Dr. Bennett and Ms. Ritz –
Of course you both are aware of what is presently happening at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut this morning. Much from an emotional reaction I want to know you have a heightened level of security activities at all of your schools as I write.
While I no longer reside in Terre Haute (I am a Vigo County native and now live in the Denver area), I have a 6th grade son. This urgent concern is, unfortunately, universal.
No doubt the Sandy Hook Elementary School leadership and the district administrators know what you know about the terrible recent history of school and other very public shootings and presumably have implemented security measures of various kinds.
(Since becoming a resident of the Denver area, having lived in Aurora and also near Columbine High School, and on my way to work daily, drive past the New Life Church in Colorado Springs where two were killed, I am quite thoughtful of these things.)
Ultimately, though, all I know is something did not go the way they wanted it to today.
I know you are sensitive to the fact that regardless of those measures, with both children and adults killed and injured, they were not perfect.
We must strive for perfection.
Please assure communities across Indiana that 1) you are leaning forward today, and 2) you and your administration will study today’s incident and determine what improvements can yet be made. Please assure us that you are doing something more and different today and tomorrow than yesterday.
Even in light of yet another tragedy I remain steadfastly supportive of our Second Amendment rights. I do not wish to outlaw guns, not even handguns. I want to outlaw evil people, and I want to outlaw mental-emotional-psychological illness. But it cannot be done. So, we must corporately strive for perfection in other ways. We’ll not quite achieve it, but it is the only acceptable objective.
This is the FIRST thing we pay you for. If my son is not safe, nothing else the school wants to do matters.
Thank you so much for your good work. We all put our trust in you every day.
Michael E Conner
Publisher, Ask A Hoosier.com
Michael E Conner
The question is where is the shortfall and where are the strongholds that protects one from being a perpetrator. We can say that Jesus is the answer but what is it about Jesus that makes Him the answer. My feeling is that not one child in 1,000 has been taught where they came from and how they can have access to the Spirit in them. The Spirit in them may not suffice unless they know how to come into the presence of the Divine. That is the protective link to save our children. Wake up and teach kids that there is such a thing as Spirit that is just as real as kidneys. Yes, they will be taught that there are kidneys in them what about Spirit. I doubt that the kids that have a relationship with that Spirit wil ever pull the trigger. This is just another consequence of what has become of the separation of church and state. Just teaching kids not to do it won’t cut it. A guy on Fox News just said change school security. What would have saved the victims today. Probably not school security. He needed a mom and dad on duty teaching him who he really was.