Reply #52: Some comments

[Mind_your_head]

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-churches10mar10,0,1567431.story?coll=la-headlines-nation
from LA Times article:

Moseley and Cloyd burned four more churches a few days later to throw investigators off their trail, according to an affidavit filed by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

#1) One of the BIG things that screams out about this to me is that once the perps got concerned that THEY MIGHT GET CAUGHT (they apparently didn't have some big sense of 'remorse' or an "OMG What have we done?" moment....they went out and burned FOUR MORE CHURCHES! They, in a very calculated way, continued to commit and expand their crimes! It wasn't ALL done in a 'drunken frenzy' one night. This to me is very damning for them and why I don't feel mercy towards these perps.

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All three suspects in the church fires grew up in neighborhoods with median household incomes of more than $50,000. In Sumter County, where the students allegedly burned Galilee Baptist Church, the median household income is $18,911. Nearly 40% of Sumter County residents live below the poverty line.

#2) Why did the suspects go to poverty stricken Sumter County to burn a church. Why not one in the wealthy town of Hoover, for instance? Did the "pranksters" think it was more "funny" to pick on poor people's churches? Is it funny to "kick people when they're down? Less chance of getting caught? Why?

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The charges seemed particularly difficult to swallow at Birmingham-Southern. The small campus attracts the children of Alabama's elite. Its students are proud of their commitment to public service. They tutor in inner-city Birmingham, work in San Francisco homeless shelters and volunteer in Mozambique.

#3) Perhaps some good can come of this if the "elite students" start helping their neighbors in Sumter County where, according to the article, 40% of residents live below the poverty line. They don't need to go so far from home and as exotic a place as Mozambique (even though it 'sounds cool'). There's poor black people in their own back yard that need help!

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Some on campus sought Thursday to distance themselves from the arrests. A few dozen students had signed a resolution posted in the cafeteria and passed by the student government the night before. It stated that the crimes did not represent the school's principles of "positive community and civic engagement, honorable morals and global human dignity

#4) I believe using a word like 'anathema' instead of 'represent' would much better demonstrate an appropriate level of disgust and condemnation of these crimes. They're college kids, after all. They can use 'big words'. As they saying goes "If you can't say what you mean, you can't mean what you say". But perhaps 'represent' is the correct measure of their level of disgust? :shrug:

anathema

Main Entry: anath·e·ma
Pronunciation: &-'na-th&-m&
Function: noun

Etymology: Late Latin anathemat-, anathema, from Greek, thing devoted to evil, curse, from anatithenai to set up, dedicate, from ana- + tithenai to place, set -- more at DO
1 a : one that is cursed by ecclesiastical authority b : someone or something intensely disliked or loathed -- usually used as a predicate nominative <this notion was anathema to most of his countrymen -- S. J. Gould>

2 a : a ban or curse solemnly pronounced by ecclesiastical authority and accompanied by excommunication b : the denunciation of something as accursed c : a vigorous denunciation : CURSE

http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?va=anathema

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