Online comments

In response to “UA lacks adequate child care resources” (by David W. Mariotte, Dec. 3)

I don’t understand — why would UA want to go into child care? It’s a college. UA should want smart students. Smart students don’t have kids when they don’t have anyone to watch them or have the resources to pay for child care.

— Lisa

Even if you ignore your ignorant claim that “smart” students don’t have kids in college, you’re forgetting two important points.

1) An on-campus child care facility would be convenient for faculty as well as students. You would be hard pressed to argue that working professionals shouldn’t have children just because they have to work.

2) Not all students are your traditional 18-22 year old traditional college student mold anymore. In fact, that’s not even the majority of college students. A lot of students are parents who are returning to college for a variety of reasons — you can’t claim that isn’t “smart” of them.

Frankly, my high school had better child care services than the UA does, and that’s pathetic. No one is saying the UA should “go into child care” like you claim, they’re simply saying the services should be offered on campus to save on costs and add convenience.

This is a basic service at most major universities, but the UA is flat out missing the mark.

— Eric (in response to Lisa)

In response to “More focus should be on victims, not motives of shooter” (by Ashley T. Powell, Dec. 3)

To suggest that such mass killings have no motive, or that it’s not important both for the survivors and the general public to understand those motives, is to resign ourselves to constant repetitions without any possibility of prevention.

In this case, the signs of trouble from Adam Lanza were clear and compelling, but the only one who knew them — his mother, Nancy — refused to act on them appropriately.

It seems that more will be known of this event from books, such as the about-to-be-released Newtown: An American Tragedy by former Daily News reporter Matthew Lysiak, who moved to Newtown for six months to do his research.

From the book:

Nancy Lanza was becoming accustomed to leaving her son alone for days, sometimes weeks at a time. Beginning in January 2012, she traveled to London, New Orleans, and New York City, in addition to frequent trips to Boston.

Nancy spent Thanksgiving 2012 in northern New England with family, leaving Adam home alone with a prepared meal in the fridge. “He’s fine,” she said reassuringly. “Just so long as he has his computer and his video games, he can keep himself occupied.”

Adam sometimes sat playing the game well into the night and slept most of the day. He had no friends, and no future ambitions. His life revolved increasingly around the game of war.

Nancy was worried and wanted answers. She had recently decided to take a peek inside his upstairs bedroom.

After a few minutes of searching, she found a disturbing number of drawings stashed underneath Adam’s nightstand. Most were pictures of guns, “normal teenage boy crap,” she called it. But other sketches were gruesome depictions of death, images of mutilated corpses. One drawing she described was of a bloodied woman clutching a rosary as bullets ripped through her spine. Another sketch depicted a large rolling grassy field lined with the corpses of young children. In the drawing, the faces of the children were severely mutilated and couldn’t be recognized. One sketch appeared to be a self-portrait of a younger Adam with blood gushing from a large hole in his forehead and his arms stretched upward to the sky in a posture of triumph.

— Robert Riversong