Two Cents About VT

In the wake of the Virginia Tech tragedy, I have been stirred by a few thoughts. I hesitated to write something because I was not directly affected by this event and thought adding my own voice to the incessant media noise that descended on Blacksburg would be of little value. But I’ve decided to go ahead and write because I do find myself thinking and feeling deeply about the tragedy and its aftermath (and I humblyrealize that my voice is only reaching my friends and family anyway). So here are my two cents….

Cent One
As a person who believes in the fundamental goodness of human beings and is constantly looking for external factors to explain how some people go sour, incidents like Virginia Tech remind me that there really are people in this world who will stop at nothing to do evil things. And they may be on a college campus near me or in my neighborhood or walking past me on the street. What makes Virginia Tech so devastating is that this did not occur in Baghdad (where, tragically, deaths of innocents of this magnitude are occurring every day) or Sudan (where, unbelievably, deaths of innocents of this magnitude have been occurring for decades), but on a college campus in classrooms not dissimilar from those many of us were once in. It is this familiarity with environment that has caused the Virginia Tech tragedy to have such an impact on me and drive home the fundamental fact that evil does exist in this world.

I hate writing the words “evil does exist” because it is such a simple explanation for this incident. It is almost lazy to dismiss the killer as one bad apple and not focus on the societal forces that worked to put him in possession of a gun, a sense of loneliness, and a desire to do harm to himself and others. That is my typical response – if I am robbed, it is not the individual I initially condemn, but the society that has kept him in poverty and convinced him of the need to obtain money or material things by any means necessary. Of course, ultimately, it is the robber who should primarily be held responsible. There are millions of others who are impoverished and need things but do not rob me. Despite the societal influences that impact all of our lives, it is ultimately the robber who has made the decision to do something wrong.

No matter what was going on in his life or what flaws there were in campus security or state gun control laws, it was ultimately the act of one bad apple that killed so many people. The work that is to be done now is to fix the things we can fix – security protocol, gun control, background checks – but with the sad understanding that external factors can’t always stop some human beings from going sour and impacting other lives in the process. I weep for the victims and their families’ shattered lives, but I am equally saddened to be reminded yet again that there are people who just are not fundamentally good and they can devastate society so easily.

Cent Two
Beyond the sadness I feel after this tragedy, the next most prominent emotion I’ve found has been revulsion at the media. Every time a crisis/incident/tragedy like this unfolds, I always find myself being turned off by the circus of media coverage that envelops those involved. In these moments, should victims’ families have to worry about issuing press releases?

Obviously, this is a story the media has to cover. And obviously, viewers/readers should be interested in the causes and details. But as I saw a campus filled with news trucks and microphones in the background of the coverage from every single channel, it struck me that the media had become vultures and I began to question the motivations for their being there. Were they there to cover the story and bring the rest of the country the news? Or were they there out of their own self-interest, searching for the most sensational angle to drive up their ratings? The NBC News release of the killer’s manifesto is the most glaring example of this, but the overall tone of the reporting was only a slight step up from the coverage that passes for news on my local evening news.

The truth is somewhere in the middle – there are some journalists who are there for the noble purpose of the profession, seeking and reporting facts, giving their audience a new perspective on a difficult event, and there are others who are there because they are supposed to be there and must be in order to selfishly maintain ratings/readers/viewers. As a pseudo member of the media, I wish we lived in a world where all journalists were in it for the noble cause just as as a pseudo member of the legal world, I wish all lawyers were in it to help people. But that isn't the world we live in, and besides, if I got my wish, neither journalists nor lawyers would ever get paid. I am certainly being too hard on the media because this is an important story that must be covered, but I know how the victims of Hurricane Katrina have been largely forgotten after a month of blanket coverage and I have little doubt that the circus will move on from Blacksburg as well.