Preventing School Shootings Discussed at UConn

The horrific school shooting that claimed the lives of thirty-three people at Virginia Tech, including that of the killer Cho Seung-Hui, has initiated a scrutinizing of college security across the nation. The University of Connecticut is no exception.

Last Thursday, a panel discussion titled "Beautiful Teaching" was held in the Stern Lounge of the CLAS building. Put on by the Aetna Chair of Writing, the Aetna Foundation and the UConn English department, the event was an analysis of UConn's own English programs and their correlation to the Virginia Tech massacre.

Lynn Bloom led the discussion, which addressed "ugly papers."

Ms. Bloom said that "ugly papers", controversial pieces written by students, are unsettling assignments that all professors within the English department eventually come in contact with.
"You're lucky if you only run into one or two of these assignments in your career," Bloom said. She stressed that experience is a teacher's greatest aid in discerning the threatening from the creative.

"Ugly papers come along with the package of an ugly person," Cormier said. He argued that discussion with the student in question is crucial to determine whether their paper was a product of a troubled mind, or merely a statement intended for "shock value."

"[The student's] interest may be a morbid interest, but it was still just an interest," Cormier said.

Corey Mahoney, a freshman-English TA, said unsettling images in mainstream society are presenting double standards of what is acceptable. Mahoney cited well-known director Quentin Tarantino as someone whose works could be wrongfully interpreted as threatening.

"Where do we draw the line for [violence] being OK in the world but not in the academy?" Mahoney asked.

Major Ronald Blicher of the UConn Police Department also stated that not much can be taken from the Virginia Tech shooting, which still has many unanswered questions.

"The facts and circumstances of what happened at Virginia Tech are still rolling out at this time, so we don't want to speculate on that," Blicher said.

In terms of UConn's own emergency protocol, Blicher noted that each emergency varies, and as a result the types of responses are equally varied.

"Certainly every situation is a little bit different," Blicher said. "If you were to [ask,] 'what would the police do in the time of a shooting?' I'd have to ask you about 150 other questions to be able to give you an answer."

"Generally the police and fire department would obviously respond," Blicher added. "But depending on a lot of different factors, I'd have a hard time saying what our response would be."

Preventing school shootings needs the coordination of everybody.

New Reality Stop Crime Show

This really is "reality" TV. Beau Maestas stuck a twelve-inch butcher knife into 2 helpless children after a drug sale gone bad with the girls' mother. The three-year-old was killed inside the blood-spilled family trailer; her ten-year-old sister was paralyzed when the knife severed her spinal cord.

Maestas is on trial facing the death penality.

Tonya Sue Baker sits in a lawyer's office, unable to understand why her adopted son would rather face the death penality than snitch on his fellow gang members in the murder of a nine-year-old girl caught in a crossfire.

"What's this honor shit?" she asks. "Ain't no honor in getting a death penalty for somebody else."

These horrific cases are happening in Clark County, Nev., home to Las Vegas and forty million annual tourists, seventy thousand criminal offenses, thousands of crystal meth-fueled crimes and almost three hundred gang-related shootings.

"Sin City Law," premiering Sept. 10, covers 4 cases; each gets a 2-part documentary treatment, with the episodes airing back to back on Mondays at nine pm and ten pm.

"Sin City Law" is another triumph for producers Denis Poncet and Jean-Xavier De Lestrade, winners of a 2005 Peabody Award for the 8-part Sundance Channel documentary "The Staircase" and an Oscar for the 2001 documentary "Murder on a Sunday Morning."

Poncet and De Lestrade, with director Remy Burkel, serve up a horrific tour of the Clark County legal system, introducing some of its darkest denizens along the way.

And it's compelling TV, here only through the first of October. Be aware that, thanks to "Sin City Law," what happens in Las Vegas no longer stays in Las Vegas. This is a great stop crime show.

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