{"id":251,"date":"2008-02-16T16:09:00","date_gmt":"2008-02-16T22:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.micro-film-magazine.com\/cublog\/?p=251"},"modified":"2014-09-06T14:59:34","modified_gmt":"2014-09-06T20:59:34","slug":"niu-shaken-c-u-stirred","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.micro-film-magazine.com\/cublog\/?p=251","title":{"rendered":"NIU shaken, C-U stirred"},"content":{"rendered":"<p align=\"left\">By now <a title=\"NIU shootings :: story directory @ CNN.com\" href=\"http:\/\/topics.cnn.com\/topics\/northern_illinois_university\" target=\"_blank\">you know\u00a0what happened<\/a> up in <strong>DeKalb, Illinois<\/strong>, this past <strong>Thursday, February 14<\/strong>, so I won&#8217;t bother recounting the details. It&#8217;s astounding to consider how single individuals can change the course of countless lives with a single, reprehensible action. And now, in our media-drenched society, those individuals are pretty much guaranteed their 15 minutes of infamy whether or not they were even looking for it. We all feel various shades of sadness for the students that perished and the friends, family, and <strong>Northern Illinois University<\/strong> personnel in mourning who will eventually need to move on from this tragedy.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">Additional undercurrents of a disquieting nature are plaguing the hearts of people who coexisted with the shooter just prior to the incident. Friday morning news reports connected suspect <strong>Stephen Kazmierczak<\/strong>\u00a0with <strong>Champaign-Urbana<\/strong>, currently enrolled as a graduate student of the <strong>School of Social Work<\/strong> at the <strong>University of Illinois<\/strong> and living\u00a0in the <strong>Country Fair Apartments<\/strong> complex on the west side of Champaign. Was this &#8220;erratic behavior&#8221; that the 27-year-old allegedly exhibited\u00a0the\u00a0past couple of weeks enough\u00a0of a\u00a0personality shift that neighbors, students, instructors, or his girlfriend should have confronted him about it? I&#8217;m not understanding how this escaped scrutiny, especially given the mental health issues of his past that the authorities uncovered all too easily between Thursday and Saturday.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\"><!--more--><\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">Bigger questions remain. Why did Kazmierczak allow his (as yet unidentified) medications to lapse? Was it a <em>conscious<\/em> decision? How did he earn the license that allowed him to legally purchase four weapons\u00a0in Champaign? Why did he take out students at NIU instead of UIUC? Did Kazmierczak have something (dubious)\u00a0to prove beyond all his lauded research and writing about social justice and the prison system? On the inside, was he simply mad at the world?<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">Unfortunately, dead men tell no tales except for ones they choose to leave behind. Just as with the <strong>Virginia Tech<\/strong> massacre, some answers will slowly trickle out while others remain lost. People will eventually blame and sue other people,\u00a0preventitive solutions will be rushed into effect, and everybody will be absolutely mortified when it happens again somewhere else. All the while, vomit-inducing vultures like <strong>Nancy Grace<\/strong> will\u00a0simply gnaw on the story until no flesh remains on the bone. What <em>else<\/em> can we do at this point\u00a0but bow our heads, shed tears, and apply a little more thought\u00a0and progressive action towards preserving a future\u00a0for mankind?<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">Most of us will never know <strong>Gayle Dubowski<\/strong>, <strong>Catalina Garcia<\/strong>, <strong>Julianna Gehant<\/strong>, <strong>Ryanne Mace<\/strong>, and <strong>Daniel Parmenter<\/strong>, who attempted to make better lives for themselves before having them taken away by a selfish and unbalanced son of a bitch. God rest their souls.<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">~ Jason Pankoke<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Your editor doesn&#8217;t have much to add regarding the NIU shootings except for the obvious &#8211; we feel for the victims.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jp-confidential","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.micro-film-magazine.com\/cublog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.micro-film-magazine.com\/cublog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.micro-film-magazine.com\/cublog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.micro-film-magazine.com\/cublog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.micro-film-magazine.com\/cublog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.micro-film-magazine.com\/cublog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.micro-film-magazine.com\/cublog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.micro-film-magazine.com\/cublog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.micro-film-magazine.com\/cublog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}