David Trotman-Wilkins / Chicago Tribune / MCT
With a bandage to protect the shotgun wounds on the back of his head, Mundelein resident Harold Ng was in shock while watching a gunman and former student go on a shooting rampage at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Ill., Friday, Feb. 15.
THE PLAGUE OF OUR NATIONS
Questions left behind: the Northern Illinois nightmare
By JESSE P. COOPER
Clarion Staff Writer
Five students, dangerously close to our Wisconsin schools, are mourned after an appalling breakdown of the peaceful intentions of modern education.
Sixteen more are left wounded from an attack on an oceanography class in NIU's Cole Hall. Masked and heavily armed, Steven Kazmierczak, a University of Illinois graduate, unleashed a thunderstorm of gunfire, blasting indiscriminately on innocent strangers, peaceful hungry-minded students.
As his emotionless face blankly scanned the room for targets, he fired without regard, without prejudice, and without warning. Students army-crawled past wounded peers frantically
avoiding the bullets flying past. As Kazmierczak paused to reload, a perceptive student warned others at the chance to run; a surreal scene almost beyond belief. In the wake of DeKalb’s trauma, a nation pleads for answers. Why…?
As of now, there is no indication that he knew anyone in the class, which raises the question, what was his motive? In prior cases of younger students, motives were typically revenge on peers or teachers whom they felt had treated them unfavorably.
Steven Kazmierczak did not know a single person inside the shamed four walls of the lecture hall, be they student or teacher. He had no police record, no recorded mental issues that would result in violent behavior.
Recently graduated (sadly ironic major, Sociology), his hands soiled themselves with the stain of innocent
blood for what appears to be an introspective battle that spilled over to unknowing bystanders. No suicide note was left with explanation.
On the contrary, his computer's hard drive and cell phone memory card were removed and hidden. Was his goal to leave behind this debate? Did he want to make the headlines and hold them in a confused and horrific
debate to the unknown and possible
lack of motive?
Other deadly phenomena were copycats, high on replicated infamy, like drunken kids recreating a “Jackass” stunt.
Was this a plunge into the blood soaked pages of American “anti-history”?
One year and five months after a Weston principle was murdered by a former student
he had suspended for tobacco, a few months following a violently large Virginia Tech massacre, and several years after the string of killings that were almost a carbon copy of the infamous beginning, Columbine. Americans wonder, when will it end? How long must education, the very fabric of civilized society, be a Russian roulette of student slaughter?
Education, in times past, was a catalyst for wisdom and knowledge. People once attended college for a greater understanding
of the philosophies of life; the number one reason in our consumer-driven nation is financial opportunities. The words “better job,” to most students, mean one that simply
pays more, a better opportunity to accumulate
more “stuff,” which might enrich our lives with the freedom to do whatever we want whenever we want.
As if possessions weren't enough to satisfy
our false instinctual needs, it has to be better, nicer, and faster than our neighbors' “stuff”. We derive happiness from "posessional"
competition. This is our culture, our society. This inherent greed is taught willingly by parents with their actions, buying
habits, and oral lessons and is, sadly, an American way of life. It is not all too surprising that our children are rotting from the core out from a moral perspective.
College magnifies these hidden flaws as banks, lenders, scholarships, and federal
offices skew the education process as a money-making game, a gamble as you place your “tuitional” bet and see if it pays out a jackpot salary. Greed can easily morph anger into hatred. Jealousy can spawn hatred. Even love can cultivate into hatred. Many of the darker of human emotions can lead to a rage driven human bulldozer. Hatred is capable of unspeakable acts of unwarranted destruction.
Where could such a deeply forged hatred first spark?
A string of seemingly senseless mass murders, occurring randomly from high schools to colleges, plagues America in these violent times. A mirror to the face of society, as it grooms itself nervously into these uncertain futures of terrorism on all fronts; guns blazing in the fatally confused hands of students. As the blood trickles into the halls of colleges and universities across America, we all debate in horror as to the culprit; the figurative man behind the curtain
gently tugging the strings.
Does this violent communal collapse serve as a cruel reminder of our national priorities of oil, business, and top dog status
in the rabid kennel of the international stage, rather than adequately safe and affordable education, health care, and civil luxuries the so- called “inferior” countries have competently provided? The echoes of commanding officers “no soldier left behind” transform and give new meaning to the “no child left behind” slogan.
No longer a political marketing slogan
for a solution to children missing the opportunities for proper education, it is now a battle cry in the war zone of our local schools and universities; A memorial of our fallen comrades, our brother in arms; our student peers. Not for country, not for crime, not for honor, rather for random fateful fortune do they prematurely rest in our broken hearts and memories. |
