Sad state of affairs

After watching the news this morning, I'm just sad. Another assault on our young people at Virginia Tech University, and it is just hard to see. I guess I was already in an agitated state regarding the issue of safety and our young ones, mainly because I'm speaking in the Women of Worth class this week about personal safety. It's a subject that I have reluctantly taught to middle schoolers in the aftermath of Jennifer Odom in Florida, seeing as her little body was found very close to the middle school where I taught. It was a tragedy that struck close to home, and because of it, talking about personal safety to middle schoolers became part of my lectures. But it gets me mad to have to teach it.

I was listening to the radio after Michael Jordan's dad was so sadly murdered, and a statement was made that changed my thinking. Until this statement, people were saying it just wasn't smart of his dad to pull over into a road stop to sleep. But someone on the radio finally verbalized what many where thinking: "Why not?" Why is it a stupid decision to pull into a road stop to sleep? Why shouldn't we feel safe to do so? If I need to pull off the road for the safety of others, why shouldn't I be able to? Or why shouldn't Bill Cosby's son stop and help someone change a tire? Those are the questions we need to be asking.

So now I'll be going into that classroom and I'll be a little bit mad. I'll be talking about the Jennifer Odom's and the Carlie Bruscia's and Drew Sjordin's to young ladies who have never known violence like this. But I do it because they need to know. They live in a world where it's not OK to get off of a school bus 400 yards from their house, or to walk behind a carwash for a shortcut home, or walk to their car after work. They need to know not to sit in their car with the doors unlocked, or not to let a person within arm's length if they don't know them. I know freedom is a good thing. But freedom without morality causes the innocent to suffer, and that just gets me mad.