Shameless Sensationalism

Last Friday, at about 1:30 am, Tiffany Marie Souers was found dead. One of her old roommates found her body at a Clemson apartment complex about 10-15 minutes away from campus (I have two friends at church who live in that building). Police and investigators have yet to find any evidence of struggle or forced entry. The only major detail that has been uncovered thus far is the cause of death. Tiffany was apparantly strangled by a bikini strap.

When I first heard this, both on the web and at Sunday School, I was both saddened and afraid. The reasons for my feelings are pretty self-explainatory. Deaths like these are always terrible, but they hit hard when they happen on college campuses. It makes us students a little more aware of how vulnerable we are. We like to believe that once we're in the real world, we're invincible. Nothing bad can happen to us. But when something like a death on or in the proximity of our home away from home happens, it shakes us up. Suddenly (if only for a short time), we don't take our safety for granted anymore. We take an extra few minutes to look around us in leaving our dorms. We double check the locks on our doors. We start using well-lit roads at night, or carry a flashlight if necessary. If there's any positive in a death like this, it's losing our false sense of security. We are vulnerable. We can be hurt or killed. It's not a pleasant thing to think about and I know its constantly on our parents' minds. We start to understand how they feel.

But my sadness was two-fold.

I literally groaned aloud when FoxNews grabbed hold of this story and turned it into "The Bikini Slaying." (watch them trademark that label and demand a dollar for every news market that uses it). Now it's guaranteed to catch more attention across the country than it ever would otherwise. All because of the 'spicy' name. Sex sells, right? Not in murder cases, it doesn't. Anyone who possesses even an ounce of compassion will tell you that much.

And that's not all. They've already called the person (there's no hard evidence yet whether the perpetrator was a boy or girl) responsible for Tiffany's murder a "potential serial killer." All this despite the fact that the solicitor has gone on record stating they have NO reason to believe it's the work of a serial killer. Near as they can figure, it's someone close to Tiffany. A classmate or an acquaintence. That's why they are searching her computer records, particularly Facebook, for clues to anyone that was in contact with her.

I don't appreciate it when the news media takes an incident like this and tries to turn it into something it's not just to suit their interests. It's embarassing, it's degrading, and I can only imagine the effect that it's having on Tiffany's family and friends. Her loved ones who are fighting to protect her identity (because knowing the media, the next place they'll look is the victim's personal life. Troubled past, emotional scars, etc. Anything that could've led into this. And if they can't find anything there, they'll turn their attention on the family. It happened with the Elizabeth Smart kidnapping four years ago) and the person that she was. It's a gross invasion of privacy and it represents a blatant misrepresentation of what is at heart a small town murder (not in the eyes of her family, of course, but in a larger context. People in California, say, would never know of a murder in Central, SC, until FoxNews slaps the "Bikini Slaying" label on it, and voila! Instant appeal). Suddenly, it's everybody's case. Experts and non-experts alike call in their takes. Opinions are heard and given more weight than the actual facts. And the sensationalism gets worse and worse until the case just quietly goes away (i.e., the media moves on to the next juicy headline). I wish the Souers family didn't have to wait for their daughter's funeral or the capture of her killer for it to happen. I wish the news guys could put themselves in the grievers' shoes. Just for a minute. Remember what it feels like.

At the end of the day, I understand why sensationalism happens. People have to run a business. They're human beings too, and despite our attempts to villify them, at heart they're no different from any of us. If I waste my time making enemies of the people I'm supposed to be loving into the kingdom, I'm failing my Lord and Savior. I am "beating the air," as Paul would say.

Sensationalism is how they've stayed in the game for so long; it's been their M.O. from the beginning. A murder doesn't grab you until it's been labeled (when the harsh truth is, unless you are a member of the bereaved circle, you have no business trying to insert yourself into it). It's their job to sell news, to make people watch. Whether it's based on facts or opinions.

I still don't like it, though.

Anyway, I'm done ranting now.

Other Side of the Tracks

This little group here is my sister Susannah's graduating class (well, about half of them. we went to a pretty small school). Lots of memories these kids have made together. This past Friday night was her high school graduation. It felt pretty surreal, to be honest. Three years ago, I could not imagine her and the freshmen taking our places up in the chapel loft and wearing the caps & gowns (thankfully they have since gone to a darker, forest green color over the lime green we had. it's MUCH better looking now). It is just amazing how time flies so fast. All the more reason to cherish the moments you have and to make them count because once they're gone, you can never get them back.

So yes, Friday was definitely a special day. I came home late in the morning having just wrapped up my spring semester at Furman (no word on my grades for another week at least) and found the dining room all decorated. The mirror on the wall was converted into a little picture montage, sporting quite a few moments that really took me back. A poster on the opposite wall had pictures from Susannah's drama productions, from Antonio in Much Ado About Nothing to Madame Robespierre. We had a wonderful dinner later that evening with our relatives and family; a real gourmet buffet with chicken tenders, fresh vegetables, popcorn shrimp, deviled eggs, and the coup de grace: chocolate-coated strawberries :P I think I'm rubbing off on Susannah because she actually took her time opening her cards and presents. Either that or she was momentarily overcome by nostalgia. Whichever.

Anna Kate got to join us as well. She remarked that this would be a new experience for her, since she was used to seeing 500+ graduates at Hillcrest High. My sister's class numbered 29. Definitely a more intimate feeling with smaller numbers. And the service was, as always, terrific, but what made this even more special was the keynote speaker. My graduating class asked Alvin Sell, our Bible/History teacher, to speak at our commencement, and I was thrilled to hear that my sister's class had asked him to speak again for them this year. Mr. Sell is a man that I deeply love and respect, and if you haven't had the pleasure of meeting him, you're really missing out. He is one of my biggest inspirations of God-centered living, and he amazes me with just how much he invests of himself in his students. Teaching is far more than just a job for him: it's a calling from Heaven, and he lives it up every day. Both of our classes had this reason in mind for choosing him as our speaker: we wanted someone who could talk to us, someone who really knew us and could communicate at our level rather than just spouting platitudes at the pulpit. And I won't deny it: he choked up quite a few of us three years ago. This year he got a bit more emotional himself, but how could you not when you've known these graduates ever since they were little seventh graders?

So Mr. Sell did another masterful job talking on the subject of "leaving your mark." The whole service was fun and enjoyable, and it felt great to sing the SFC alma mater again (I'm the only one in my family who knows it by heart). And part of me still could not believe it was Susannah, my little sister, walking down the aisle. That within the hour, she would be a high school graduate. That within three months, she would be packing up for Anderson. (and that within three days, she'd be calling and begging to come home for laundry and money ... just kidding!!) But she has astounded me in the ways that she has grown and matured, especially within the past several years. The thing I love most about her is her fun-loving, energetic attitude she takes to everything. She isn't stressed out by very many things, and when she is, you hardly notice it. Even with her work, she keeps that optimism up and somehow always manages to get it all accomplished. Yeah, we're different that way, but it just shows how God knew what He was doing when He created us to be unique. We would love and bless each other in a variety of different ways, and it would keep life always fresh and exciting. What a wonderful God that He would bless me with such a loving family and a sister of whom I am proud beyond words. Congrats on all your accomplishments, Susannah! Know that I will always be here for you and that I love you!

Almost, Not Quite

It doesn't always hit you when you schedule classes what the long-term benefits and consequences are. For this spring, my benefits were no exams. None. In all three of my classes.

Of course, you can't have the silver lining without the cloud. And the consequences of no exams is a big load of classwork that almost makes me wish I was taking exams. Almost.

It's not overwhelmingly bad, mind you. I've pretty much narrowed it down to two 'big' assignments left. They are a 10-12 page paper in Vic-Lit about "The Conundrum of Count Fosco" (the primary villain in Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White), and my final journal in Faulkner class. The paper is halfway done, and I'm ten lines deep in my second-to-last section of the journal. I'm thankful to God for giving me strength to get it done step by step.

Of course, the term wouldn't be complete without some kind of nagging problem with my laptop. This time, it has nothing to do with internet, the motherboard, or spyware. It's my power cord. Apparantly, it has begun to suffer from the effects of overuse. Wrapping it up and taking it with me to classes so often has frayed the cable, and its down to the point where you can see the tiny little wires inside. Now I have to push the frayed edges together if I want to maintain full power. Otherwise, it's stuck on battery life. And since time and batteries aren't best friends, I'd rather not head into my final week with a dead laptop. So hopefully I can get this fixed when I take it home.

A big shout-out to my sister and her school friends in New York! Hope you lucky kids are having fun up there. And Anna Kate is currently gone to the beach with her folks. You can just imagine how supremely jealous I am.

That's about all for now! Goodnight and God bless!

SURPRISE!

It's rare these days to generate a real, genuine surprise. With all the media outlets available to us and our crafty means of weasling information out of people, we are scarcely taken off guard by anything. But sometimes, God just works everything out in our favor, all the pieces fall into place, and you get rewarded by that flabbergasted look on your surprisee's face when he/she figures out they've been snowed big time.

I've had a pretty big surprise going for the last few weeks, but until yesterday, I had to hold off on talking about it here because my surprisee tends to visit my blog a lot. But now the story can be told...

On Friday, May 12 (which was yesterday), Anna Kate was scheduled to graduate from Clemson. Earlier on, I learned that my BCM group had planned their Beach Weekend (along with the rest of the Furman student body) for that same weekend. When I found this out, I told Anna. Without ever actually coming out and saying it, mind you, I gave her every indication that I had chosen to go with BCM to the beach. She was disappointed, but said she understood and was fine with it. We could always plan something for that Sunday when I got back to town.

NOW ... once I learned the date for Anna's graduation, I decided then and there that I was going. And then for some weird reason, a plan hatched itself in my head, and its contents spilled over into a complex and convoluted yolk (okay, bad metaphor) that grew into a brilliant scheme to surprise her at graduation. But how to pull it off?

Step 1 - Connections. Family and friends talk. They interact a lot. So the first thing I had to do was suck them into the web with a little misdirection. I told both my family and even my friends at Furman that I was still thinking hard about this, trying to figure out what to do (remember, I had already decided). But all the while, I dropped hints that I was leaning toward Beach Weekend (I think I even told my Mom once that I had definitely decided to go, but mostly because I felt pressured into a decision). I even made sure to state that I had my $60 payment set aside in my bank account. And I did (but it ended up being used for something else on the side). The logic is you have to make sure that no one in your personal network can give you away. No one. They may not do it on purpose, but you never know what can slip out in a casual conversation. "So what's David up to next weekend?"

Step 2 - Say Without Saying. As the date got closer, I continued the misdirection in online conversations with Anna Kate. Usually, I tried to avoid talking about Beach Weekend. But when she did bring it up, I would either change the subject ("Whoa, my bread's thawed out.") or give an indirect answer ("I have to get that payment in first.") The key here was to make her think I was going without actually saying so. I never wanted to lie outright. So I told the truth - but not the whole truth. Overall, I think I did pretty well. I remember only one time I nearly screwed up when I mentioned an interview planned for that Friday - the Friday that I was supposed to be gone.

Step 3 - Clue the Parents. Finally, it was the week before. And it was time to let Anna's parents in on my plan. This required strategic phone-calling. The only number I had was her Dad and step-Mom's at home. And I was afraid I'd accidently run afoul of Anna in trying to call them. Then what? "Oh, um, hi Anna! ... uhhh, can I please speak to your Dad for a few minutes?" "Um, okay, WHY?" Which would bring us back to the whole lying thing.

So, using some carefully guarded questions, I got Anna to tell me what time her step-Mom was available, as well as where she herself would be the night I planned to call. It took a big leap of faith to place that phone call - I still feared Anna would pick up. But that Tuesday evening, I hit paydirt. I told her step-Mom of my plan. She loved it and was totally willing to play along. After getting her cell number, she gave me a number for Anna's Mom, who I contacted the following day, Wednesday. And she was equally excited about the surprise.

By this time, both my parents and her parents knew about my plan. But with the graduation only two days away, I figured it was less likely to get ruined because they wouldn't have to keep the secret for too long. That's not an easy thing to do, because Anna's very observant and picks up on things. So I had to plan very carefully.

Step 4 - Disappear. The next step was the toughest of all - waiting.

I came home on Tuesday, and BCM had to leave for the beach on Wednesday afternoon. So I had to drop out of sight for the next 48 hours. That meant I couldn't be seen online either (no internet at the beach). I had to sign on with one of my old screen names to check mail and stuff. It was tough seeing Anna's SN and being unable to talk. I also couldn't do stuff like update this blog or my Facebook page. Couldn't take the chance that she'd see the update and get suspicious. Hey, call me paranoid if you want, but I'd say if you're going to do a surprise, you may as well do it right. No way was I going to let AIM, Blogger, or Facebook blow my cover.

The only problem was by this time, I hadn't talked with Anna since the weekend. Not in person, not online, not over the phone, not anywhere. I got worried that being out of contact for that long (since I wasn't supposed to leave until Wednesday) would really make her wonder. But a family visit to my grandparents in Whitmire solved that little problem. I left her a message in the car, saying I was, "on the road, and getting ready for a long drive." Made sure to have the radio on in the background for good effect. I couldn't resist adding that "I will definitely see you after graduation is over." My Mom, sister, and I nearly spun off the road laughing as soon as I hung up.

Step 5 - Payoff. Finally - the big day arrived - Graduation Day. I arrived at her Dad's house in Fountain Inn and piled in with him, her step-Mom, and her grandparents, who had also been privvy to the surprise. The plan was to drive to Clemson, and meet up with Anna's Mom, step-Dad, McEwen and Kristi inside Littlejohn, where we would sit together and then meet Anna at the end. Her odds of spotting us in a capacity crowd were virtually nil.

However, I decided to speed up the payoff. I waded through the lines of anxious graduates grouped by subject, until I found the Early Childhood group. And there, I spotted her.

I waved slightly. She looked up and saw me. At first, she was like "Oh, there's David." Then it hit her. David was at the beach, wasn't he? She did a double take. Her eyes went wide, and a big smile spread over her face. How I wished I had a camera at that precise moment! I'll never forget that look. It was just what I wanted, and more.

After the service was over, her folks and I spilled the whole plan. I couldn't believe we actually pulled it off. She said she never once suspected what was going on. Now the whole time, I was always prepared to drop pretense and tell her I was coming (if I couldn't reach her folks, if I bumped into her, etc.) But it all worked out perfectly. I even extended the surprise a little by hiding a graduation present in her Dad's car, along with a can of Silly String. I engineered a sneak attack on Anna before she could get in (thankfully, I didn't mess up her robe). Of course, I have to be extra cautious now, because she's already planning some surprise of her own to get even with me. :)

Anyway, that's my little surprise in a nutshell. A big nutshell. To all those I kept in the dark, I'm sorry a thousand times. It was all in good fun. I hope you'll forgive me, sweetheart :) Love you bunches! Congrats on graduating!

May Day at Furman

Today was awesome. That wonderful time of year known as May Day Play Day rolled around again. And that means puppet shows for BCM. We put them on every year in the Watkins Room for the children who invade Furman, and they love them to death. So we did that for the better part of the morning, and had a superb time. I warned Cara and the others ahead of time that their arms would get a major workout holding the puppets, doing mouth movements, etc. By about ten seconds into the song, you can already start to feel the strain as the blood rushes down into your shoulder joints. With less circulation going to your hands, wrists, and fingers, they begin to feel like lead weights. And no I'm not a science/health person, either - I know that based on my own experience. But it's all in good fun. I told Lauren this before the show: we live for this stuff. It's part of how ministry happens. You don't have to use a pulpit, a sermon, or a baptismal loft to reach people in Jesus' name - you can do that in something as fun and silly as a puppet show. That shows just how big God is; that he can use that for His glory.

Eyes...Bleeding...

Okay, not really. But if it was at all possible to have a brain hemmorrage from reading too much, I'm the unlucky candidate.

Well, the North Village thing didn't really work out after all. But it's no huge loss. The whole thing kind of came up at zero hour anyway. Well, 36 hours before the shared bedrooms lottery was supposed to begin. But I can just go forward with my original plan to pursue a single room for senior year. I entered my choices into the lottery just a few minutes ago. Hopefully, the system will be nice to me one last time. Wish me luck on that. :)

If Furman students weren't antsy about summer break before, it will surely kick into high gear this week. What with all other colleges like Clemson and USC taking their finals and having their graduation next week. It's the price we pay for being daring enough to start the year late (although that won't be the case much longer ... sorry, class of '08). I'm expecting to see lots of heads on desks, sunbathers, and outdoor classes within the next week.

I finally managed to see a Clemson baseball game with Anna Kate this past Sunday. We had a leisurely lunch at Firehouse; I was very surprised to see one in Clemson, then we enjoyed a very pleasant game. The weather was just about perfect; only a little windy, plenty of sun, and our Tigers won easily 7-3 over the Virginia Tech Hokies. I find it a little odd that they're scheduling the first game with Florida State on Friday, May 12, the night of senior graduation. Wouldn't that be a bit distracting? What about the seniors on the team? Will they dress out?

Prayer Vigil tonight through tomorrow night here at Furman Chapel. I'm excited. :)