 |
| MICHAEL BRAGG |
It's one thing when students rally and cheer the death of Osama bin Laden, but it's another altogether when they ridicule the irresponsible and possibly fatal actions of a student.
Late Saturday night, four students were in a car that went offroad and into Duck Pond. Police were able to lift the vehicle out of the pond and the four students were safe and unharmed.
A car wreck of any nature carries a degree of concern. Fortunately, no one in the car was hurt and alcohol and drugs did not play a role in the accident, Senior Police Officer Travis Osborne said. Mistakes, both big and small, happen all the time. This accident was a big mistake that these students won't forget for a long time. I'm sure they'd like to put it behind them.
 Cartoon by Aaron Fairbanks | The Appalachian To make matters worse, the Facebook page App State Memes and its followers jumped all over the opportunity to make cultural stabs at the incident.
As of press time, 18 memes relating to the incident were available on the Facebook page.
Is Appalachian State University's student body so insensitive that we find it amusing to make fun of a person's mistake - one that could have potentially taken the lives of four of our peers? If they had lost their lives - and thank goodness they didn't - would the same degree of ridicule and satire been circulating on the internet? Or would that have been just a little too far for some of you?
Have you ever made a mistake you just wanted to forget about? Imagine everyone at your school grabbing onto that mistake and putting it on social networking sites and making memes about it and refusing to let go.
Sucks to think about, doesn't it?
The point is that there is a line to making fun of someone's mishaps. That line was crossed this weekend and the evidence is all over the Internet.
While the intent of this opinion is not to persuade the entire student body to individually apologize to the victims for their public remarks, it is a reminder that there are limits to jokes on people's misfortunes and accidents, and that quite a few people have overdone it.
This was a careless mistake and those happen, simple as that.
As a student body, let's recognize that the accident happened, be thankful that the students are okay and realize that there's nothing more to say about the incident.
Bragg, a sophomore journalism major from Lillington, is the lifestyles editor. |
