Tragedy at the UW
I don’t know how to explain what I felt yesterday when I saw many students crying and shaking. It was around 1:00 PM and I was taking pictures of two congresswomen from Chile that were meeting with professor Kathy Gill about social media tools for campaign purposes. At first I thought that it was a shooting and my legs felt weak! Then I saw a UW police car and a fire truck.
My first intention was to run as far as I could, but then I switched my camera into video mode and I started recording. Someone told me that a man set himself on fire. I couldn’t believe that something like that was happening. I noticed many people texting and calling on their cellphones. Probably telling their friends or family that they were okay. Then I stopped to send a multiple text massage to my family and friends who knew I was at the UW at that time. My experience cannot be compared to the experiences of the people (probably students) who tried to put the fire out and save that man.
That reminded me of program that the UW has to send a text message to your cellphone in case of an emergency. I was thinking that will take care of the students and staff at the UW, but what about their families. What if the students or staff cannot immediately text or call their families to let them know they’re okay. Do you have a safety plan for you and your family? Is there something that can be done to keep the families informed without causing a massive panic? It is important to use the technology available to keep our love ones informed in case of an emergency or a tragedy like the one that happened yesterday. Any ideas?
To enroll in the cellphone program go to: UW Alert
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9 Comments, Comment or Ping
Risa de Gorgue
I am lucky not to have been on Red Square to witness the suicide but in spite of the fact that I don’t have a visual reminder it continues to haunt me. If the rumors are accurate this 61 year old man had recently lost his job. As a manager of a fairly large team I am reminded that my decisions as a manager can have a profound affect on peoples lives.
I also wonder how I might of responded in this situation. I read in the Seattle Times that the student closest to the scene removed his pants in an effort to extinguish the fire. He didn’t hesitate to use whatever he had at his disposal to help this man. It saddens me to think I might not have been able to respond so selflessly. Horrified by the scene what would I have done?
My heart goes out to everyone on Red Square at 1:00PM on Wednesday October 29th.
Nov 1st, 2008
roniayalla
I was checking Facebook from my phone (wasting time on the bus). Matthew and Cindy’s status updates was how I first heard the story.
Nov 1st, 2008
cindy wong
Thank you for posting this sensitive post. I agree with Risa — it’s heartbreaking to hear about this man’s situation — at the same time, I am so, so, so proud that UW students who were at the scene of the fire immediately went to action and attempted to save this man’s life.
Major props to those who endangered themselves in trying to extinguish the fire. I, myself, can’t predict how I’d react but I am proud to be around a campus where students were quick to react.
Matthew was the first to respond — I saw his twitter feed on my work computer and immediately responded for more information. Its breaking-news situations like this that make me wonder how helpful and impactful we can make use of the Twitter network.
Nov 2nd, 2008
Pei-chieh
I notice that UW has sent out 2 email for all students after the tragedy happened.They remind us to find help for mental support and personal security. I was wondering how social media can help the school communicate with students, instead of email only? Maybe the police department should use twitter, too?
Nov 3rd, 2008
rubir
I thing that Twitter can be a great idea, sometimes you don’t have the time to talk to a counselor, but you can debrief by using Twitter or a social network. I will send this link to my friends at the UW Police Dept. see what they think.
Nov 3rd, 2008
seanwang
Thanks for the video report. I normally don’t have time for TV or youtube so this is the first and only video footage I saw.
Nov 4th, 2008
gzliuzw
Thanks for the sharing“` To inform your friends or family, it is simply a matter of a phone call or a text message“`
Nov 5th, 2008
Matthew "Mattso" Stringer
This happened right outside of Harry Hayward and I’s building, so we witnessed some of this first-hand from the 4th floor. Although I was able to twitter about it immediately, it’s interesting to note just how little I actually knew about what was going on as I made updates. For example, I didn’t even know it was a man that was on fire until after the fact. So, I’m just thinking that just because we might have people on the ground in real-time during whatever particular event might be going on (let’s say there’s a big disaster and we start twittering for information and to help each other out), it doesn’t mean even those on the scene have any clue what is really happening and that we can trust what they twitter/blog/comment etc. Official sources that have authority to gather information can sometimes be much more helpful. But, I wouldn’t want to entirely discredit the power of new media during major events. Beating KOMO to the story (or whoever else did the same down in Red Square) doesn’t mean we’ve got the story at all.
Nov 5th, 2008
Brook Ellingwood
Matthew, I really appreciate your post. One of my big concerns is that in the rush to “democratize” everything with digital media, we overlook the reasons that the old-guard institutions evolved in the first place.
Reporters are called that because they are supposed to report. They are supposed to do exactly the sort of qualitative data gathering and filtering that we have been discussing in the Research and Methodology class. Just as we all approach our papers with a hypothesis, reporters also must approach every story with a hypothesis. When they get it right, we are well-informed. When they get it wrong, we aren’t.
Remove the reporter from the equation, and you are asking all of us as individuals to assemble the story ourselves from the bits and pieces of information that we can find (“Shirkian filtering”). What used to come to us packaged as news now comes to us in its raw form: rumor.
You can look at this as the next step forward in information gathering, or you can look at it as a return to pre-mass media ways of gaining information, in which you had the mob, and you had government, but you had no one who stood outside both and wasn’t afraid to report critically on them. Those were the days when “witch hunt’ actually meant “witch hunt.”
When most of us talk about “democracy” what we really mean is “representational democracy.” We don’t necessarily want to vote on all the minutia of running a government, but we do want to pick the people who will do it for us. Maybe what we don’t like about reporters is that they are picked for us by autocrats driven, not by concern for the common good, but concern for profit.
What a dedicated news blogger like West Seattle Blog gives us is still the representational reporting that we’ve relied on for some 150 or so years. She isn’t just a random passer-by with a laptop — she brings the value of a reporter’s training and temperment to her. What’s changed is the delivery medium and, by extension, the authoring tools.
More importantly, the business model has changed, at least temporarily. At this moment, reporters can start their own publishing enterprises and succeed on their own terms. I predict that, as with all sources of profit, there will be consolidation. In the next few years, look for news bloggers to start joining networks offering them greater and more stable revenue sources. And just as surely people will start criticizing them, not for their reporting, but for the content of the ads on their sites and the conflicts of interest they perceive these ads reveal.
Nov 6th, 2008
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