All deaths matter equally. The recent tragedy at Virginia Tech has called to the forefront many of American culture’s ways of dealing with situations that cause feelings of sadness, while also invoking an aura of danger. On April 21st, the Phillips Academy community was asked by the school’s administration to wear orange and maroon in order to participate in national “Orange and Maroon Effect Day.” This situation incorrectly places unequivocal importance on a single horrific event, when an unfathomable number of other events also occurred last week. The recognition of Orange and Maroon Effect Day did little to enhance our place as a truly globalized school. Frankly, the school as a community responded to the event in the wrong manner. Andover’s recognition of Orange and Maroon Effect Day placed unequal importance on some lives. Given that this is a heated issue and that opposition to the day is often considered unpatriotic, I will try to be as straightforward as possible with my views. We have a unique affinity to the situation because we have graduates who attended the school and must therefore commemorate the tragedy. So far, I have no problems; in fact, I believe it is important to mourn such a horrible incident. But we are also a school whose graduates include soldiers dying in Iraq and a President who controls the fate of the free world. Thus, we should have just as much of an affinity towards the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who have died since the war began. As a place of learning, we also have ties to the school in Chechnya, Russia where hundreds of students perished. My real question is, why do these lives matter any less? This is not to say that I encourage a day of remembrance for every Iraqi killed or every student lost, but rather, that when national tragedies do occur, we recognize that killing is a horrible injustice. As a globalized school, it is important that we work to change the current way in which our national conscience functions. It seems that in America, we have to care only about what goes wrong within our own borders and disregard what goes on around us. Globalization, however, instructs us that events outside our borders will affect us just as much as those within them. Our school takes this into account when it accepts more international students and tries to place an importance on global history. However, we should have toned down our full day of mourning in favor of a quieter period of sadness that reflects our continuing mourning over the state of war that exists in our world. The way in which the commemoration occurred was just wrong. The problem was twofold; as Farah Dahya ’08 pointed out, “It feels too superficial for the event that took place.” Instead of honoring the deaths of people with discussion and preventative measures, the school and the rest of the country decided to honor the victims by simply wearing clothing in the school’s colors. It is difficult to argue that this does more to mourn the victims when compared to what could have been done – a discourse on gun control laws or a discussion on campus safety. The actual memorial service was also mishandled. Rather than making the service that took place last Friday the highlight of our commemoration, we minimized the importance the event by making it a small and optional gathering. I wasn’t even fully aware of what it was that was taking place at the Chapel, a sentiment many other students would echo; as a result, as few as seventy people attended. In the end, remembering those who were killed at Virginia Tech exemplifies our inability as a society, both at Andover and in the greater world, to recognize tragedy respectfully and ethically. To counter this, however, will require a dramatic shift in thought, a change that will result in a more globalized perspective and a larger attempt to actually enact measures that will prevent the next great tragedy.
