The wrong way

Yesterday, a faculty member at my alma mater open fire on her fellow faculty and staff members during a meeting. She killed three people, and two more are in critical condition. They were all members of the Biology department, and not anyone I knew or ever had classes with, but I, like so many other alumni, am completely shocked that such a thing could happen at MY school.

I heard about it from a student ten minutes after it happened. One of my coworkers has family on the SWAT team, and he started passing information back to my office. All of us UAH graduates were huddled together around a computer, listening to the scattered reports coming in from the local news, students calling friends, and my coworker's family. Students dead, no it was staff; ten, no six, no twenty; the shooter's caught, no the shooter's on the run. No one knew who was hurt, and we all have friends, family, or former professors we care about on campus. It was...horrible.

Information is still trickling out, but as the story develops, I find myself absolutely disgusted at the things people are saying today. Bishop was a weird nerd, everyone knows they're the ones who lose it. She's an atheist, and all atheists are killers deep down because they don't have Jesus. This is why everyone should carry guns. It's horrible - the groups that have popped up on Facebook, the comments left on online articles, the conversations I've personally overheard. Even though Dr. Bishop is clearly a murderer, we still don't know what happened or why. It's beyond wrong to blame Harvard (seriously! they are!), or atheists, or Obama, or Prozac, or a lack of armed faculty for what happened yesterday. It's sick, it's disrespectful, and it's disgusting.

I feel for everyone involved....even Dr. Bishop and her family. No one who was there and none of the familes who have suffered at her hands will ever be the same, and that's a terrible thing. But I can't help but think that despite what she's inflicted on so many people, it's not right for her family to suffer what people are speculating and saying about her. There's already enough pain in all of this - there's no need to add more with thoughtless, cruel, and possibly innaccurate comments. There's a right way and wrong way to show support for the victims, and too many people are choosing the latter.