South African Coverage of the NIU Shooting

This is really a short note because the coverage here has been brief, but present.  When I returned home from the Midlands yesterday a national news program here on one of the SABCs (South African Broadcasting Channel) reported "another" shooting had occurred on a university campus in the United States.  When the footage visually indicated the shooting had occurred in Illinois without identifying the institution, I was understandably even more disconcerted because of the number of people I know affiliated with the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.  Early coverage here has foregone providing specific details about the shooting and has focused on connecting it to other occurrences of recent shootings at US universities and colleges instead.  Preliminarily, this seems to be the angle that much international coverage of the event has used.

Several of my friends in Urbana-Champaign contacted me to inform me of the shooting and its affect upon them and the campus.  My thoughts continue to be with you.

Comments

[Leslie]

It was pretty strange here yesterday. I keep thinking about why he chose to go to DeKalb instead of here. I have been fearing something like this for 10 years, since high school and Columbine, and now it has hit so close to home. I offered my students the chance to talk about it yesterday by asking, "everybody doing ok? Is everyone alright?" I didn't want to start class with a tone in either direction, but I think the students understood. Usually, our before-class chatting leans toward them telling me what they are reading in other classes or sitting in silence, but yesterday they all made eye contact with me and nodded. It was a strange and nuanced moment.

I can't help but wonder why this particualr expression keeps happening. Why is *this* the avenue the violent choose so often here? The international press, according to your post, seems to be wondering something similar.

[Ted]

There have been an inordinate number of violent, seemingly random shooting sprees in the US, simply since the beginning of the new year. I am fighting the urge to devote too much of my time to trying to understand why this very modern expression of violence is becoming so popular, and why it most often is perpetrated by young men.