I read "I interviewed the Ohio State attacker on the first day of school. It felt important. Now it’s chilling" so you don't have to.

It's December 1st, so this link to The Washington Post won't hit the paywall, but consider whether you want to use your free access to read "I interviewed the Ohio State attacker on the first day of school. It felt important. Now it’s chilling." The "I" is an Ohio State student named Kevin Stankiewicz.

There's something irksomely twee about the headline. Is there really anything that once was "important," or is Stankiewicz humbly revealing that it felt important to him at the time? Is there anything about the text of the interview that is "chilling," or is it just supposed to be chilling to have access to some words from a man who later did something evil? That's what I'm wondering as I set out to read this on the theory that you're cagey about the WaPo paywall or you prefer Althouse reprocessings or both.

Stankiewicz needed material for the "Humans of Ohio State" feature in the student newspaper and he chose Abdul Razak Ali Artan because he was: 1. the first person he saw, and 2. sitting alone. Artan,  "surprised" to be chosen, was "friendly," open, "thoughtful," and "engaged."

Stankiewicz chose to focus on the problem Artan said he had praying on campus: He wanted to pray publicly, but "I was scared with everything going on in the media." According to Stankiewicz, Artan "ticked off examples of Islamophobia that garnered media attention." (The word "garnered" sets off my bullshit detector.) Artan claimed to worry that he might be shot if he prayed openly.

The interview was on August 23rd, and the summary of the interview ran in the student newspaper a few days later. That is, Artan began the semester surrounded by many students who'd read the piece and were probably moved to feel sympathetic toward him. There was a photograph of the distinctive-looking young man, enabling students to act upon a desire to help him feel included. I'd be interested in hearing from students who read the piece and, especially, students who interacted with Artan after feeling sympathetic because they believed he was sad, feeling like an outsider.

But we only hear from Stankiewicz, who tells us how he felt talking to Artan, which is that he had no access to the inner life of the man he experienced as "friendly" and "thoughtful":

There is nothing I heard from Artan that day that would have ever made me think he could be responsible for the brutal, senseless attack that would come just three months later. Nothing to indicate his thoughtful frustrations and fears would lead him to drive a car into a crowd of people on campus, that he would lash out with a knife at students and faculty, that he would make national news for what many believe was a terrorist attack. That he would be dead, shot by a police officer trying to prevent him from killing others.

Sentence fragments. Allowed by WaPo. Expressive of feelings of author. Clueless author who accepted polite exterior manifestations as evidence of another nice person looking for friends at college. Don't misjudge him. Stankiewicz wanted students to feel. Ironic, considering.

Oh, but Stankiewicz assumes he did see the real Artan that day. It's just that later the "thoughtful, engaged student I had met on the first day of classes... snapped."

I wished the whole day was a dream in the first place; I wished a gray Honda sedan never drove over a curb, struck a group of people, before being lunged at with a knife; I wished the sirens I heard on my walk to class were phantom. And then I wished — like I’ve never wished before — that the assailant was not Artan.

And then I wished that I was not reading The Washington Post. That I was reading a young adult novel. Because that's what this sounds like.

IN THE COMMENTS: Leland said:

Artan was shot while preying openly.

"In its claim of responsibility for Monday's attack at Ohio State, the Islamic State news agency AMAQ posted a photo of Artan wearing a blue shirt and sitting with greenery in the background."

"It described him as a soldier of the group. 'Brother Abdul Razak Ali Artan, God accept him, implementer of the Ohio attack, a student in his third year in university,' the caption read."

Shouldn't this story be getting more attention? Perhaps not, but somehow I feel like this story is getting marginalized for the wrong reasons. The right reason would be to deter others from seeking fame and glory through actions like this.

ADDED: Oh, no:

OSU Diversity Officer Urges Compassion for Somali Terrorist Who Attacked Students. “Stephanie Clemons Thompson urged her followers to have compassion for Artan after he expressed a desire ‘to kill a billion infidels’ and then tried to kill as many as he could at OSU. She also urged people to ‘think of the pain he must have been in,’ and used the hashtags #BlackLivesMatter and #SayHisName (which BLM uses to denote victims of police brutality).”

Well, Rush Limbaugh was saying on his show yesterday:

Why isn't the big news today, the Ohio State University attack, the fact that a white cop shot and killed a young black man who was only armed with a knife?... I mean, the Regime at Ohio State is celebrating him as a hero.... Where is Black Lives Matter?  You can see why I'm a little bit confused here....

He spoke too soon!

"Suspect dead, 8 hospitalized following active shooter situation on Ohio State campus."

News from 8 minutes ago.

The shocking tweet students saw: "Buckeye Alert: Active Shooter on campus. Run Hide Fight. Watts Hall. 19th and College."

UPDATE: "[L]aw enforcement officials told NBC News he was an 18-year-old Ohio State student, a Somali refugee who was a legal permanent resident of the United States."

The motive was unknown, but officials said the attack was clearly deliberate and may have been planned in advance.

The attacker didn't use a gun but a car and a knife.

The relationship between football players and fans at Ohio State.

Screen-grabbed by TPM, which seems to be celebrating Cardale Jones (the potential starting QB):

"In less than 24 hours, a six-second Vine of the fourth quarter between Ohio State and Alabama on Thursday night has been viewed more than 29 million times."

"Why?"



ADDED: It's funnier backwards.

"The senior guard Aaron Craft of Ohio State after his last-second shot bounced out, giving 11th-seeded Dayton a win over the sixth-seeded Buckeyes."

Caption to a great photo. Cool writing too:

Aaron Craft lay on the floor, his arms behind his head, staring up at the arena ceiling, as if the hardcourt were a poolside chaise longue.

Red was all around him, the jubilant scrum of Dayton players racing around the court, dancing and laughing, while Craft, Ohio State’s senior guard, just lay there, in the middle of it, the popped balloon at a raging party.

His mind raced: the last four seconds, the last four years....

"Ohio State officials will argue that the school should be spared, in part because they got rid of Tressel..."

"... the head of the program that has been so tainted by wrongdoing. For years, Ohio State benefited from Tressel's choirboy image. Now, the university is likely to paint him as a huge problem that has been eliminated for the betterment of the athletic department. It is not the noblest of tactics, but it adheres to an axiom of big-time college football, one that Jim Tressel has heeded for years: You do whatever it takes to win."

Sports Illustrated investigates.

"For top-ranked Ohio State teams this school year, this city has turned into a graveyard for undefeated seasons."

"This city" is Madison, Wisconsin, as the Badgers beat the #1 Ohio State Buckeyes, 71-67. 

Badger fans stormed the court, just like they stormed the football field after upsetting the No. 1 Buckeyes in October.

The 13th-ranked Badgers erased a 15-point deficit in the second half behind the hot shooting of guard Jordan Taylor, who finished with 27 points.

Why should a state run a law school?

Andrew Morriss, guest-blogging at Volokh Conspiracy, doesn't think there is a good enough reason for state universities to have law schools.

Why should states have law schools at all? If there is a desire for more lawyers in a state, funding a state law school (esp. a prestigious one) is not an efficient means of getting them. In Ohio, for example, Ohio State touts the opportunities for its graduates to get jobs across the U.S., not just in Ohio, after graduation. Clearly not aimed at maximizing the number of new lawyers in Ohio.

Here in Wisconsin, the diploma privilege — exempting Wisconsin own law students from taking the bar exam — shows we're serious about supplying lawyers for the state. Much as we also care about helping students find employment outside of Wisconsin, if they leave they will have to take a bar exam.

Morriss has more on the topic here, where he addresses many of the justifications that people raised in the comments to his first post.

Why pick on law schools, though? Look at all the other departments of the state university. Do they all make sense in a way that law school doesn't? I haven't read all of Morriss's posts over there, but his main topic has been law school rankings, and I think his more fundamental problem with state law schools is their participation in the effort to climb in the U.S. News rankings. If there is a reason for the state to run a law school, is it consistent with competing in the rankings?

This reminds me of the question Justice Scalia asked counsel for the University of Michigan in the oral argument in Grutter?

QUESTION: Ms. Mahoney, I — I find it hard to take seriously the State of Michigan's contention that racial diversity is a compelling State interest, compelling enough to warrant ignoring the Constitution's prohibition of distribution on the basis of race.

The reason I say that is that the problem is a problem of Michigan's own creation, that is to say, it has decided to create an elite law school, it is one of the best law schools in the country. And there are few State law schools that — that get to that level.

Now, it's done this by taking only the best students with the best grades and the best SATs or LSATs knowing that the result of this will be to exclude to a large degree minorities.

It is — it's not unconstitutional to do that, because it's — that's not — not the purpose of what Michigan did, but it is the predictable result. Nonetheless, Michigan says we want an elite law school.

Now, considering created this situation by making that decision, it then turns around and says, oh, we have a compelling State interest in eliminating this racial imbalance that ourselves have created.

Now, if Michigan really cares enough about that racial imbalance, why doesn't it do as many other State law schools do, lower the standards, not have a flagship elite law school, it solves the problem.

MS. MAHONEY: Your Honor, I don't think there's anything in this Court's cases that suggests that the law school has to make an election between academic excellence and racial diversity. The interest here is having a —

QUESTION: If it claims it's a compelling State interest. If it's important enough to override the Constitution's prohibition of racial distribution, it seems to me it's important enough to override Michigan's desire to have a super-duper law school?

MS. MAHONEY: Your Honor, the question isn't whether it's important to override the prohibition on discrimination. It's whether this is discrimination. Michigan — what Michigan is doing benefits —

Perhaps the question Morriss really means to ask is not whether the state should run a law school, but whether the state, if it chooses to run a law school, ought to have a different, less elite approach than a private law school.

Bush campaign music, especially "Hang On Sloopy."

Elisabeth Bumiller writes in today's NYT about the music used by the Bush campaign. I took note the other day of the Kerry campaign's use of the Springsteen song "No Surrender," so let me take a look at the Bush campaign's selections. They've got a new video that uses "Taking Care of Business," and they follow something called the Karl Rove rule, according to campaign strategist Mark McKinnon:

"We go by the Karl Rove rule," Mr. McKinnon said, referring to the president's 53-year-old political adviser. "If Rove has heard it, we can't use it."

Hmmm.... Karl Rove and I are the same age. Same age as Rush Limbaugh too (Rush and I were born on the very same day). Karl Rove doesn't know "Taking Care of Business"? I guess it's not terribly hard to find songs he hasn't heard.

The Bush campaign is really sick of "Eye of the Tiger":

"We finally sent out the mandate that if anybody plays 'Eye of the Tiger' again we're going to come out and kill them," Mr. McKinnon said.

They also play "Hang On Sloopy," supposedly, according to McKinnon because it's "so old it's cool." Wait, I think "Hang On Sloopy" has always been cool. It was cool when it came out, it was cool in the 70s, and it was cool in the 80s. When wasn't it cool? Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is one song that did not have to age to regain coolness.

The Times notes that it's the "official rock song of Ohio State University," and they were playing it in Ohio, which, we all know, is the single most important state in the union. This is an election about what Ohio wants, it seems, so by all means, play them their song.

Wisconsin is a swing state too, not as big as Ohio, but I bet we could make them cater to our taste too. But we don't have an official rock song, so I think we ought to have one. Email me at althouse at wisc dot edu with some ideas for an official rock song for Wisconsin. I don't like our rival Ohio having one and not us. We've already got a better state song, so maybe that means we don't need a state rock song, but it would be interesting to try to think up what the right state rock song would be.
If you're wondering why "Hang On Sloopy" is the state rock song for Ohio, you can read the actual resolution here. The "whereas" clauses include:

WHEREAS, In 1965, an Ohio-based rock group known as the McCoys reached the top of the national record charts with "Hang On Sloopy," and ...

WHEREAS, If fans of jazz, country-and-western, classical, Hawaiian and polka music think those styles also should be recognized by the state, then by golly, they can push their own resolution just like we're doing; and ...

WHEREAS, Sloopy lives in a very bad part of town, and everybody, yeah, tries to put my Sloopy down; and ... therefore be it

Resolved ...

UPDATE: Maybe I'm too hard on the New York Times. I appreciated this article quite a bit, and I loved learning about "Hang On Sloopy," but did you notice the Times referred to it as the "official rock song of Ohio State University," when research shows it's the official rock song of the whole state?

As I write this, I can hear the UW marching band practicing playing "On Wisconsin!"--which is not just our official school song, it's our official state song. For an early post discussing my interest in state songs, go here. You can see all the Wisconsin state symbols there, including the state fossil (trilobite!). I remembered blogging about the state motto, "Forward," and I found the post back here in mid-February. It turns out it's a post about John Kerry being boring by working "Forward" into a speech he gave in Wisconsin.

ANOTHER UPDATE: I've gotten some email doubting that "Hang On Sloopy" is really the official rock song of the state of Ohio, so I did a little Nexis search and found plenty of confirmation, including a March 14, 1999 article in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, written by Joe Dirck. Here are some highlights:

14 years ago I led the successful drive to have "Hang On Sloopy" named Ohio's official rock song.

It started as sort of a joke. The state of Washington was considering making "Louie, Louie" its state rock song, and I suggested in a column in the old Columbus Citizen-Journal that Ohio adopt "Sloopy," which never fails to send Ohio State fans into a frenzy when the OSU marching band plays it at football games.

Well, the thing took on a life of its own. A team of morning radio jocks ran with the idea, and pretty soon there were "Sloopy" rallies and petition drives being held around town. … I picked my sponsors carefully. …

Well, I don't want to brag, but we won. Big. It passed at a festive session marked by the OSU band performing its rendition of "Sloopy" in the hallowed chamber. …