Fatalism is killing us

We spend a lot of time worrying about fascism, and it’s a worthy adversary. But there is another F-word in America that has been killing us for a long time.

On May 21, 1998, Kip Kinkel drove his mother’s car to Thurston high school in Springfield, Oregon and killed two classmates and wounded 25 others. He had killed his parents at his home the day before. Just a little over a year later, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed 12 students and 1 teacher at Columbine High School in Columbine, Colorado.

I was 24 and living in Oahu, Hawaii with my partner Cheryl and our first child, Cole, when the Thurston High School shooting rocked us to our core because of the proximity to our home and loved ones. The Columbine massacre left us reeling in that way that something you didn’t expect could happen twice in your lifetime does happen, only worse this time, if worse is even a qualifier to something this horrific.

Five years later I was attending Chemeketa Community College and taking my required Writing 121 credits when the instructor approached me to ask if I was comfortable being partnered with someone from the Department of Corrections Education Program. It was an online course, and I was a non-traditional student. I did not see a problem with that, if anything, I figured the person would probably be more reliable than a typical student fresh out of high school.

To say I was a little surprised to find an email from a K. Kinkel in my inbox before the first scheduled assignment was due would be a gross understatement, but I had easily agreed to be a partner for the duration of the course and didn’t want to go back on that at this point when the first assignment was due.

I was only ever instructed not to ask the student any questions not pertaining to the assignments given by the instructor. When I asked a journalism instructor about it, he suggested I make an appointment with the Dept. of Corrections to try to schedule an interview. I waited through the entire course before emailing the department. I was nearly instantly denied, and I never heard from K. Kinkel again via email or through the school’s website messaging system.

The interactions I had with K. Kinkel were all via that website messaging system and twice through email. If I recall it correctly, we talked…