Roundup of Case bloggery re Virginia Tech
James Chang has a pretty level-headed roundup himself. Read the Bradford Wiles letter and his analysis of "Ismail AX". The claim that Cho was a jihadi is spun out of air; I cannot believe that a Muslim devout enough to wage violent jihad could have written Cho's play. Chang's earlier post is a timeline.
Nicole Sharp's personal note seems to have drawn a plethora of inane comments, most of which reduce to "Why don't they protect us? And why don't they ban guns?" Hey Ben, have you ever fired a "semi automatic weapon"? Or a revolver? What's the difference in rate of fire? Or do you think only muzzleloaders should be legal? Part of being an adult is being responsible for protecting yourself. And if that remark sounds a tad parental, consider that it's the government or campus security that you're asking to be your parents.
And to close, let me add this non-Case link:
In response to student Bradford Wiles's campus newspaper op-ed piece in support of concealed carry on campus, Virginia Tech Associate Vice President Larry Hincker scoffed:
"[I]t is absolutely mind-boggling to see the opinions of Bradford Wiles. . . . The editors of this page must have printed this commentary if for no other reason than malicious compliance. Surely, they scratched their heads saying, 'I can't believe he really wants to say that.' Wiles tells us that he didn't feel safe with the hundreds of highly trained officers armed with high powered rifles encircling the building and protecting him. He even implies that he needed his sidearm to protect himself . . ."The nerve!
Hincker continued: "The writer would have us believe that a university campus, with tens of thousands of young people, is safer with everyone packing heat. Imagine the continual fear of students in that scenario. We've seen that fear here, and we don't want to see it again. . . . Guns don't belong in classrooms. They never will. Virginia Tech has a very sound policy preventing same."
Who's scratching his head now, Mr. Hincker?
Comments
Posted by: Nicole Sharp
Posted on: April 18, 2007 04:26 PM
I wish I could explain the thought processes behind most of the comments showing up on that entry. Somehow, whenever I write about things in that blog, I manage to get amazing numbers of comments from non-Case people I do not know who seem not to have read the entry at all except to find out what the basic topic was. It's kind of scary, actually.
Posted by: Jeffrey Quick
Posted on: April 18, 2007 04:55 PM
Weird are the ways of the blogosphere, Nicole. Why did I get dozens of comment spams yesterday on one year-old post? I've only had one posting that generated the kind of reaction you're talking about. I let the Clay Aiken fans post for a long while, because it supported the point of the post (that it wasn't about the music). But I finally got bored and stopped approving them. I'm still getting comments on that one, a year later.
My response would be to engage in vigorous debate. But that wasn't about what your original post was about, so why should you bother yourself with that? Evidently people have decided that you offer them a safe place to emote, and it might be considered churlish to interfere with that.
Posted by: Nicole Sharp
Posted on: April 18, 2007 05:27 PM
You have essentially struck the reason why I have not gone through and removed or censored the comments (though I did delete a couple of duplicated ones). Although what they're saying doesn't pertain to my post, no one (so far) has been offensive--no one's cross the line yet in my opinion at least, and it seems like a lot of them are just looking for an outlet. I just find it odd that my Case blog is showing up on some Internet listing for that.
I've had some pretty strange stuff show up in the past, too. One of my entries that was just an index of information for a class project my senior year somehow prompted people to send me all kinds of ideas they thought I could pass on to NASA for them. Amazingly, none of them seemed to realize that I was just a college student.