Patterns of behavior are beginning to emerge. For example, I
cannot find one instance of a female carrying out a mass school shooting in the
United States. Mother Jones did find
four instances where women were plotting mass shootings, but the police thwarted
all four.
Given the overwhelming preponderance of male mass killers,
we have to begin with the idea that these killings are related to some sort of
male crisis. Many of the killers had problems with women. Indeed, it is in many
of these killers’ relationships with or attitude toward women that we see the
genesis of the problem.
While the killers may not tell us when, where, and how the
attack will take place, they do alert us.
APPALACHIAN SCHOOL OF LAW
In the case of Peter Odighizuwa, the killer at the
Appalachian School of Law, he was a wife beater and in one classroom outburst
pushed a professor from the podium and launched into an anti-female diatribe.
He was banned from going into some school offices without an escort, and a
student had to intervene to stop him from hitting the librarian because she was
running the vacuum cleaner.
The warning signs were there. Some of the students had
nicknamed him “the shooter.” Three female faculty members were so concerned for
their safety and the wellbeing of their students that they asked for campus
security. The law school had none. The school president brushed them aside
saying, “You women and your hormones and your intuition … there is nothing to
be afraid of, it will be ok.”
Within a few weeks Peter Odighizuwa went on a rampage and
killed three people and wounded three others.
Neither the president of the Appalachian School of Law, nor
any member of the administration was ever asked to explain the school’s
inaction when confronted with blatant acts of violence. And the school
president was never called to task for ignoring faculty members’ calls for
school security.
I will be posting the warning signs form other shootings in
the next few posts. (To be continued)
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