COLUMN: What could lead to this?
How does a person get to the point where they think it’s OK to treat someone else badly? When did we stop killing people with kindness and starting killing them with guns?
I know the events of this week will spark all kinds of discussion about gun control and guns at school, especially here in Utah with the University of Utah’s recent issues about restricting guns on campus. But this is not the issue I am addressing in this column.
I want to talk about the people.
My roommate is from France, and a while back she was interviewed by another student about stereotypes some French people have about American and Americans, and vice versa. She said when she told her friends she was coming to America to go to school, they told her not to go because America was a dangerous place. They said she’d get shot. Last night she said again, “This is why people in France think America is so dangerous – things like this.”
There is a lot of bad stuff going on in the world. The news reports on it daily – people stealing, people lying, people killing, people dying. Monday night I sat down to watch the 10 p.m. news on KSL and the first three stories were: first, Virginia Tech, second, about a Utah student who was locked down in one of the buildings at Virginia Tech, and third, about a lady who stole a purse from behind the counter at an outlet store 30 seconds after telling her young daughter not to take something that wasn’t hers.
None of it is nice stuff. So how did we get to this point? The truth – I don’t know. I don’t think anyone does. This is the kind of problem that doesn’t just show up overnight and, in reverse, isn’t going to be solved in a day. It is going to be a constant fight.
If I had to pick a place to start, it would be with the things we say. Over the last couple of weeks, there has been a lot of talk about some racist comments made about a girl’s basketball team. Don Imus, the instigator of those remarks, issued an apology on several different occasions, an apology the team accepted. But by that point the controversy was already in motion. Imus lost his jobs. People are out analyzing and arguing over what lead to these remarks and what this event really shows about the media and racism in it.
Just think, all this bad stuff would have been avoided if Mr. Imus simply could have thought of something better to say.
The things people say have an extraordinary impact on our lives. Even if you pride yourself on being one of those people who doesn’t care what other people think, you must realize words are powerful enough to change the world.
Teasing, taunting and other types of bullying are powerful enough to influence some teens into acting out, getting into gangs and drugs, committing suicide or even bringing a weapon to school and killing their peers. While there is no way to show a direct cause and effect relationship between these events, recent studies have shown high levels of correlation between teasing and school violence.
When I was growing up, there were lots of little rules my mother, teachers and others would recite anytime I said something that was less than angelic. For example: If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all. While this was wise council when I was younger, my adult life has proved a little too complicated for this rule in some aspects. While I am still a supporter of saying kind things only, I have also added these questions to my arsenal of speech improvement: Is it true and is it necessary?
It is my belief that if every American started today to carefully monitor the things they said, there would be less domestic violence, fewer domestic squabbles, less child and spousal abuse, less gun crime. Now, I’m not a scientist so I don’t have a formula to prove my theory. But I really think things would improve.
The question I have is what can American do? Can we talk the talk?
Mikaylie Kartchner is a senior in print journalism. Comments can be sent to mikayliek@cc.usu.edu.