Tuesday, April 24, 2007
What happened at Virginia Tech on April 17 was horrifying and senseless, a tragedy in every sense of the word. But amid the consistent front-page headlines and 24-hour CNN coverage, there is something else about the situation that is terribly wrong.
While we are shocked and deeply appalled by the recent school violence, we also seem to have forgotten that many more people are dying around the world daily in equally senseless violence.
Wednesday 127 people died in a Baghdad market, just part of the 183 who died in Iraq that day. The people who died there are no less human than the people who died at Virginia Tech, but you wouldn’t know it by the amount of media coverage.
nutgraf
It is no excuse to say things like “Things like this shouldn’t happen in America, at a school.”
We are so disturbed by the VT shooting because the victims were young, rich and American. It occurred close to home, and our concern is legitimate. But our ignorance of global tragedies is unforgivable.
The University Daily Kansan’s most recent editorials only highlight this attitude. It is no excuse to say things like “Things like this shouldn’t happen in America, at a school.” Entire villages are regularly razed in Africa by governments, just for belonging to the wrong ethnic group. So why are things like this “not supposed to happen to us”?
I think that says something very distressing about our value systems. And the narcissism of American culture is beginning to make me sick. The Darfur region has suffered 400,000 deaths; Iraq, 62,000; U.S. soldiers fighting in the war in Iraq, 3,200.
Every single one of those people had a mother, a father, sisters and brothers. Every one had infinite potential, just as much as our friends and neighbors, and the innocent victims at Virginia Tech. None of them had to die. But we don’t hear about people halfway around the world; we don’t care. And that is truly tragic.
Mark Petterson
Prairie Village sophomore
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