Forum Editorial: Threats continue
EDITORIAL MUG: Editorial art Vertical
How many of us didn’t bat much of an eye at another hoax threat made to two local education institutions last week? Go ahead and raise your hand, we can’t see you.
It is a sign of the times that it’s hardly surprising anymore for a school day, even in a place as out-of-the-way as Nodaway County, to be interrupted by threats of violence from an unknown origin, as was the case at North Nodaway and Northwest Missouri State University last week. So we won’t blame you if you raised your hand (or if you only did it in your head).
School and law enforcement officials don’t have that luxury, and thankfully, continue to respond to these threats with the swift seriousness they demand — no matter how many times it happens.
But how many times will it happen? It’s really only happened a few times here over the last year, but does anyone think the pace will slow down? Let’s see those hands.
Yeah. That’s our feeling too.
We are simultaneously a society completely run by fear, and yet, also completely numb to it. Maybe because we spend every day so immersed in it. And our children are growing up in that world, one where it wouldn’t be shocking to start having to plan for “threat days” right alongside snow days, would it?
It’s frustrating that, in our area at least, there’s no local connection — nothing we can point to and say “there! That’s the problem!” The threats made against our children come either from people overseas or from those who want to make authorities think they are. Either way, they are chaos agents who know it is always easier to tear something down than to build something up. And the price of building something worth having is that someone will want to tear it down.
Unfortunately, that leaves us with nothing we can do except continue to treat every threat like it’s the real thing — because we also live in a world where every threat very well could be.
But, certainly, we all are hoping for a better solution.
Raise your hand if you’ve got one.
