The Events of October": Murder-Suicide on a Small Campus (Painted Turtle Press) in Obsessed with True Crime

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Jun 12, 2020 Esme rated it liked it

Shelves: books-i-read-in-2020, memoir

A somewhat dry and scholarly look at a murder suicide on a college campus. I think it suffered from the fact that the family of perpetrator didn’t participate in book, so what we end up with is a lot of speculation on the role of patriarchal dominance and expectation he had placed on him. We hear “his father was demanding and abusive” many times throughout the book but there is nothing concrete to add nuance to this perspective. What about his mother? Siblings? His childhood?

The author chooses A somewhat dry and scholarly look at a murder suicide on a college campus. I think it suffered from the fact that the family of perpetrator didn’t participate in book, so what we end up with is a lot of speculation on the role of patriarchal dominance and expectation he had placed on him. We hear “his father was demanding and abusive” many times throughout the book but there is nothing concrete to add nuance to this perspective. What about his mother? Siblings? His childhood?

The author chooses to frame this from a feminist perspective, and I wondered if she had been a scholar of Middle Eastern culture how this would have changed the book. Once we get past the nitty gritty of “events of October,” it seems to me the book flails a bit. Lots of hand wringing. Why didn’t we see? What can we do to prevent it from happening again?

Cynically, since I’ve worked for a college and in higher education administration, I recognized a lot of the scrambling by the administration after the event to be, “how can we keep our liability in this event to an absolute minimum?” What if students stop enrolling? It reminded me of a personal experience: we had a student die who had been on academic probation (to continue to be enrolled they had to get tutoring.) I worked as a part of the tutoring unit. (Most of these students clearly didn’t want to be in school, resented the required tutoring, and were only there because it enabled them to stay on their parents’ health insurance.) The director of student affairs was down in the tutoring center first thing that morning after the student died, to see if we had sent the student a letter about noncompliance or expulsion that may have caused a suicide. I’ll never forget that first and foremost on the minds of the administrators was CYA. In the end, we learned the student had died of an undiagnosed medical issue. I think this speaks the central mythology of higher education; one the author doesn’t acknowledge in her book. This being that:

Colleges and universities want to project that they truly care about students and their outcomes but much of their concern lies in the advancement of their own careers, collecting tuition and fees, and worry about their continued funding, ratings, and appearance in the world of higher ed. It’s a business like any other -- cold and data driven, exploitative in a way because of the power imbalance between professor/administrator and student, but cloaked in a robe of smiles, youth, hope, expectation, and a community belonging experience.

The author also chose to draw conclusions about Maggie and her personality and interior life early in the book that I know I would have resented if such conclusions had been drawn about me at that point in my life. Her persistence in labeling Maggie as a geek and nerd was rather insulting, as though intense interest in a subject automatically renders you a fool in some way. Maggie also, as many young murdered women are, is posthumously painted as the most friendly, warm, promising, pretty, happy women with nary a flaw.

It’s a sobering lesson in the worst that can happen to young people just starting out into adulthood. ...more

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Oct 14, 2011 Kelly marked it as tbr-true-crime

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Mar 12, 2014 Sheryl added it

Shelves: true-crime, started-but-not-finished

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