Breaking: Univ. of Colo. student arrested for remarks about VA Tech shooter by Buck Fush [Subscribe]
Wed Apr 18, 2007 at 06:26:21 PM
I apologize for writing a "breaking" diary, but I haven't seen this addressed yet here, and it evoked the kind of "holy @#$%, is this really happening in America?" reaction that we've all experienced far too frequently over the last six years.
The AP headline reads Student Arrested Over Va. Tech Remarks. Now, I understand that those tasked with ensuring security on college campuses are justifiably on edge right now, but this went beyond any reasonable bounds of decency.
BOULDER, Colo. (AP) -- A University of Colorado student was arrested after making comments that classmates deemed sympathetic toward the gunman blamed for killing 32 students and himself at Virginia Tech, authorities said. During a class discussion of Monday's massacre at Virginia Tech, the student ''made comments about understanding how someone could kill 32 people,'' university police Cmdr. Brad Wiesley said.
Several witnesses told investigators the student said he was ''angry about all kinds of things from the fluorescent light bulbs to the unpainted walls, and it made him angry enough to kill people,'' according to a police report. Witnesses ''said they were afraid of him and afraid to come to class with him,'' Wiesley said.
He was arrested "on suspicion of interfering with staff, faculty or students of an education institution."
If this isn't thoughtcrime, then I don't know what is.
Let's review. Acceptable discourse regarding the VA Tech tragedy: implying that our immigration laws are at fault for allowing Cho into the country (never mind he was a legal resident with a greencard), or that gun control is to blame because the students in class that day weren't all packing heat. Subject to arrest: pointing out the likelihood (supported by the manifesto released today) that Cho suffered from persecutory delusions that were the proximate cause of his rampage. Granted, that's my own reading of the offending quote, but it certainly seems like that's what he was saying. Perhaps he phrased it inartfully, but that isn't grounds for arrest.
I'm genuinely scared that the usual suspects who have railed for years about leftist academia will use this incident as an excuse to significantly restrict freedom on college campuses. Campus "speech codes" that restrict all but the most innocuous of platitudes will become the norm. We all watched the previously unthinkable become reality after 9/11/01 under the mantra that "9/11 changed everything". I hope I'm wrong, but I'm scared I'm right.