Oracle Online

The student body of Hamline has been abuzz, and e-mails have been sent out over Netmail urging prayer and consideration for the surviving students, faculty and staff of Virginia Tech.

I join the rest of my peers in wondering what sort of messed-up personality would do such a thing. The idea of 32 of our peers shot dead in a school environment casts an uncomfortable shroud around the minds of many. These victims in Virginia Tech were students our age, minding their own business in an environment very similar to ours. For many of us, it shook the illusion that somehow we are protected from random violence on campus. It’s a sobering reality that we aren’t.

People react to such shifts of thought very differently from case to case. Some seek to ignore what has happened and remain buried in their numerous day-to-day responsibilities. Others on the other end of the spectrum begin impassioned debates over meals, discussing with varying degrees of intensity why this happened.

But one of the more disturbing reactions I’ve witnessed is the desire for more violence, dispatched as punishment to the gunman.

Some of my peers seem to feel that the killer’s death wasn’t enough, that he should’ve been kept alive somehow, physically chastised or tortured to condemn his actions further. These students never knew the victims personally, and they weren’t affected personally by the gunman’s actions save for the remorse the event caused, and yet they still hunger for his blood.

It’s an overt desire, as wellčone that they feel justified in, a view that they see is right. Frankly, this frightens me. Violence is often a necessary and just reaction to dangerous aggressiončincarceration in a prison is one of the most common forms it takes, and that is a form of violence. Yet to crave the drawn-out, merciless torture of a person who has trespassed against what we see as right is barbaric.

Retribution is a seductive feeling. As humans, many of us gasp for joy and immediately cling to any justification for it. Man on Fire and the Boondock Saints are just two examples of violent, immediate revenge against those who would or have harmed us and they are lauded as fantastic movies by many. I myself enjoy both movies immensely. But one must recognize the reason we enjoy these depictionsčbecause they portray acts that many of us would do ourselves if not held in check by federal and state law.

I believe that the majority of us are vigilantes at heart. Through social censure and intimidation on the part of the police, this instinct for revenge is suppressed-that’s why it squeezes out so often in harmless popular culture. Awareness of these feral instincts within us is our greatest defense against these sorts of unhealthy cravings for another’s pain.

We must make known that real live torture is never, ever right, and despite the many attractive justifications we cannot let it happen. It degrades the human spirit, and there are certain things about us that must be preserved and warded against ourselves.