I feel that there were not enough measures taken with Jared Loughner. It was obvious that there was something wrong with him. All the witness reports are all very consistent and tell the tale of a psychotic young man with anger management problems.
The school was completely aware of Jared’s mental instability. Yet, it seems that the school did not take any measures to get Jared’s mental state evaluated. He scared both his fellow students and his teachers. Teachers reported that he made sudden outbursts in class and that he would often has “incoherent” questions; questions that had nothing to do with the topics being taught. Kent Sinker, Loughner’s “Intro to Logic” professor, stated, “I was never able to talk to him on a one-to-one basis and I did worry about him a lot. I do recall thinking I hope his parents know what’s going on and that they have a handle on things.” If Sinker was so worried about Loughner, why didn’t he take the time to have a one-on-one chat with him and make sure everything was ok, or even take ten minutes to call his parents and make sure they were aware of the situation.
Loughner’s ex-girlfriend, Ashley Fugueroa, broke it off between them because she was afraid of him. She said that, “He used to scare me sometimes and that’s why I left him. He kind of made me feel uncomfortable at times. He’d get really mad, clench his fists and then throw a kind of little tantrum. He’d flail his arms and walk off.” Then again, this alone is not nearly enough evidence to mark him as psychotic. I wonder if she ever talked to a teacher about his odd behavior.
It was very clear that there was something seriously wrong. He was so unstable that he drew the attention of campus law enforcement on multiple occasions. Though the icing on the cake was two reports. The first, was made by the Pima College Department of Public Safety; it said, “[his comments] “were a huge leap from the context of the poem and said things about abortion, wars, killing people, and ‘why don’t we just strap bombs to babies.” I can’t get over how disturbing that is. It was taken so seriously that it was filed with the Pima College Department of Public Safety. They had to know something was seriously wrong, so why didn’t they do anything about it? The other report was made by Ben McGahee, he said, “ I was scared of what he could do. I wasn’t scared of him physically, but I was scared of him bringing a weapon to class.” When a teacher has these kinds of fears about a student, something should be done. The only thing that was done was he got kicked out of college until he received a letter that stated that he wasn’t harm to himself or others. Kicking someone out of school is not going to make him suddenly stable. They really should have checked him into a psychiatric ward. If they had done that, this entire situation may have been avoided.
Honestly, I don’t know if the school has the power to do the things I wanted them to have done. If they don’t, maybe they should. It might go against the constitution. It also brings back into question how right Bush’s “preemptive strike” methods. Though when is preemptively taking action right, and when is it wrong. Looking back it is obvious that preemptive action should have been taken, but if we were looking forward instead, would the course of action be so obvious.
