The Hidden Victims of Campus Massacre

When a disturbed gun-wielding killer opens fire on a college campus, it stuns us. We send our young people to college or university with the promise of a bright future. Few of us expect our children to come out at the end of four or five years, with anything except a diploma and the prospect of a career. So the recent tragedies of Northern Illinois University and Virginia Tech hit us hard. Victims shot down in their prime, and futures obliterated, remind us of how fragile life really is, and how it can all be changed in a second. Once again, being in the wrong place at the wrong time reminds us of how unpredictable fate can kill an innocent person.

But what about the wreckage left behind beyond the obvious gunshot wounds? We don't talk enough about other carnage. Each student murdered is part of a family, she or he is someone's son, daughter, grandchild, niece, nephew, cousin, or friend. Adults in the fray might be a parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents. For each student gunned down, there are the loved ones left behind. And all the "what-ifs" haunt the living. What if he skipped that class that day? What if she had gone to her other choice of school instead of this one? Massacres such as this hurt the extended families and friends of the dead.

The survivors, who either were at the scene and spared, or were elsewhere on campus altogether, suffer a different trauma. The "it could have been I" thoughts are torturous. And the feeling that it could happen again anywhere at any time, are frightening. Sometimes it isn't so comforting to realize it might have been you who were in the wrong classroom or lecture hall.

When something like this happens, we all want to know about the killer. Who was he? Who are his parents? Were there signs that he could do this that were ignored by fellow students, teachers, psychologists, his family. And finally we ask ourselves if there was something that somebody could have done to prevent this horrible event. Journalists and photographers barrage the family home. The family is understandably distraught and full of guilt, wondering "Was there more we could have done?"

Lastly, there is a fallout that nobody talks about: the tainted image of the nation's mentally-ill. The gunman who wrought havoc at Virginia Tech was characterized as a loner with depressive disorder and the inability to form relationships with his peers. Steven Kazmierczak went off his medication before he killed. With all the strides we have made raising awareness and acceptance of people with psychiatric disorders, one little piece of information will stick in peoples' brains. The image of a psychiatric patient neglecting to take his medication and then going on a killing spree, is a most frightening cause-and-effect scenario. The fact that that there are millions of schizophrenics, bi-polar affective, and otherwise mentally-afflicted individuals out there who are living productive lives, is not a comfort to people at a time like this. Furthermore, a missed dose of psychiatric medicine does not automatically lead to tragedy.

When a mass killing shocks the nation, we think of lives lost needlessly, snuffed out by a mind wracked with mental illness. But long after the bodies are buried and the injured healed, the fallout is further-reaching. We are forced to look at the world that spurns such anger and despair.