One year ago, a student walked through the doors of Chardon High School, my alma mater, and fired shots, killing three peers and wounding three others.
Less than a month later, Chardon police killed a 28-year-old man wielding a knife just a few blocks away from the high school. In July, a couple was left dead after an apparent murder-suicide at a Chardon gas station. In a town that hadn’t seen a murder in about two decades, six were dead because of violence in just a few months.
Since that February day, there have been the Aurora and Sandy Hook shootings, and those are just what come to mind first. According to The Nation, 2012 saw 16 mass shootings throughout the globe, leaving at least 88 dead, and that’s not to mention the countless murders every day that go unpublicized.
A hurricane hit the East Coast, leaving in its wake an estimated 285 dead throughout seven countries. A tornado ripped through Mobile, Ala., killing at least three while wreaking damage throughout Alabama and Mississippi.
Here at Ohio University, we’ve faced suicides and arson, even a stabbing on Court Street last weekend.
And that’s just this past year.
It’s enough to make you lose hope in humanity, quite frankly. What are a few good deeds against the seemingly never-ending torrent of death and despair?
Yet, somehow, despite all this, cynicism fails me. I’ve tried to be cynical. It’s a weird mission, to be sure, to actively look for the bad in everything and be blind to silver linings. It seems like it should be so easy with headlines blaring tragedy at us every day.
But the fact is, when I think back to Feb. 27, 2012, I don’t only remember the pain, the fear, the tight knot in my stomach. I remember the red ribbons adorning trees and the alumni gathering at the town square. I remember a band of OU students planning a vigil to stand in solidarity with those back home, and I remember seeing fellow Bobcats, many of whom had no connection to Chardon, donning red in the following days.
I remember attending the funeral of one of the victims. There had been rumors that Westboro Baptist Church would picket the funeral, as they are wont to do.
Chardon residents — as well as people from all around Northeast Ohio, including a biker gang — formed a human barricade around the church to shield the family and friends of the victim from the people spewing hate. And at the end of the day, it didn’t seem to matter that Westboro had never shown up, that our “wall” was pointless.
And I think of today, when hundreds of fellow Hilltoppers will don red to remember those killed.
I know it’s not an isolated occurrence, that my hometown isn’t the only one to respond to jarring events in inspiring ways, and that people don’t do good deeds only in response to tragedy. You even see stories on the news sometimes; those ones that make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside, those ones that some journalists refer to as “fluff.”
And I think if we had some more fluff in this world, there’d be a whole lot less cynicism. But hey, I’m an optimist, so what do I know?
Nicolien Buholzer is The Post’s culture editor and a junior studying journalism. Email her at nb360409@ohiou.edu.
