I don’t want to live in a society that is ruled by fear and suspicion. Unfortunately, the huge coverage of school shootings in the media has created a culture of fear both on campuses and in classrooms, which permeates our community to the core.
Obviously, such violence is unspeakably sad and deeply disturbing, but it is an aberration, not a norm. You can’t live your life thinking that you’ll be hit by a bus, and neither should you believe that the boy sitting next to you in your English class is compiling a hit list. It’s frustrating that our media is flooded with stories of violence and danger, from school shootings to superbugs, which leave the populace with little option but to panic.
I’ve always felt that the media promotes this “culture of fear,” but only recently did it pervade the walls of my own home. Last week, my brother Chris arrived home deeply distressed after having spent an hour talking with the SFU campus security. It seemed that, after a misunderstanding in class, security had decided to question Chris about a list he’d made during his English seminar that morning.
As the external vice-president of the Altered Reality Club (ARC) and a 4th-year English major, Chris’s days are usually occupied with sleeping, eating, reading, sleeping, and planning one of his online gaming sessions. On the day of the incident, Chris had decided to do a little brainstorming for his forum game, which he hosts online for the ARC, SFU’s “club for gaming, anime, cosplay, comics, and people who love geeky things.”
Chris began to write down some of the weapons for the characters. Some of which, like the shotgun and handgun, could easily have seemed suspicious to the students seated around him. Others, like “mind-bullet,” “itchy-powder,” “mouth-laser,” and “bazooka,” were less cause for alarm.
On the way to his next class, Chris was stopped by the security guards and told to come down with them to the security office. Once seated, they told Chris that they’d received a report that he was making disturbing writings in class; two girls behind him thought he was making a list of weapons and a list of names. I personally doubt a killer would pull out his hit list in the middle of an English tutorial, but Chris patiently explained that he was running a forum game, in which the players were the teachers and staff at a mutant school, like in X-Men. The list of names were in fact characters in the game, not real people at SFU.
At that point, security wanted to address further concerns they’d heard from the students. Apparently, Chris was reported as being “disconnected” in class and falling asleep and reading Game of Thrones — classic terrorist behaviour. SFU security strongly suggested that
he should see a counsellor.
Chris responded, “I’m not a killer. I’m just a geek.”
Although I feel safe knowing that SFU security is cracking down on suspicious behavior, it makes me sad that our society is so paranoid that reading Game of Thrones and creating a Dungeons & Dragons-style character sheet are signs of psychosis and deviancy. Are we harkening back to days of Catcher in the Rye, when books were banned because of the negative effects they might have on adolescents? Is John Snow our new Holden Caulfield? I don’t think so.
How unsafe is our society? In the past year, there have been 17 school shootings in the US, with 42 deaths. In Canada, there have only been three deaths related to school shootings since 2000. This raises the question: are we suffering from the symptoms of a disease which isn’t ours? At times, yes. We should be careful, but we should not let fear overwhelm common sense. In the real world,
‘winter is not coming.’
