Wow, two fantastic pieces on the Virginia Tech shootings

[omnifarious]

There are two articles that, in my opinion, give an excellent analysis of the Virginia Tech shootings.

The first is a scholarly piece by a professor of sociology that carefully dissects the situation and the blame spinning around it to raise some serious questions about exactly why the shootings happened:

MOBBING AND THE VIRGINIA TECH MASSACRE

Comments

[gamerchick]

That first piece was interesting and I really agreed with what it said. The second piece - I don't know. The VT English department distinctly seemed to have overreacted in that case and treated the writer poorly, but certain comments within the piece also makes me think there's another side to the story (such as "being fired for writing amusing and fictitious emails" - sounds to me like sexual harassment HELLO). And the guy comes off as very arrogant, and writes like a total asshole. *shrug*

[omnifarious]

*nod* I was wondering what 'amusing and fictitious emails' meant too. And I expect there is another side to the story. Though my mind first jumped to this: Why I Got Fired From Apple Computer.

As for arrogance... He does clearly think pretty highly of his ability to write. But the quality of the writing in his little piece tells me that his opinion of his own work is not totally unfounded. Though I don't think he thinks that he's especially better in any objective and global sense than anybody else though.

I actually read a surprising amount of gentleness and care into his feelings about others:

As a result the younger generation has a deeply cultivated, if quiet, notion of absurdity that grows in proportion to the inability of society to act in a balanced way, leaving decent young people alone and isolated, treasuring images of incredible and brutal violence as reflections of their own helpless situations.

That paragraph, for example... he isn't setting himself above anybody. It actually seems rather compassionate.

There is a