It's Our Turn

It's our turn.

Thanks to those of you who checked in on email, Facebook and otherwise to see if Rick and I were OK after the tragic shooting at Michigan State University. We are. We live about two miles from campus and about two miles from where the shooter killed himself after his campus rampage. We heard (and Rick saw) police cars and helicopters. And we were up very late, trying to wrap our heads around what happened.

Photo: Mike Mihalus

Michigan State has both glorious and not-so-good connotations for me, having done both my undergraduate and graduate work there, working at the university for 32 years and volunteering for WKAR before that, and volunteering with the university theatre after I retired. 

Those are the good times. Times of laughter in the dorms.

Enjoying outdoor theatre on a lovely summer evening.

Long walks through the university's beautiful gardens.

Many have said we have one of the most beautiful campuses in the United States and with its origins as an agricultural college, that's not surprising. Wherever it fits on that continuum, it certainly is a stunner, especially in the spring when the blossoms come out in force..

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...and the classic buildings in the old part of campus look their best.

It's had its problems too -- Larry Nasser comes to mind, but he is far from being the only scandal at MSU, just one of the more public ones. I've seen how the sausage is made and it isn't always as pretty as a flowering tree or as tranquil as ducklings on the Red Cedar River in the spring. On a somewhat lighter note, we may be the couch-burning capital of the world, because that's what students do when we lose championship game (along with turning over cars. Don't ask.)

But it has always felt relatively safe. Until now.

Photo by Tamara Hicks Syron

 

As you know by now -- because how could you miss it? -- three were killed, five in critical condition in a local hospital (all students), as I write this. The shooter is dead as well, from a self-inflicted gunshot. 

Sixty-seven mass shootings in 2023 alone here in the U.S. Sixty-seven in the first six weeks of the year. 

It's our turn. East Lansing and MSU have joined that long list of schools from elementary to college, Sandy Hook to Parkland and Uvalde to Virginia Tech. It's Michigan's second school shooting in less than two years (the other being a student shooting classmates at a high school in Oxford, Michigan.) And let's not forget the shootings in Buffalo or the L.A. dance studios, among others.

Thing is, it shouldn't be anyone's turn. No one wants a turn at being the next city or school or workplace to have to report deaths from gun shots.

We still don't know what kind of gun this shooter used, how he bought it, if he had a background check (probably not, in Michigan) or if he had extenuating mental health circumstances. He has no known affiliation with the U so we don't know why he decided to do this on an uncharacteristically temperate February night. 

But something must be done. We say it after every shooting, almost like a mantra. Thoughts and prayers. 

But nothing changes.

Whose turn is next? It shouldn't be anybody's turn. It should end.