Clarissa's Blog

I’m sure you’ve all heard by now of the student who had a violent outburst and threatened to kill students and the professor during a class on evolution:

A student at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton was reportedly subdued with a taser after a violent outburst in a class discussing evolution. Jonatha Carr’s apparent meltdown, in which she hit another student, threw punches, and allegedly threatened to kill the professor and other students, was recorded on a cell phone camera and has quickly gone viral. . .

Fellow student Rachel Bustamante wrote that Carr was asking “absurd questions”during a review section about female selection among peacocks, and eventually went on to ask why “evolution kills black people” in an increasingly insistent manner.

What I find very annoying is that, in every discussion of this event, somebody immediately states that the video of this student’s unraveling doesn’t show what was said before the outburst. (Just scroll to the comments in the link I provided, for example.) As if there is anything anybody can say that can possibly excuse such vile behavior. Then, there are also comments about this woman’s alleged stress levels, poverty, and the pressures of the college grading system (scroll to the comments here) that somehow excuse beating other students during class. And there is also the most bizarre suggestion of all, which is that Trayvon Martin’s tragedy makes this sort of behavior acceptable.

No, people. No, no, no. If somebody is old enough to go to college, then they are also old enough to keep their stress, annoyance, outrage, reaction to the news feed, or whatever else, under control.

We all have some traumatic shit going on in our lives and in our societies. Recently, a young woman was gang raped and set on fire by a group of men in Ukraine. None of them will suffer any consequences because they are from rich families. The story is so painful to me on a variety of levels that I haven’t even blogged about it. But another thing I haven’t done is unleash my anger on my students who are obviously not guilty of the situation.

People will continue throwing these vicious tantrums whenever life gets too hard as long as there is somebody willing to offer a list of excuses for how they were driven to behave horribly by forces outside of their control.

I’m also really annoyed by repeated suggestions that this outburst just has to be a sign of mental illness (scroll down to the comments here). Unless you are this person’s physician, it is not your place to diagnose her with mental illness. Besides, this idea that people can’t behave violently and disrespectfully because that is what they choose to do and that there should always be some treatable condition behind such behavior is really silly.

The more excuses we offer for this kind of outrageous behavior instead of simply condemning it as absolutely and completely wrong, the more likely it is that tomorrow somebody will decide to victimize us because they are in a bad mood or can’t get their shit together for whatever reason.