Don’t let attack damage multicultural trademark of American universities

More questions than answers continue to whirl around Monday’s brazen daylight attack at Ohio State University, where 11 people were injured and a lone knife-wielding assailant was shot dead.

What was the primary motivation behind 18-year-old OSU student Abdul Razak Ali Artan’s vehicular and knife assaults? To what extent was he inspired by the ilk of the Islamic State group or other radical terrorist organizations?

Were there any warning signs from Artan that he would be capable of executing such a morbidly brutal attack?

Was this truly a lone-wolf assault, or is the 60,000-student campus susceptible to follow-up or copycat terror?

Early signs in the investigation indicate that the Somali native and OSU freshman held at least some allegiance to the doctrine of ISIS and other anti-West radical organizations. A post on his Facebook page had eerie similarities to warnings from the cold-blooded scum who carried out fatal attacks on innocents in San Bernardino, Orlando and Paris over the past year.

“America! Stop interfering with other countries, especially the Muslim Ummah. ... If you want us Muslims to stop carrying out lone wolf attacks, then make peace” with the IS, Artan ranted in his posts.

Full answers, however, behind the motivation and mindset of Artan likely will have to wait until investigations by the OSU police, Columbus and Franklin County authorities and the FBI run their course.

PRAISEWORTHY RESPONSE

For now, though, several observations from Monday’s chilling scene outside an engineering hall at the campus have become clear.

First and foremost, all involved in the speedy resolution of the crisis merit thanks and praise.

The response from police agencies and emergency medical technicians came rapidly and professionally. Artan was shot and killed by a campus police officer after only about one minute of his mad slashing spree. In that situation, each passing second ticked away as a matter of life and death.

In the end, other than the shooter, none of the 11 people hurt by Artan’s vehicular attack or stabbings suffered life-threatening injuries. Three remained hospitalized Tuesday but their prognosis for full recovery was encouraging.

In addition, within moments of the attack, the university issued Buckeye Alert notifications to all students and workers to beware of danger and steer clear of the mayhem.

No one can underestimate the value of such warnings and readiness. At Ohio State, like other universities across the country, formal programs also are in place to train students and others on how best to react if and when terror and tragedy might strike.

At Youngstown State University, the ALICE program offers training focused on each letter of its acronym: Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, Evacuate.” Students, faculty and staff at the university would be wise to undergo such training. After all, no institution of higher learning can consider itself an oasis from the terror that most violently visited Virginia Tech where 32 people were killed by a mad gunman in 2007 and Umpqua Community College in Oregon where 15 were slaughtered last year.

The need for such vigilance and preparedness should not, however, dampen the spirit of diversity and inclusiveness that the American college campus increasingly has grown to represent.

More than virtually any other institution, public and private colleges across the United States stand tall as quintessentially American melting pots of cultures, races, religions and ethnicities.

At Ohio State, much like at Youngstown State, students and faculty from across the globe come together, study together, work together and socialize together. They draw mutual strength from similarities – not differences.

In this immediate aftermath of the Ohio State attack and amid the recent surge in openly racist attitudes and hate crimes tied in part to the volatile rhetoric of Republican Donald Trump’s divisive presidential campaign, now is definitely not the time for campus communities to retreat from their commitments to openness and inclusiveness.

To do so would give in to the shooters, the stabbers and other violent malcontents seeking to stoke hatred and division. Such mean-spirited qualities must remain anathema to American universities where multicultural understanding should be encouraged to flourish and thrive.