Obligatory Words on Tragic Events

Posted by Unknown , Tuesday, October 28, 2008 4:07 PM

I'm sure everyone has heard about the shooting here at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway, whether you are living in a dorm on campus or live in the Serengeti - if you get CNN and have caught a snippet of the 24-hour news cycle, you know that there's been a tragedy on our campus.

I wasn't even on campus when it happened, so I can't comment on any hysteria from my friends and fellow students, or really on any tangible signs of grief. I had never either heard or known, perhaps even seen, any of the boys in question. On that basis, I can only offer my weak condolences to the families. I hope you are all able to find peace in the weeks to come.

Arkansas has had an awfully rough news week. First it was the brutal attack and subsequent death of Anne Pressly, a 26-year-old KATV news correspondent out of Little Rock. Then the shooting at UCA happened. On top of all of that, police arrested two Neo-Nazi idiots for an assassination plot to kill presidential candidate Barack Obama and, more frighteningly and plausibly, 110 black students at a mostly black high school (though this school went unnamed). One of the Neo-Nazi jerks was from West-Helena, which is in - you guessed it - Arkansas.

This isn't to say that horrible things don't happen here, just like they do anywhere else. It just seems that we've gotten the lion's share of it in a very short period of time.