Santa Monica College Shooting

Hello Everyone:

I'm back after a few days of being waylaid by other things including a visit from the bf.  Once again, sad news intrudes on the rhythm of the daily life.  On Friday, June 7, 2013, a troubled young man distraught over his parents divorce and other things opened fired at school in Santa Monica, California.  The school is Santa Monica College, a college I attended, was the site of the deadly shooting.  The shooter, not only shot up people sitting in the library minding their own business studying or doing other things but he also car jacked a woman, shooting her and strafing a bus.  Unfortunately, these incidents have become all too common place.  For me, though, having attended  Santa Monica College, I have a connection to the place.

Santa Monica College was the place where I was able to pick up the shards of an academic life and get my life back on track.  It set me on the path I'm on right now.  If it weren't for the wonderful professors had there, encouraging me onward and upward, I would've never been able to do and experience the things I've.  More importantly, I really wouldn't have a real purpose in life.  Now that's all been tarnished.  No, tarnished implies that a stain can be removed.  Permanently damaged is a better term.  When the shooting at Virginia Tech happened six years ago, I was in my first tour of grad school.  While the loss of life and the violation of the sanctity of peaceful academic endeavor was keenly felt, because it happened in Virginia not at the school I was attended in the Bay Area, there was a disconnect.  Now a shooting that resulted in the loss of five lives and a number of injuries happened at a school I attended and I keenly feel it.  The feeling is one of loss, anger, and confusion.  I am angry at the person who felt that he (notice how these crimes are always committed by men) couldn't constructively handle his personal issues and had to use violence to work them out.  I am angry at this person because he violated the academic hall of an institution I attended, forever damaging it for me.  I am angry at the school officials and campus police who placed the shooter's privacy issues above the safety of other students.  Why does his personal civil liberties trump the safety of others?

I value the halls of academia as place for opportunities.  For me, a library is place where one can unlock the secrets of the universe.  A classroom is a place for exchanging knowledge.  A studio, a place for creating whole worlds.  A university or college is place for people of diverse worlds to come together under the common banner of opportunity.  Now that's been violated the place where I started.