Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Taking issue ...

Reports about the Virginia Tech massacre break your heart. All we can do, from this distance, is pray for those involved. We know that comfort from such prayer resides with those doing the praying as well as those who are prayed for.

The appalling series of events on campus seems to conspire to make authoritative decisions questionable, in retrospect. Personally, I take issue with yesterday’s talking heads who prefaced remarks with the phrase that they may be proven wrong but ... yada, yada, yada.

I actually heard that statement, live on the air: this may be wrong, but .... Why report it as a semi-fact if it may be wrong? Is there such a thing as a semi-fact?

Speculative musing, immediately subsequent to events. On a news channel. News. Ratings. Broadcast
news' version of survival of the fittest.

But, fit for what?

6 comments:

Zeta said...

My class had a discussion of what we would do if this situation where to happen at the college campus we attend. My professor noted that if a student decided to walk in our classroom, and start to shoot one student at a time, we should charge the person while attempting to grab their gun. If there were thirty of us; some of us would have a chance to survive this situation. None of the classrooms at our campus have windows for a quick escape. Security employees and Miami Dade Police Officers are on campus which does help keep crime at minimum.

Anonymous said...

Okay, while the class is charging the shooter, whereabouts is the professor and which direction is the window he's climbing out of!

That'd be my first reaction - sort of Monty Python-esque...Run Away, Run Away!

Otherwise, lock the doors, restrict access points, make sure the students, visitors & staff are identifiable by color coded ID tags and put metal detectors in place!

RANGER said...

J and I discussed rushing the shooter, too. It sounds good, but you really don't know what you would do unless you've been trained for the situation or are insanely brave.

With my luck, he'd hear me whisper "lets rush 'im" and shoot me through the overturned chair seat I was cowering behind.

Zeta said...

Yes, we are issued ID cards for the campus, but we are not forced to wear them. I am going to suggest that we start to wear our college ID cards which will also help security. In the past, under cover police officers would walk the campus as students carrying books and crime went way down according to my professor. She also didn't think this process was being applied today due to the changes made in the campus security department. ST's high school had random metal detectors, and he was told to change his deodorant from Right Guard to anything else. His deodorant kept setting off the metal detectors. He also requested that I stop laughing as he told me this story.

Anonymous said...

Right Guard sets off metal detectors? What's in that stuff, anyway! Maybe since that happened, the formula has changed... we have detectors in our courthouse and nobody has set things clanging unless they had a big knife or something. And I'm pretty sure some of those folks entering the premises use some kind of deoderant, including Right Guard.

I'm not laughing... ga-humf ... no, really!

Big Ed said...

You mean you let the small knives pass, oh my. If you get shot when charging the shooter, you'll get trampled to death too.