As people followed television coverage of the search for the perpetrators of the Boston Marathon bombing, the fear of homegrown terrorism plummeted back into the forefront of American public consciousness.
The suspects have been identified as brothers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev - Russian immigrants who arrived to the United States in 2002. The event has reignited a feature of the immigration debate with additional intensity, as certain portions of the population have begun articulating the "risks" of allowing more newcomers into the country.
Dzhokhar was a college student enrolled at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. As a teenager, he showed signs of promise. He was the captain of his high school wrestling team and worked as a lifeguard at Harvard.
Many who knew him were shocked to see his face appear on the television screen as the suspect of last week's tragedy - especially those who knew him at school. Imagine following the news after a terrorist attack and seeing the prime suspect was someone you sat next to in Principles of Modern Chemistry or ran into often around the dorms. Though he was failing many classes, Dzhokhar was in many ways a normal college student, seemingly not so different from the people we all interact with at UB every day.
This latest incident has reminded people of a difficult truth pervasive in modern times - that the threat of violence is always with us and can come from the least likely of people and places.
Officials in anti-terror outfits were prompted to remind the American people again another difficult truth - that they have to be right every time but terrorists only have to be right one time.
While the potential threat is always out there and these are difficult, complex times we are living in, this is not the time to change our way of life or to live in fear. This incident was a rarity and to not realize that can lead to more paranoia - and heightened paranoia can lead to civic unrest.
At UB, we have a diversity of students from different cultures and backgrounds and we have a large international presence on campus. Following 9/11, there was an intensified prejudice toward Muslims and it was utterly unjustified. To allow a minority of bad seeds to cast a dark shadow on a majority of decent people is a tragedy in and of itself.
International students or immigrants should not have to bear the brunt of the moral monstrosity committed by two sick individuals.
In college, you gain exposure to all sorts of people different from yourself. It is one of the many benefits of the experience. Interacting with a diverse group of people can provide humanistic learning that directs you away from stereotyping and generalizing. You can learn that the human condition is complex and vast and that no person warrants categorization.
The truth of the matter is that terrorism can come from anywhere, from anyone, at any time. There is no humanistic formula to attach to any group or type of people that are possible suspects. Anti-terror outfits look to patterns of behavior and affiliations and other factors when determining if someone should be investigated. But as college students living in the day-to-day trenches of having to interact with many people, we have our own concerns to worry about. We shouldn't succumb to the very point of terrorism apart from the goal of murder and destruction - to instill fear.
By allowing an event like this to cloud our judgment and propel division in our respective communities is to let the malevolent forces weaken us and alter our form of life. The best response we can collectively engage in is to embrace a culture that celebrates unity over division.
With one week left of classes, be sure to keep in mind while you're roaming the halls, weaving through a plethora of different faces, ethnicities, religions, races, etc., that while our differences are expansive, they make us stronger - because our common humanity matters much more, especially when we consciously and conscientiously choose to embrace it.
Email: editorial@ubspectrum.com
