Covering the business of education and training

Bill, I just spent a week with my precious daughter and son-in-law at Boston College and I share your sadness for these young men. What a reminder to run from guns and value people! When will we learn!

I wish their dad had taken the time to seek help or left his boys out of his misery. I guess you can never really judge without the full picture but it seems such a waste of life. If only we can take time to really appreciate the little things

How sad. What in the world would make a man do that?

The Shepherd tragedy strikes an emotional chord for me because nearly one year ago I was hired by the college to discuss the issues of hate crimes on campuses and conducted a workshop for the residential life staff.

I had never been to the school and found the area as well as the college setting absolutely beautiful. It sits high up on a range of hills/mountains and having been there for a few days, I had not care in the world.

It was during the workshop on hate and self-hate that I shared with the staff that they lived in a very beautiful place and it is easy to feel safe at their school but that Washington DC was only 45 minutes away where five years ago 9/11 changed the face of their world as well as ours.

Since 9/11, I shared that each of us need to have a higher sense of ourself and our surroundings and that hate can strike at anytime as well as anywhere. Little did I know that one year later, it would strike their campus in such a violent manner.

It appears that this father was consumed with self-hate which transformed itself into action. Sadly, that action took the lives of his two sons as well as himself.

I consistently share in my workshops that those that strike out in hateful language and/or actions are basically saying, "What is it that I love so little about myself, that I feel a need to perpertrate a crime against someone else or myself."

Brent Scarpo