Mary Muscari gave a lecture Wednesday on the state of school violence, 10 years after the Columbine massacre. She said there’s cause for optimism – mass shootings are tragic, but also very rare.

‘Now just watch there be a shooting,’ the pediatric practitioner and professor at Binghamton University told the small group who had gathered to hear her speak.

Two days later, Vietnam native Jiverly Wong walked into the American Civic Association in Binghamton – 10 minutes from Muscari’s office – and killed 14 people and critically wounded four, before turning the gun on himself. Among the victims shot at the immigration services center was Roberta King, a former teacher in the Syracuse city school district.

The Binghamton shooting has shocked the small working-class city of around 47,000 and drawn the attention and sympathies of the entire nation. The shooting is the nation’s worst since the April 16, 2007 Virginia Tech massacre, when Seung Hui Cho killed 32 people.

At a news conference Friday, Binghamton Mayor Matthew Ryan called it the ‘most tragic day in Binghamton’s history.’

Muscari has worked with juvenile delinquents since the early 1980s, has written five books, and has done extensive research on youth violence and shootings. This is the closest one she’s experienced.

‘I hate to say this is the shooting season,’ she said. ‘This is when Columbine happened, Virginia Tech, then there were the three cops shot today in Pittsburgh. Unfortunately, we do see a lot of crime in March and April.’

Muscari said one theory behind the rise in these months might be that people are depressed coming out of winter while everyone else starts to feel better. Then something happens to trigger it, such as a break-up or loss of a job. Wong was upset over recently losing his job at a vacuum cleaner plant, the New York Times reported.

Matt Landau is the student body president at BU. He lives less than five minutes from the American Civic Association, in the university plaza apartments. Friday was the last day of classes before Spring Break, so many students had already left campus for home, he said.

The university is 10 minutes from the shootings. But the school did not institute a lockdown or cancel classes, Landau said. Landau received an e-mail about increased police presence in the downtown center, where he estimates about 10 percent of students take classes.

‘It seemed that it was an isolated incident that the university was far enough away from, that it would not affect class,’ he said.

Sami Mohr, a sophomore landscape architecture major at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry, found out about the shooting Friday – a day before she was due to return to the Binghamton area to help her grandmother move.

Mohr said she went on Facebook after her classes ended Friday and saw a series of status updates referencing the incident. ‘I started freaking out. I got our local newspaper’s Web site and I just started reading about it. I didn’t know how to react to it at first, and then I started to cry.’

Mohr, who returned home Saturday, said the mood in Binghamton has remained somber but static.

‘I think everyone’s trying to not think about it. It just hurts, but we don’t want to show that it hurts,’ she said. ‘We want to stay strong and show our support and respect.’

Terance Walsh, a junior history and economics major at Syracuse University, lives in Port Dickinson, three miles away from the American Civic Association. He was working in Steele Hall when he heard the news and called home.

Walsh said he has noticed the city suffering recently because of tough economic times and increased crime.

‘Binghamton has gone through some rough times lately, but things like this never happen there,’ he said. ‘It’s kind of just a slap in the face by reality is really what it is.’

jmterrus@syr.edu

Published on April 5, 2009 at 12:00 pm