Mourning with Charlotte - Public Ed Works

CHARLOTTE – It’s not just another day in America.

We join the UNC Charlotte community in mourning the loss of life Tuesday of two students. We hope for the recovery of the four students who were injured and healing of the entire UNC Charlotte community. We join schools across the nation in feeling the loss of innocence and peace when such an incident happens.

And it happens too often.

We share the struggle to make sense of a senseless act. We echo Chancellor Phil DuBois’s praise for campus and local police, and we are saddened that they have to be so good at responding to something that should not happen.

“This is the saddest day in UNC Charlotte’s history,” Dubois said Tuesday.¹

Police praised one victim, 21-year-old Riley Howell of Waynesville, for tackling the shooter and taking him off his feet before he was fatally shot.

“His sacrifice saved lives,” said Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Chief Kerr Putney.²

Dubois praised campus police for their rapid response to an active shooter that prevented the gunman from leaving the room where the shootings occurred.

“Our police were magnificent,” he told WFAE. “They went right toward the sound of the gunfire…. I commend them for their heroism.”

The chancellor said the campus community also benefited from technology that allowed officials to lock down all buildings on campus with the touch of a single button.

Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles told one interviewer the shootings were so jarring in part because the university is normally a peaceful place where students work to improve their lives.³

But this event – on the last day of classes – means joyous graduations, first jobs and grandchildren will never be celebrated.

Dubois emphasized in interviews after the tragedy that it is now time to focus on recovery. The university has deployed its counseling staff for students and set up a family assistance center.⁴

There is indeed much healing to be done.

But at some point, North Carolinians and Americans must figure out how to keep this from happening again and again.

Perhaps the university can play a role in that.

¹ https://inside.uncc.edu/news-features/2019-04-30/statement-chancellor-philip-l-dubois.
² https://www.wfae.org/post/charlotte-talks-community-reacts-unc-charlotte-campus-shooting#stream/0.
³ https://www.wfae.org/post/charlotte-talks-community-reacts-unc-charlotte-campus-shooting#stream/0.
⁴ https://www.wfae.org/post/saddest-day-unc-charlottes-history-chancellor-philip-dubois-shooting#stream/0.

Edward Kick says

May 2, 2019 at 9:50 pm

The universities of the US will play a role in this, particularly insofar as the federal and state governments provide grant incentives to carefully study this dynamic. There are exceptions, of course, but many universities receive less and less support from their states, and compensate through over enrollments, campaigns for private support, and grant efforts which often take an enormous amount of time in the writing, but with no forthcoming support to match that effort.
Regardless, data from Uniform Crime Reports and Homeland Security provide descriptions of each school shooting and every school killing back to the beginning of our country. The first such killing was by a Native American tribe in the 1700s,which took the lives of a schoolmaster (b gun) and several children. School killing did not escalate until the 1800s, when every so often quarrels between male students. and between them (or their parents) and teachers became the major reason for school killings. Grade disputes, graduation holdovers, and general disputes between students and teachers continue to made up a substantial number of school murders today, although we do not hear much about them. Also fights between students over material items, girlfriends, positions of playground power and so on escalated until one party was dead from the early 1800s until today. Deaths resulted from the use of .22 caliber weapons and less often 9 mm pistols both on school ground and in public homicides. As well,i n the latter, knives and other weapons for bludgeoning the victim. played a role in lethal encounters secondary to guns. Nonetheless, throughout our history ARs and AR-like weapons that concern so many in the public are employed in mass slayings on occasion, and they should not be thought of as the only source for school murders–not by any stretch of the imagination! Often, when guns are used, they are taken from parents who did not secure their weapons properly.
The take away messages are: the data are now available to more thoroughly unravel the etiology of school homicides; school homicides have been part of US history (But not in the school books!) for centuries; across the period 1800-2019 one-on-one encounters, not mass slayings have been rather frequent although only locally reported!; These deaths were often “rational” acts in the sense that they at least often started as a means to achieve goals that are shared throughout society (higher grades, graduation on time, taking “possession” of a girlfriend, gaining monetary reward or status. These struggles were only recently accompanied by another trend–the mass slaying that emerged around the time of Charles Whitman and his use of a military rifle to kill and maim from the University of Texas bell tower These are high profile incidents and it appears many are so concerned with these murders that they would disarm the American public.. If this public opts to do this, and frequency of use is a key they would need to start with the “weakest: caliber weapon (which still is quite lethal), but before they round up all the .357 and .44 magnums, the’d would be more effective rounding up the public’s steak knives and ashtrays capable of being used as blunt objects. See Wikipedia, Homeland Security, and Uniform Crime Reports for the data and descriptions used in this analysis). A complete analysis will be presented for the public benefit at the 2019 Rural Sociological Society meetings in Richmond VA.

Comments

Rhonda says

May 2, 2019 at 5:02 pm

Somehow, we must remove the stigma for seeking mental health treatment. As long as mental health issues remain untreated, there is a risk for this kind of behavior in every community, school and university in the US.

Edward Kick says

May 2, 2019 at 9:50 pm

The universities of the US will play a role in this, particularly insofar as the federal and state governments provide grant incentives to carefully study this dynamic. There are exceptions, of course, but many universities receive less and less support from their states, and compensate through over enrollments, campaigns for private support, and grant efforts which often take an enormous amount of time in the writing, but with no forthcoming support to match that effort.
Regardless, data from Uniform Crime Reports and Homeland Security provide descriptions of each school shooting and every school killing back to the beginning of our country. The first such killing was by a Native American tribe in the 1700s,which took the lives of a schoolmaster (b gun) and several children. School killing did not escalate until the 1800s, when every so often quarrels between male students. and between them (or their parents) and teachers became the major reason for school killings. Grade disputes, graduation holdovers, and general disputes between students and teachers continue to made up a substantial number of school murders today, although we do not hear much about them. Also fights between students over material items, girlfriends, positions of playground power and so on escalated until one party was dead from the early 1800s until today. Deaths resulted from the use of .22 caliber weapons and less often 9 mm pistols both on school ground and in public homicides. As well,i n the latter, knives and other weapons for bludgeoning the victim. played a role in lethal encounters secondary to guns. Nonetheless, throughout our history ARs and AR-like weapons that concern so many in the public are employed in mass slayings on occasion, and they should not be thought of as the only source for school murders–not by any stretch of the imagination! Often, when guns are used, they are taken from parents who did not secure their weapons properly.
The take away messages are: the data are now available to more thoroughly unravel the etiology of school homicides; school homicides have been part of US history (But not in the school books!) for centuries; across the period 1800-2019 one-on-one encounters, not mass slayings have been rather frequent although only locally reported!; These deaths were often “rational” acts in the sense that they at least often started as a means to achieve goals that are shared throughout society (higher grades, graduation on time, taking “possession” of a girlfriend, gaining monetary reward or status. These struggles were only recently accompanied by another trend–the mass slaying that emerged around the time of Charles Whitman and his use of a military rifle to kill and maim from the University of Texas bell tower These are high profile incidents and it appears many are so concerned with these murders that they would disarm the American public.. If this public opts to do this, and frequency of use is a key they would need to start with the “weakest: caliber weapon (which still is quite lethal), but before they round up all the .357 and .44 magnums, the’d would be more effective rounding up the public’s steak knives and ashtrays capable of being used as blunt objects. See Wikipedia, Homeland Security, and Uniform Crime Reports for the data and descriptions used in this analysis). A complete analysis will be presented for the public benefit at the 2019 Rural Sociological Society meetings in Richmond VA.

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