The recent tragedy at Virginia Tech has caused immense sorrow across the United States and especially within the academic community. It's challenging to realize that we may not be as safe as we believe.
Several weeks ago, an alumni committed suicide on my campus (Rensselaer Polytech) by jumping down a stairwell. When officials arrived on the scene it looked like a gun-shot and they jumped to blockade campus and cancel all classes. SWAT teams cleared the building room by room. Afterwards, many people felt that these actions were too drastic for what we would later learn was a suicide. But after the events at Virginia Tech, all of us are wondering.... what if?
I was surprised by a comments on a post by Raees al Jumhuriyeh regarding foreign students. Coming from a community with a strong presence of foreign students, it's terrible to think of the lack of diversity. Keeping "foreigners" from being educated in the United States doesn't solve any problems and I'm glad subsequent comments demonstrate that.
Even further along those lines, Down on the Brown Side points out that yesterday was the 12th year anniversary of the Oklahoma City Bombings by Timothy McVeigh. People didn't consider his race or religion in the same way that we appear to be making a big deal out of Cho's ethnicity.
Grand Ayatollah Makarem Shirazi seems to claim that this event was a result of a deviation from God. I disagree with this as well. I think it's more important to recognize that Cho was deeply mentally disturbed. There are plenty of people with an enormous range of religious beliefs who find this event shocking and disturbing.
My sympathy and support goes out to all those that were affected by this tragedy...
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
I find the comment about keeping foreign students out of america as being a bad solution. I agree. Then problem with our economy is that we are outsourcing the manufacture of goods to places like China. The problem is that as they develope indusrty they will start to realize that is more profitable to also more the R and D to China and hince we design, manufacture and then sell the good from China and cut out our indusrty all together. This is a big big problem. We do have one saving grace though. As our oil researves(globaly) become more expensive we will see more contries move back to the US due to shipping costs. The problem is this could take 10 years or soooo... grrrrrr so I think we need to attract as many foreigners to get educated here and hopefully move here because we are going to need as many well trained Doctors, Engineers, and other trained professionals to compete with foreign companies.
Eric J.
Keeping foreign students out of the US is a bad idea. That is not what America is about.
On the other hand, restricting the ability of a University to signal mental health problems of an individual to adminsitration or to professionals (and maybe even parents) is alarming.
The world can be a tough and daunting place. So it is not surprising that some people "lose it". We all have to work together to keep people off the brink of disastrous societal impacts.
Do youth of the world realize this?
Or are we too worried about privacy and individualism?
Gotta respectfully disagree with Eric J!! Outsourcing is about a free world with free trade. People and countries need to do the things they can do well. They are under an obligation to try to improve their lot in life ("Pursuit of happiness" comes to mind here). It happens that China and other developing countries are gettign very good at basic manufacturing. The problem that the developed countries face (and not jsut the US, but many of the western European countries)is that we are not innovating fast enough on new advanced technologies. For the last century much of what has driven the developed country's economies has been new innovations and higher productivity. We must reinforce that work. Yes, jobs and manufacturing will go to China (they do that well); we need to move into the next level of jobs solve the next big problems of the world.
It is disappointing that we spend so much time focused on the war in other places that we loose track of things that are happening at home.
Post a Comment