What's Old is NIU

Here we go again. NIU (Northern Illinois University) had its version of Virginia Tech, but somehow, it's garnered a lot less attention. There were differences, to be sure. Virginia Tech's shootings started early in the morning, and lasted til maybe noon. By then, as news spread of how many people were shot (somewhere near 20), the massacre seemed unbelievable.

Then, came the media stuff for Cho Seung Hui, the disaffected Korean, who created videos that he so thoughtfully sent to the media realizing it would be displayed on air. Then, being near the DC area, Virginia Tech sends tons of graduates this way, and so one is bound to know someone that went there. Then, the personal stories that came out of the mayhem, of how one guy pretended to be dead among the dead, to avoid getting shot, the deliberate attack. Then, the plays he had written, awful, yet far more read after his death than when he was alive.

I know few details of what happened at NIU. Six people died and perhaps another fifteen were shot, but survived. At the very least, that so many people survived seems like a miracle, and yet, the parents of the few that died are in no less agony had the shooter been more accurate, more deadly.

It is said that these school shootings merely attract copycats, that these are cries in the dark of the desperate, looking for attention, and yet, somehow, this has created a bit less airplay, while in the midst of the candidates rushing to and fro.

Some had hoped that the name of the killer would remain anonymous, lest it encourage desperate people who wanted their names echoed in the media chamber. Yet, one Stephen P. Kazmierczak has had his name in print, a graduate student in sociology. No one knows why he did it. There was some solace that NIU took some lessons from Virginia Tech, and responded to the shootings as quickly as they did.

Even so, if such events occur more often, will we ignore than as we mostly ignore shootings that still occur in violent cities throughout the country. It is said that one death is a tragedy, a million deaths, a statistic. And so, perhaps, we have come to this, where such an event now registers more as a statistic, than a tragedy.