Next

I'm lazy, so I woke up at ten on Sunday morning. I had received two text messages from the campus security alert system, about twenty minutes apart. One ordered all students to stay in their buildings, and the other said that campus was now safe. They had been sent at around eight AM, rather late in the game, as it turned out, and no one in my suite seemed to know what had happened. My mind instantly went to a shooting. Every few months, it seems, there's an announcement of a fatal shooting on a college or high school campus somewhere in America. Seton Hill, I figured, was next.

Facebook was full of confused status messages, but I finally got an instant message from a friend who claimed to know what had happened.

Do you really, or are you just being silly? I asked. She told me that her roommate's best friend had been a few houses away from the incident, and explained to me what we all now know. The police had been forced to shoot a young man after attempting to talk him down for hours. The information was later confirmed by my RA, Seton Hill's press release, and the Tribune review.

I looked at Joe Briggs' facebook page (which has since been closed to non-friends). By Sunday afternoon, it was brimming with heartfelt comments from an array of Seton Hill students, and even one of the coaches. Someone with that many people speaking up for him obviously isn't a deranged killer. I did have mixed feelings about the profile picture, which showed Briggs holding a what seemed to be a hunting rifle. Normally, I wouldn't have given the image a second thought. It just seemed sickeningly ironic.

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