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Original: 4/18/2007 9:50 PM
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Wednesday, April 18, 2007

=(

 
there are so many things that i find disturbing about the virginia tech shooting this past monday.
 
this morning as i was driving to work, i heard on the radio about how one of professors used his body as a shield to block the door to prevent the shooter from coming back in and yelling at the students to get out and jump out of the windows and he was shot many times. i cry easily in general but when i heard this i got a little choked up. this is just so tragic and sad.
 
what i find troubling is that there are so many school/campus shooting incidents in the us. i don't know why it happens so often here...maybe since gun control here is more lax than say japan, is partially the reason. i'm not advocating tighter gun control or anything like that, but it's just disturbing how many we have.
 
although this was definitely tragic...i don't think it was necessary for the president of south korea to apologize not just once, but THREE times (please keep in mind that it's only wednesday). i can see once for diplomacy's sake...but three?? as if it's south korea's fault, or something inherently south korean to be blamed. this shouldn't be an issue of nationality...it's an individual. i think everyone's afraid that there will be racial discrimination as a backlash, and understandably so. i've heard a lot of south koreans express shame that he's south korean...but i don't really think that's necessary. there are troubled individuals everywhere regardless. maybe i can't really understand this sentiment since i'm not korean myself. when they initially thought he was chinese i thought to myself that there were would probably be ignorant people who would be prejudiced and that made me worried but i wouldn't say ashamed.

i recently read news coverage on how the shooter's family struggled financially in south korea, like living in the cheapest room in the basement of their apartment building, before emigrating to the us to seek a better life. i don't understand how relevant this is...that's the story of many immigrants. i know living in the us for 14 years since the age of 9 doesn't necessarily erase his ethnicity. and the fact that he's an english writing major doesn't blind us to his background, but i feel as we're all too self-conscious that he's south korean. it's a bigger issue than it needs to be. i'm still interested in finding out what his motives were and maybe if has a history of being abused (my guess based on one of the scripts he wrote over students fantasizing stalking and murdering their abusive teacher).
 
where are his parents in all this? it doesn't seem like he had any friends so i'm not that surprised that we haven't heard of any of their accounts. but the news never described his parents as being deceased or anything. we hear quotes from his classmates, teachers, neighbors, but what about his parents? what about the acquaintance who reported him to the school for fear that he'd commit suicide?
 
i offer my condolences to everyone effected by this horrible event...i hope i won't be flooded with hate mail.
 Posted 4/18/2007 9:50 PM - 16 Views

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