it has been a bizarre three days. so i went to wesleyan this weekend to visit my homegurl booboo and listen to santigold and celebrate spring fling for the fourth and final year. it was supposed be the most fun part of this semester, except everything went horribly wrong. the morning was beautiful, a nice taste of sunshine after the very rainy days before. everyone had already begun to party and gather at various houses. we were all about to make our way over to the hill, when people started saying that someone got shot. a lot of kids brushed it off, saying “people always get shot in middletown,” and continued partying, but then news came that the victim was a wesleyan student and that she had died. then people began to take the issue more seriously. we all went home and sat on the porch. nobody really knew what else to do. people started calling their parents to tell them they were safe. it was all so strange because by that point in the afternoon a lot of people had already been partying for a least a couple hours and not in the right state of mind to deal with such an event. after sitting outside for a while, a kid came up and told us that the guy wasn’t caught, that we should stay inside. so we went in, closed the shades, sat in the kitchen and tried to think of what we should be doing. booboo washed the dishes. we sat around the table, and tried to configure a reason for why all of this was happening. there were already rumors about who the guy was and the victim’s level of involvement with him. some people were saying things like, “i heard he was a townie, why would she be dating a townie?” or “why don’t the cops just ask her friends?” some of the girls said they knew people that knew her. i don’t even go there and i know someone that studied in spain with her, and other guy who dated her in highschool. crazy, right? so anyway, we just sat around waiting for updates, which seemed like they alternated between “we are safe, be vigilant” to “stay inside, he is armed and dangerous.” we were feeling like we were in a bit of a safe zone, until the school released a picture that didn’t look like anything like the guy in the bookstore surveillance video. seems like the police did a friggin google search and just chose the closest geographical person with the suspect’s name, who happened to be a cornell professor. duh. i dunno if the school or police was just trying to keep everyone calm by releasing the pictures, but that didn’t help booboo, who knew immediately that the balding professor they showed us was not the culprit. i honestly don’t even remember what time of night it was by then, but i know we all checked emails and websites right up until we went to bed. the house was awake by midmorning, one roommate was already packed to go home, the school hadn’t called for an evacuation but we were all gonna leave. i had made a promise to my little brother to be home on friday morning, so i already had my train ticket, but everyone packed their stuff to stay at a friend’s house in another town. by the time i got home, around 7pm, i got a call from booboo saying that the killer was at the scene of the crime talking to the police. she also told me that the victim had already filed a complaint about harrassment from the guy but had not pursued the case. i read just now that it was because he had already left the state. it is pretty clear that this man is troubled. why wouldn’t the police have thought that perhaps the shooter was her crazy stalker. interestingly, someone said “if he’s white, he must be crazy.” i’m still not sure if she was being sarcastic, but i will say that if he had been non-white, this would have been a different story. a lot of people were saying things  like, “it’s so scary that he’s white, and is skinny and has a beard. he fits right in!” the killer must have known he could count on wesleyan/middletown’s preconceptions about who is dangerous (“we live right by the ghetto”) and who isn’t. after the news broke that he was expressing anti-semitic sentiments in his journal, i heard one girl say “i was gonna go to boston to study for exams with this girl, but everyone in the car is really jewish.” it is so ridiculous how fear can make people say the most hurtful things. anyway, aside from the inappropriate commentary and police errors, what really troubles me is how common this is. crimes of passion aka violence against women, has to stop. this is second time that i’ve had to witness what this kind of violence leads up to. i wonder what happened with the complaint she made. i wonder if the police took any precautious measures to protect the victim. i wonder how many people blamed her for “dating a creep,” like one girl said. i wonder who dismissed her because she was just a pretty college girl. i wonder who ever called her out of her name or judged her for her relationship choices. i wonder if they never thought a white guy would do something so cold-blooded in middletown. i wonder whose gonna say she was too nice to people. maybe she wasn’t vocal enough. maybe she led him on. maybe she shared her notes one day. maybe she loaned him a pencil. maybe he was just your friendly average neighborhood joe. maybe he was just in love. always said hello in the mornings. a nice boy who just lost it. he needs help, they will say. it is crazy that there is already a rationale for this type of murder, this kind of crime against a woman. i wish people would make a bigger deal out of it. it shouldn’t be normal.

as i write this, i’ve just gotten news that the shooter turned himself in.  i’m now reading the nyt account of what happened. according to them, he is the son of harvard business school graduate, who told people he had just broken up with his fiancee. well there’s his insanity plea, whether she exists or not. i will definitely be following what happens to him. i dunno how many more senseless murders have to occur for people to realize that there is something wrong with the way we deal with violence against women.

i know my descriptions of people’s reactions may seem a bit insensitive, but i had to write something. i decided to leave out the victim’s name, just to avoid offending anyone scouring the  internet for comfort as i tried to do last night.

that said, my thoughts are with her family and friends and with the wes community.