security. Give the university your cell number and you’re notified of any emergency situation from snow days to pandemic influenza. You’re covered, you’re informed, you’re safe, or something.
On National Public Radio, I heard an interview with a representative from NIU about their emergency alert systems—they worked just as planned. But they could only do as much good as the police did when they got there two minutes after shots were fired to clean up the mess. NIU has plans to set up emergency address systems along their campus walkways, so that police can give emergency instructions in case of an emergency.
You could think of it from the other direction, too. What do we do to prevent people from killing us at our colleges?
The standard answer is to lobby for stricter gun control laws. Making it harder for people to get guns may deter them enough to save lives. But what real power do we have against our own inventions? Perhaps if last week’s violence has shown us anything, it’s that guns might not be the problem after all. Last week’s killings were carried out with a shotgun, a weapon the U.S. government would never think of putting more than a background check on. Yes, I might be happier if I never saw another shotgun, but that doesn’t negate their use. People who own guns liken them to cars—catastrophically dangerous but brilliant pieces of American machinery.
Another thing the NIU spokesperson said was that it’s just the times we live in. That’s just the way it is.
Which is true. Universities are open, and the way UB’s expansion is looking, ours will probably operate more like a city than a college campus. Metal detectors won’t flatter the already frigid Knox Hall, and a great wall around the Audubon might significantly stall traffic.
The thing is, UB’s emergency response system isn’t likely to save anybody’s life in the case of a real crisis. But at least it makes you feel a little better. In reality, it’s all we can do.
If you believe what you see on the Internet, there have been half a dozen shootings in schools in the past week alone. We’re not immune by any means, but that doesn’t mean we should run and cower under our lecture hall desks. If anything, this should unify us.
You have a much better chance of being killed driving your car from your Sweethome apartment to campus than you do of being killed by a classmate. It’s just so frightening to think that in a place of such “sanctity” should exist such horror. It scares George Bush, and it scares me.
In police talk they’d call this an isolated incident, but isolated just means the guys didn’t know each other. What freaks me out is that they’re tragically connected. Every time this happens there’s a suicide, every time there’s a new focus on the National Rifle Association, and big scary pictures of the evildoers in the newspapers. There are mourners and parents just wanting to know why. We will never know why. Just like we’ll never know why it happens across the world. Remember hearing of how much hate Muslims must have for Americans after 9/11? We talk about jihadists killing people for God. Americans kill Americans all the time, and for nothing.
When Timothy McVeigh blew up the Oklahoma City Federal Building in 1995, he killed 168 people. We wondered how God could create such a vile human. Ten people were present to see him executed. His death was broadcast to a few hundred others on television. Why did he do it?
Those kids at Columbine, why did they do it? Virginia Tech? We want to know, but we won’t, ever.
So you can use this as a catalyst to act for gun control or for campus awareness of violence or you can start your own personal jihad against whomever you find most guilty.
Or go to every fucking one of your PHY121 classes next week, just to show Kasmierczak what’s up.
