We had an incident on our campus yesterday when someone reported a person on campus with a gun, near our bus stop. Our police responded quickly, resolved the problem, and arranged to have a campus alert sent out. An all-clear followed somewhat shortly after the original alert. Our campus has practiced for just this type of scenario, and from my point of view, I thought it all went very well.
Today I heard that the police had come in for a fair bit of criticism about this event. I don't know any details, and I'm not sure what the gist of the complaints were. But I've heard that sending out an alert has often resulted in criticism aimed back at the sender, some of it bordering on abusive. I wonder why this is.
I've been thinking today about how easy it is to be a critic, especially when you are criticizing some faceless human being. I wish that as a society we could learn to be a bit more tempered in our criticism.
Critical thinking is an important skill. We pride ourselves in higher education that this is something we teach our students. But critical thinking is a two-sided coin. The good side helps us to see things that are wrong and work to correct them. The bad side lets us fall into a knee-jerk response that the other person must be an idiot. Let's work to stay on the good side. And when we do have useful criticism to offer, let's try to do it diplomatically.
I hope you'll join me in thanking our police officers for putting their lives on the line to protect us.
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