Columbine, Sandy Hook and Lone Star. These once nameless dots on the map now invoke feelings of hatred, fear and vulnerability. The savagery that our culture is immersed in does not seem to be fading anytime soon. The recent violence at the Boston Marathon along with subsequent attacks further prove my point. As students, is there really any way we can keep ourselves safe in these dismal times?
Many Boston universities were closed last Friday as police conducted a manhunt for Tamerlan Tsarnaev and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, suspects in the bombing. Tamerlan was pronounced dead after an ensuing shootout and Dzhokhar was found wounded.
Dylan Quick, the 20-year-old student who was recently accused of wounding 14 people in a stabbing at Lone Star College, told investigators he “has had fantasies of stabbing people to death since he was in elementary school.”
What causes someone to desire such indiscriminate acts of violence and how can it possibly be prevented? I would argue many of the issues stem from the rapid pace and singularity of our lives.
What do you do as you make your way to class? The vast majority of us unconsciously do everything possible to block ourselves off from the world around us. Maybe you listen to your new favorite song so loud you can’t hear the pattering of the bricks from the approaching bicycle. Or maybe you’re busy on Facebook or another social media fad that consumes our culture. When was the last time you said hello or gave a nod and exchanged eye contact as you passed a stranger?
We as students are immersed in ourselves. Many of us choose to live in a world where we opt out of opportunities to try something out of our comfort zones. We may have one thousand friends on Facebook, but we only keep in contact with 40 of them, at best. Emails, iMessages and social media have become the new form of communication. We are pushing ourselves into a faceless society.
I would venture to say many of those who commit such atrocious acts have been left in the past. They may not have had the most social first couple of years, a time in which most of us make the friends who help us cope with the daily rigors of college life. Such students face a very difficult time adjusting, especially in a culture that, for the most part, is fairly closed off. They don’t belong and are quickly labeled as “freaks.” In a faceless society, one essentially becomes that: faceless, allowing some to conjure what they believe is justification for horrid actions.
Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, shooters at Columbine High School, were known to be social outcasts who did not quite fit in with the rest of the student body. Adam Lanza, shooter at Sandy Hook Elementary, was said to be quiet and uncomfortable and was not known to associate with others.
This lack of interaction not only promotes further dissociation of certain people from our society, but also creates a situation in which nobody notices the isolation and therefore does nothing about it. With one suspect killed and the other recently captured, the Boston Marathon bombing is still under investigation. Dzhokhar was a student at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth and his brother Tamerlan studied engineering at Bunker Hill Community College. I would argue the brothers demonstrated very similar traits to the perpetrators in the formerly mentioned tragedies. I resort to the question: could or should we have known about this earlier?
Violence can never be extinguished from our society, but I believe it can be controlled. The most effective way to prevent these evils before they take root is to ensure that we as students commit ourselves to being more active within our student body and ensure each member of the community is doing the same. Also, take notice of others. Next time you’re walking to class, unplug your headphones and take a break from checking your news feed. Make eye contact with the people you walk by and you’ll be surprised at the difference it can make in your life and quite possibly the safety of the world around you.