Why?
Published on Apr 17, 2007 at 4:31 pm.
9 Comments.
Filed under college teaching.
Yesterday’s events at Virgina Tech deserve some comment. But, I feel that any comment that I might make would be woefully inadequate. I am deeply saddened at this news, and I believe that we should keep the survivors and the family and friends of the victims in our prayers. They are going to have a tough time dealing with this.
These sort of things make you stop and think. One of the first thoughts, of course, is “Why did this happen?” Then, you think “How could this have happened?” And then you think, “Could this happen again?” And finally, you wonder, “How can we make sure it doesn’t happen here?” Unfortunately, I am neither qualified nor capable of answering all of these questions. Even if I did have the answers, I’m pretty sure that very few people would listen to me.
Also, while college killings are not all that common, it does seem that an unusually high percentage of them involve either students or faculty in physics and engineering. Why is that? Any of my social science friends have any clues? Granted, the student was an English major, but several of the faculty killed were engineering faculty.
I want to share some of my thoughts here, even if nobody listens or cares.
“Why?” is a difficult question. I have ideas of some of the underlying triggers. College is a very stressful environment. That is true for faculty as well as students. Most people who are not in academia have no idea just how stressful this can be. It can also be a humbling experience. Smart kids can sail through school. Most schools teach to the lowest common denominator. “No child left behind” unfortunately means that the whole class, or even the whole school, moves at the pace of the bottom of the class. The gifted students are bored and often not challenged. Many schools are focusing on teaching state standardized exams so that the school rating is higher so that property values in the area are high. Everyone with children wants to move to where there is a highly ranked school. So, don’t worry about teaching the students something that they’ll need later in life. Make sure that they can pass that stupid test. Then, these bright kids get to college and BAM. They hit a brick wall. Suddenly the expectations are far higher, and they are expected to know things and how to do things that were never taught because such things were not being tested. A tremendous number of straight A students flunk out of college their first year. Others get grades that they’d never seen before. I know that my first semester in college decades ago was quite a shock to me, and I got the lowest grades that semester that I had ever gotten before, or since. Some students don’t adjust to that. This is a major stressor. Then you add relationships, work loads, etc, and students are under the worst stress that they’ve ever had in their lives. And, that stress does not go away as they get past their first semester. It stays with them all the way through college, and often through graduate school, and often even into being faculty.
College students often experience failure for the first time. Face it, these are smart kids. Places like Virginia Tech have standards. Most of the students there were among the top students in their high school classes. They are achievers and dreamers. They accomplish what they set their minds to. They always get what they want. And, then they get to college, and the rules change. Suddenly, they are in with others like them. They are no longer the top of the class. And, they are for the first time having to face up to the fact that there are others who are better at things than they are. That is tough. Some turn inwards. Some turn outwards. Some become introverts and some become extroverts. Some try to do whatever it takes to win acceptance of their peers. Others try to do whatever it takes to succeed in their studies. And, some just give up. Some turn all these feelings inwards. Those feelings then burn in them, and they become depressed or angry.
So, what do we do? At this point, someone will bring up gun control. Don’t even go there. I am not going to tolerate a flame war in the comments. Some will say that if guns were harder to get then this wouldn’t happen. Others will say that if the faculty were armed, the shooter could have been stopped before so many innocent people were killed. And, I don’t want to moderate that. And, I might point out that it was already illegal for him to be in possession of a firearm on campus. So, don’t even go there. And, no, we don’t need metal detectors at all the doors to every building on campus. There are plenty of other ways to look at this. After all, all the other students in his situation either deal with it (or many don’t) without shooting anyone. Personally, I can’t even imagine how any human being could be filled with such rage and hatred of others to do this sort of thing. It baffles me. And, I am glad that I can’t understand it. Really, it would trouble me if I could get into his head and really understand how this could be seen as an appropriate response to any issues whatsoever that he was facing.
So, then we look at what others could have done. Could other students have reached out to him? According to news reports, he was a “loner.” They always say that about people like this. What does that mean? “Oh, he seemed like a normal quiet kid, but he was a bit of a loner.” Does it mean that he didn’t have any friends? Did he not try to have friends? Did he want friends, but had poor social skills and didn’t know how to get any? Did he try to make friends but was rejected by others (probably related to poor social skills). Or did he just have quiet friends? Sometimes the really popular people see others who have only a small handful of friends as “loners.” We really don’t know what was going on here. If he had had more friends would have he have had an outlet for his feelings? I don’t know.
But, I do know one thing. He didn’t have to do this. There is no way to justify his actions or excuse them. No matter how badly treated he was, no matter how he didn’t fit in, no matter how badly he was failing at what he was doing, no matter how deep the depression or anything else, this is NOT the way things should have gone. At some point, some moral compass should have kicked in telling him that hurting others was wrong. So, where is that moral compass?
Here is where I’m going to talk about something that I normally don’t preach about. People who know me know that I am a man of faith, and that my faith in God is important to me. Furthermore, I believe not just in any God, but in Jesus Christ, His son, my Lord. And as a Christian, I have a deep moral grounding that says that hurting others is WRONG. Hating others is WRONG. Yes, an astrophysicist can believe in God. After all, who do you think made all that stuff out there? There is nothing that keeps you from believing both what you see through scientific investigation or what you see through spiritual investigation. There is no conflict between religion and science. And, I can say that without resorting to wild justifications and rationalizations. I recently saw a book about astronomy and the Bible, and the author (supposedly a PhD in physics) was trying to reconcile creationism and cosmology, and making a mess of everything. What came forth was both really bad science and really bad theology. Sadly that happens a lot. Why can’t we just accept that this is a mystery and that the creator of the universe might have a deeper understanding of all of this than we do?
And here is where I think that we need to stop and consider. In academia we often pretend that faith is not important. But, it is deep in the character of who we are. It is our moral foundation, and our moral framework through which we see the world. We pour people full of knowledge, but leave their souls empty. Now, I am not saying that we should have daily Bible verses in class, just that we are not producing well rounded people by ignoring one entire part of their being. It is no wonder that snap and go on a killing spree.
Now, I have some friends reading this who know me and know that this is not something that I wear like an armband. I don’t run around preaching to everyone. I don’t make professions of faith in my classroom. I don’t even wear a cross around my neck. I don’t spice up my lectures with references to God. I don’t cram my beliefs down the throats of people who are not interested. But, most figure out very quickly that my faith is very deep and very important to me. And, if they ask me, I’ll tell them about Jesus and what He means to me. My friends who do not share my faith can see it in my life without my ever saying a word to them about it. And, I’m sure that they appreciate my not cramming it down their throats and throwing it in their faces at every opportunity. And those that really know me will also know that my faith provides that moral compass that keeps me from wanting to hurt others when the pressure and stress get to me. Yes, I will sometimes say things that I later deeply regret because they caused some wound to someone that I care for very much. I did that not too long ago, and I feel bad about it. I am a man. I make mistakes. But, I would never intentionally go hurt innocent people. That violates my core being and my faith.
I’m not saying that we need dorm Bible studies, or a campus religion, or any such thing. Faith comes from within, between God and a human, not from other humans. I am merely saying that we need to think about filling students with something other than knowledge and not leaving them as empty shells. You don’t have to be a Christian to know that what this guy did was wrong. But, you do need to know that it was wrong, and that comes from a moral code that is based on your world view, and your world view is based on how you perceive yourself fitting into the world, and that often is based in faith. There’s more than book knowledge out there. You need something inside yourself to hold onto when the going gets tough.
And, the going just got a lot tougher at Virginia Tech for the students and the faculty. So, we need to keep them in our thoughts and prayers.
But, none of this addresses the earlier question of why it so often seems that students and faculty of physics and engineering always get caught in the middle of these sorts of things.
-Astroprof
cephyn on April 17, 2007 at 5:01 pm: 1
Indeed what happened was a tragedy. But I simply don’t share your view that engineering&science is harder hit than any other demographic group. You’ll have to do some convincing before I could share that. So what that a few individuals killed were physics/engineering profs? They were a minority among the dead. The shooter was an English student. What’s the connection here? I tried to find lists of US school shootings to see if engineering/science backgrounds stood out. I couldn’t find evidence of your view.
http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/story?section=nation_world&id=5214601
That list is the one most shared by the media right now. Only 2 or 3 incidents seem to be focused on engineering. So I’m not really sure why you feel that engineering and science folk are disproportionately involved in these things. So I can offer you no theories as to why it would be so - since I don’t see the evidence to support the thesis in the first place. 8/
Astroprof on April 17, 2007 at 5:19 pm: 2
Not all of those cases are college shootings. But, you might be right. Maybe, like many people, I remember the ones that I can relate to more. But, I do remember a few other cases not on that list where a student killed a professor or another student (not always with a gun). But, as I said, it “seems” like we are in the middle of these things more often. I’m willing to admit that it might just seem like it because I selectively remember those events!
Darnell Clayton on April 17, 2007 at 9:16 pm: 3
I hear you Astroprof. This whole situation is rather surreal if you ask me.
PS
By the way, its good to see someone else shares the view that faith and science do not conflict.
Mary Jo on April 17, 2007 at 11:19 pm: 4
Great post, Astroprof, and clearly a lot of deep reflection involved.
We shake our heads, struggle to find reason, and usually come up empty.
Thanks for providing your answer to this madness.
average professor on April 18, 2007 at 1:12 pm: 5
I agree, I’m not sure they really *are* disproportionally represented.
But if there’s any truth to the impression that eng & sci seem disproportionately represented, it may be because those disciplines tend to attract people that are not the best equipped to deal with failure. For one, they often think they’re smarter than everybody else. For another, that these disciplines often seem to have, at least at the high school or early college level, clearly defined right or wrong answers - so students that are used to getting the “right” answer sometimes don’t develop the skills to handle criticism. I can think of several examples from places that I’ve been where there’s not been shooting, but some other degree of violence to person or property, and many (but maybe not most) of them involved eng/sci people.
And, I too am a devout Christian. You might be interested in the Bill Moyers series on “Faith and Reason,” which involves speakers of various mindsets and from a variety of backgrounds. You can download audio and/or video from pbs: http://www.pbs.org/moyers/faithandreason/
Astronomy Buff - Virginia Tech, AstroProf and Morality on April 18, 2007 at 2:25 pm: 6
[…] AstroProf has just written a very thoughtful and heartfelt post about the incident at Virginia Tech. I’ve come to really appreciate his thoughts and writings, his blog is of the highest quality, full of original posts from the mind of a critical thinker with deep convictions. […]
AstronomyBuff on April 18, 2007 at 2:32 pm: 7
AstroProf, this post has touched me profoundly. I have offered my humble thoughts to yours here:
http://www.astronomybuff.com/virginia-tech-astroprof-and-morality/
Let me say, I am so grateful that you are teaching our young people. Knowing you’re there fills me with a great comfort.
Astroprof on April 18, 2007 at 3:02 pm: 8
Thanks for all of the kind words.
The whole situation is just so sad.
Astrolink [Global Edition] » Virginia Tech, AstroProf and Morality | Latest astronomy news in 11 languages on April 18, 2007 at 3:02 pm: 9
[…] AstroProf has just written a very thoughtful and heartfelt post about the incident at Virginia Tech. I’ve come to really appreciate his thoughts and writings, his blog is of the highest quality, full of original posts from the mind of a critical thinker with deep convictions. […]