February 15, 2008

Northern Illinois U. Shooter Was Graduate Student at U. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

The authorities have identified the gunman in the massacre at Northern Illinois University on Thursday as Steven P. Kazmierczak. Mr. Kazmierczak, who committed suicide after shooting dead six students in a lecture hall, was 27 years old and an alumnus of the university. He was enrolled as a graduate student in the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s School of Social Work.

The Chicago Tribune reported that the police have been unable to determine a motive, and are seeking to interview Mr. Kazmierczak’s father, who lives in Florida. John G. Peters, Northern Illinois’s president, said “the shooter had a very good academic record, no record of trouble.”

The Tribune also reported that Mr. Kazmierczak had recently stopped taking an unspecified medication and, according to the campus police, had become “somewhat erratic” as a result.

Mr. Kazmierczak was a former vice president of the Academic Criminal Justice Association at Northern Illinois. The university honored him two years ago with a dean’s award for his scholarship in sociology, the Tribune reported.

As an undergraduate, Mr. Kazmierczak was apparently a co-author of a paper, “Self-Injury in Correctional Settings: ‘Pathology’ of Prisons or of Prisoners?,” that was published in the scholarly journal Criminology & Public Policy. According to the article’s abstract, he had an interest in “corrections, political violence, and peace and social justice,” and was “co-authoring a manuscript on the role of religion in the formation of early prisons in the United States with Jim Thomas and Josh Stone.” —Paul Fain

Comments

1. Motive… I think the answer is not a failed relationship. Well, sort of a failed relationsip. Above you quote that he’s working on a book on faith and prison. With Josh and Jim (Prof.).

   Well, Jim’s publication list includes this:

   J. Thomas* and Josh Stone. 2007. “Faith-based Prison Programming. pp 275-287 in Controversies in Criminal Justice (G. Barak, ed.). Wesport (Conn): Greenwood Press.

   So, Steve is gone from NIU, but Josh, who was Pres. to Steve’s VP in the ACJA, is still there and publishing on Steve’s topic.

   Just an idea.

   — elaine    Feb 15, 01:02 PM    #

2. Elaine, you may be right. I already commented on this shooting under previous news.
   At least the shooting in Concordia Univ. in Canada included plagiarism as a motive.
   It is appalling that instead of honestly looking for the motive (and, therefore, for prevention), some people blame guns, play politics. The question why, time after time, it happens in universities, no one wants to answer. And no one wants to change anything in universities, except for… security arrangements. It is not difficult to predict that the lawyers-advisers will wait until this will become a part of academic life, and sensational part of it will be gone. I am sure lawyers are working on “risk management” and are advising staying the course in policies and practices that humiliate and rob students.

   — Michael Pyshnov    Feb 15, 04:38 PM    #

3. The non-PC but obvious solution is to enact concealed weapon laws — I mean to allow, not prohibit. Illinois prohibits. If only ONE person in that classroom had had a gun, the shooter would have been stopped immediately and many lives would have been saved (remember the Appalachian State situation where a student with a gun stopped what could have been a major massacre). Don’t bother to argue that it would make what happened easier — over and over, these events have shown that those so inclined to do such harm will find a way to get a weapon. What will it take to allow us to protect ourselves?

   — bb    Feb 15, 05:42 PM    #

4. The horse, unfortunately, is now out of the barn in terms of gun availability, with hundreds of millions of them out there. But yes, the answer, in the long run (a very long run, unfortunately, and an answer that probably will never be realized) would be gun control, not arming everyone so that we can all shoot at each other with equal opportunity. Why would this not have happened 50 years ago? Weren’t there as many with mental problems then as there are now? Yes, but in years past they would have been armed with knives, not multiple guns, which are now so ridiculously easy to obtain. I reject the idea that the problem is criminals, not guns. The problem is the availability of guns for criminals and anyone else with a short-term emotional problem.

   — Bill Miller    Feb 15, 07:11 PM    #

5. SOME psychoactive drugs have very severe adverse side effects. This has been known by Merck, Lilly, .. for many years. Many have wised up and let the doctors, public, family and patient know. There are very few studies of people taking combinations of psychoactive drugs and taking them off of them. In some sense, is it even ethical to take a person off a medication after he has been stablized? Many bioethicists say no. But we are learning that a lot of research still needs to be done with respect to the prescription of psychoactive drugs. Even Heath Ledger died due to having normal doses of drugs in his body. NIH and the FDA needs to put a lot more money into the study of adverse side reactions of drugs and tighten up the reporting of all cases like this. The drugs which people were on when such incidents occur need to reported, so that future events like this can be prevented. There are MANY MANY cases of non violent people becoming violent when on or after having taken psychoactive drugs. The pharmaceutial companies and physicians need to assume some responsibility for not making the information better known and for not developing better alternatve drugs which do not have these VERY SEVERE ADVERSE side effects. No all drugs “produce’ violent behaviour in people with no previous violent tendencies!
   They are the ones which should be prescribed as first alternatives. Some of the profits need to be put back into research and not to pay record bonuses to the excutives.

   — KJJ    Feb 15, 08:28 PM    #

6. The common denominator to these massacres is that all the shooters are or have recently been on psychotropic medications. These are prescribed even for fairly mild cases. In the NIU case, the shooter’s mother died just a few years ago,so likely he was given a drug to “handle” that, but the drugs have only been anecdotally proven to work — depression as a “physical” disease has not been proven. ANY drug that could even potentially cause such side effects as “homicidal ideation” — yes, read the fine print — should be taken off the market IMMEDIATELY. That is the solution.

   — MFM    Feb 15, 09:30 PM    #

7. I wrote another post elsewhere about the need to totally redefine the educational process. To an individual-centered system. With the requisite number of people involved, kids with problems/issues/interests would be taken care of. Instead of feeling like they have to conform to the school environment (and not to get into politics/religion…) and societal norms. We have to stop helping people define themselves as being of lesser value or being bad.

   But to be honest, I don’t think that explains more than a little bit of what happened at NIU. I think S.K. had “angst” about any number of issues. But I totally agree that what probably pushed him over the edge was the use of (and subsequent quitting of) pharmaceuticals that should not be on the market.

   — elaine    Feb 15, 10:02 PM    #

8. Bill Miller — you are very wrong in assuming that gun control would solve all our problems. Washington D.C. is poised to repeal their strict gun control law — the city with the highest rate of crime in the U.S. Any criminal in Washington D.C. KNOWS for a fact that the person he robs or commits another crime against does not have a gun and likely cannot stop a criminal who does have a gun. “Gun control” laws only prevent law-abiding citizens from being able to protect themselves. Criminals always will be able to obtain them; it is absolutely imposible to stop that.

   — bb    Feb 15, 11:21 PM    #

9. What is the common denominator in every wacky killing? Psych drugs! Wake up everybody! Psych drugs cause all of these killings and no university should allow any student who is or has been on psych drugs to even be in that school. Guns aren’t causing the problem. Psychiatric, mind altering drugs are causing all of these killings. The problem will not be solved until the real cause is found and eradicated but how are you going to stop psychiatry? How are you going to stop the drug companies? We can start by prohibiting psych drugs in the schools. These drugs are the cause of the killings and they must be banned.

   — Ken    Feb 16, 02:46 AM    #

10. Okay, so the American people want to allow its citizens to the have the right to bear arms.

    However, what about the need to bear arms? Maybe you have the right, but you have to show a need.

    What was his need to have guns? And why so many?

    Home defense? He didn’t own a home. Handguns should only be sold to homeowners, and only one gun not three or four.

    Hunting? Guns should be limited to single-shot rifles.

    What about medical checks as well as back ground checks? In this instance as well as in the Virginia Tech shootings the perpetrator had mental health issues.

    — Theo Penne    Feb 16, 03:11 PM    #

11. the incident which occured in the campus of niu is really dismal, but one thing can be concluded is that it is only the transparent effect of globalization boosting terrorism, its quite normal for a person to possess anger or love for another person , and aggressiveness out of anger is also a part of daily life . each of us is having positive or nagative emotions , which somtimes we try to hide from the world and sometimes it just come out with a burst, but unfortunately , due to this so called globalization , is creating such a n situation where a ferocious arm (the guns)can be accessed in exchange of some money , and it is because of this accessibility nof guns or arms with such an ease is transforming the anger into violence which is a growth of terrorism among the educated youth of our age, . this form of dismal incidents can only be mitigated by strenthening the security on the bordering areas of the country from where this harmful arms are getting entered into the countries and reaching to the reaches of the students. and this seriouly needs to be stopped

    — saswati    Feb 19, 02:38 PM    #

12. We do have the right to bear arms, it is in our constitution. Why? We have the right not only to protect ourselves (whether or not you own your own home), but to form a malitia if the government becomes corupt! This was the intent when the 2nd ammendment was made.These are the rights of Americans.
    It is not only home owners who are robbed or raped or harmed.

    It is very important, during events like this, that we not loose the main point through emotion. Yes, this was a horrible thing! A nightmare! But to say now that people should not have the right to bear arms?
    If this is the case, then smoking should be banned…etc. We can not make laws against everything.

    The problems are so much deeper. We are an individualistic society, and often people have no one to turn to. This has become more prevelent in our society, why? If someone can not buy a gun down the street, they will buy it illegally, if wanted enough.
    Mental illnesses have seemed to be on the rise, along with psychotropic medication that are handed out like candy. We must think about what the consequences are for these types of actions. Now, the new trend is to label small children (i have seen a 3 year old-very serious aout this) as bipolar and put them on psychotropic meds for. How a 3 year old could be diagnosed this, im not sure?

    It is so easy to point the finger at someone or something else because then we dont own the problem and dont have to deal with the problem anymore. It is very irresponsible as a society and we must be very careful about blaming. Otherwise, we will never get to the source of the problem.

    — Heidi    Feb 21, 10:16 PM    #

Previous: Death Toll in Northern Illinois U. Shooting Rises to 7
Next: Career Education Corporation Says It Will Close 9 Troubled Colleges