BY MATTHEW BOEDY

“When you read about this kid–he was 20, no longer a child, but far from a mature adult too–it all seems very confused. He’s a sad kid, of a kind I’ve seen dozens of times in my classrooms.”

This quote is from American historian John Haas about the young man who tried to assassinate a presidential candidate in Pennsylvania over the weekend.

We don’t know a lot about this young man. (I have been refusing to use his name as we have been asked to do with school shooters.) One fact we do know is that he graduated in May with an associate’s degree in engineering science from the Community College of Allegheny County, according to a college spokesperson. We also know he was set to pursue a bachelor’s degree in the fall.

These facts put this historically significant political event squarely in our lane, in our backyard, in our classroom. Not as a text to analyze but as a chair filled. Now, of course, never to be filled again.

Where does one begin with such an evil act?

On a hot summer Saturday, he apparently got a gun from his father’s collection, bought some ammo from a local store, and drove the half hour or so to a rooftop and aimed and fired. It is apparent that he planned ahead because police say they found a bomb in his car and a transmitter on his body. Was that a distraction or an ending that he wanted to control?

Sometimes people say we don’t have the words for evil. But we do. It’s just that the words can’t hold it all, can’t contain the width and breadth and depth.

But we write. We read too. Because it’s all we have. The title of a book by one of my graduate school professors, Erik Doxtader, reflects this “faith in the works of words.”

For some time now, I have assigned first-year students every fall an essay, the introduction to Richard E. Miller’s book Writing at the End of the World, that asks this provocative question: what might reading and writing be good for? It’s a question provoked by the tragedy at Columbine.

Since then so many more. And so the question still persists—parallel, under, intertwined with each one. Virginia Tech. Michigan State. Umpqua Community College. Just to name a few.

And each time we are confronted with the possibility that one of us had him in a class. Maybe one of us read his essays.

In Pennsylvania he may have certainly climbed that ladder and stood on that roof alone.

But he was not alone.

Maybe one of us talked to him. Maybe one of us had him in their office.

Maybe one of us saw the sadness. We all have seen it before, quite possibly as regularly as John Haas.

Maybe one of us said something.

When I was a college senior, for my final act as crime reporter for the campus newspaper, I wrote a collection of articles about college students who had gone to prison. It was spurred on by a family example. Then, I was thinking with incredulity, How could someone with such a future throw it all away?

Now twenty-five years later—after too much campus death from guns—I am not asking that question. Not asking any questions, really. It’s all too familiar, too sad. Too normal.

I’m too numb but also disturbed by the thought that if it hadn’t been a rally in Pennsylvania it might have been the community college.

Of course we don’t know why he chose this day and that target. He missed and killed another and injured others.

Maybe he had it all planned. Maybe he walked across that stage in May with it in mind.

But the wind. A head swivel. A nod. A police officer poking his eyes over the eave. The applause. Maybe he could see the gun aimed at him. The wind. Bang. Bang. Bang. Maybe more. And then a bang from the opposite roof.

Before, we were facing a democracy under assault. Now we face our democracy swaying in the wind, the same wind that pushed those bullets. Or to use an image from our history, like a flag threadbare under the bombs bursting in air.

Our national future teetering on the unknown motive of an undergrad—though it’s highly likely any revelation we will learn will be pushed into the political meat grinder and made into something to be thrown at the other side. If this, professors are the enemy. If that, elitism. If something else, then another new villain yet to be named. Or not named at all. “They.”

The man whose ear was bloodied says if he wins, there will be retribution.

Maybe one of us will be on a list.

What might reading and writing be good for in such a future? The professor who asked that question in the wake of Columbine didn’t have much of an answer. Or not a simple one, as my students learn in frustration. He ended his essay the way he began it, wondering. “The only way out is through,” he wrote, as a last line, though, as I note to my students, it’s not a last line. It’s an invitation—in this case, a literal one, as the essay is an introduction to a book. He’s asking you to read it.

What might reading and writing be good for? I have an answer now after all this writing.

You need an answer come August. Come November. Come what may.

Contributing editor Matthew Boedy is the president of the Georgia conference of the AAUP and works at the Univeristy of North Georgia. He can be reached through email or his Twitter account @matthewboedy.