AsI walked across the Green on Tuesdaymorning, I noticed the details of the campus: The clear blue sky, the color of summer days or a baby's eyes, accented only by a few faint clouds; the mountains of New Hampshire peeking out from behind each building -- "God's country," as I've heard many alumni refer to it; Baker Tower, tall, strong, everlasting, set against this brilliant backdrop.
And one more symbol among all these of nature and purity -- the American Flag flying, at full mast, higher than it has in the past few days. Higher than it has since the bombing in Oklahoma.
"It's only been five days," I thought. Five days of mourning for a continually rising number of dead, injured and missing. And yet, the flag is no longer flying at half-mast.
Of course I'm not suggesting that the entire country go into a prolonged mourning period for each person killed, ticking off the days in numbered dead, reducing the event to a flat numeral. The country had its official day of mourning; now it has to move on. What disturbs me is the profound apathy toward the whole event that I have witnessed in many quarters of this campus. Many students do not know what occurred, and those who do, do not even seem fazed by it.
When my Undergraduate Advisor sent out a blitz explaining to us that collections were being made for the Oklahoma Red Cross, to aid in relief efforts, and asked us to give whatever we could, a hall-mate of mine said, "So this is a big thing, or something? I was wondering why they were collecting money, I mean, it's not an earthquake or anything."
I wanted to shake him, to tell him that an earthquake is a disaster that nature creates, an eventuality that cannot be controlled or predicted by man. An earthquake, at least, is not of our making.
This bombing is antithetical to nature. There is nothing natural about the few killing the innocent many to make a political statement. There is nothing natural about crushed children, and lives erased in the blink of an eye and the detonation of an explosive. Mass murder is unnatural and insane.
So this is why it is so difficult for me to comprehend how The Dartmouth can continue to run articles from the Associated Press on page 2, and yet not one columnist has picked up the story. It seems that no one on the campus feels compelled to express outrage.
In decades past, college students, with their youthful idealism and vigorous morality, have not necessarily been more aware of the world around them, but they have championed, seemingly in one voice, humanity and justice. Coming to a place with students from 62 countries and 50 states should make us more in touch with the universality of disasters. After all, knowing that people have died is one thing. Having your friend fly home because her mother was injured in her office, which was across the street from the Federal building in Oklahoma is quite another.
The fact that we are so out of touch with reality, especially a reality that is so well-covered by the media, does not reflect well on us. We are supposed to be the future of this country, yet we can hardly extricate ourselves from our daily routines to keep in contact with a national tragedy.
My own mother, recently returned from England, tells me that the media there are referring to the culprits as "The Enemy From Within." In giving the perpetrators this title, they have perhaps revealed the most terrifying aspect of this disaster -- it is not simply man's inhumanity to man. It is Americans' disregard for American life. There are no fundamentalist Arab terrorist scapegoats.
I do not want to condemn my fellow students. Perhaps the Red Cross collection will prove that there is a silent majority of empathetic individuals at Dartmouth. I would like to think so. The victims of this bombing need the rest of America to support them, especially in the face of such an unexpected enemy. And, at the very least, the victims and their families deserve our recognition. So this is my tribute to them.
This bombing is much more than the detonation of a half-ton of fuel and fertilizer explosives; it is the excision of innocence in America's Heartland. It is a moral outrage, and should be treated as such.
