Editorial-It could just as well have been Kimball, or …

The details of that fateful day last week have been pretty well played out in the media. Everyone responded better than expected – including the alleged shooter who gave up quickly and quietly. Law enforcement arrived in mere seconds and, by all reports, people remained calm and professional. This was one of those occasions, though, that made me question my career choice. I heard the dispatch calls shortly before noon last Wednesday. As it became clear what had happened, I thought about the Cold Spring Record publisher, Mike Austreng. I couldn’t imagine being in his shoes – and still can’t. A press conference was held Thursday afternoon; the Tri-County News attended and were just about the only local “small” media. The “big guys” were there with all their TV cameras. A still photographer climbed around people with his camera and gigantic lens; every click of the shutter sounded more like a team of horses clopping through the room. There was one guy posted outside the main entrance (where students were gathering to console each other) with a TV camera waiting to “catch” good close-ups of students sobbing with each other. “Sometimes I hate my job,” I said to myself as I snapped the obligatory photos. No, I don’t hate my career, I sometimes don’t like what some in the profession believe they have to do in order to sell a few more newspapers or attract a few more viewers. As a staff, we knew we had nearly a week to work on the story, so we didn’t need such “in-your-face” sensationalism, which isn’t our style. That night I watched some of those “big guys” on the TV news. They repeated the facts presented at the press conference. Some dug deeper and provided more information. Many added speculation as to motive.  It’s human nature to want to know that giant looming question here: WHY? Because the alleged shooter is a minor, we may never have that question answered. But we want an explanation. We want to identify a person or circumstance as the cause of school violence in general. That way, if we eliminate a cause, we can feel “safe” from future tragedy. The difficult answer is that there is no single cause. There isn’t one person to take the blame. There can be no guarantee. We’re all responsible for raising children in our community to be moral, caring and confident people. We can take what happened in our neighboring school district as a call to do everything we can for each and every child in our own school district.  Cold Spring is very much like so many other smaller Midwestern communities. It’s a little bigger than Kimball or Eden Valley – but it could have been us. Or Annandale, or Litchfield. That’s terrifying to those of us who have felt safely removed from the violence and incomprehensible grief that’s usually “out there” somewhere distant. All we can do is be our best, each one of us. We can prepare, be sensitive to students and families, and truly care for each other. Meanwhile, we also can pray for the entire community of Cold Spring as they find a way through this tragedy and the unwanted notoriety it brings.