What next – a memorial to Cho at Virginia Tech?

The father of a University of Oklahoma student who died after a homemade explosive he was carrying detonated near a packed football stadium said the placement of a memorial to the young man on campus wasn't his idea.

A football fan attending OU's Red-White game on April 7 spotted a stone paver outside the student union with Joel Henry Hinrichs III's name on it.

"I was just kind of horrified," Jenny Clemons told The Oklahoman. "I don't think he has any business being out here."

The school's student affairs division arranged to have the stone placed, an OU alumni affairs employee said. Families pay for such memorials, which cost about $150, officials said, but Hinrichs' father told the newspaper the school offered to place the stone and never billed him.

Hinrichs, an engineering student, died Oct. 1, 2005, when his bomb went off as he sat on a campus bench not far from Oklahoma Memorial Stadium, where a night game was being played.

The FBI investigated whether the 21-year-old Colorado Springs, Colo., resident tried or intended to enter the stadium but reported finding no conclusive evidence.

Joel Hinrichs Jr., the student's father, said OU's dean of students, Clarke Stroud, offered to have the stone placed. In an e-mail, the father told The Oklahoman the dean "very kindly understood that Joel's act was one of loneliness, not of aggression, and offered to have the stone placed in the memorial courtyard; he also indicated that the wife of the university president might select a tree to be placed on campus, also in Joel III's memory."

Even if we presume (just for a minute) that Hinrichs didn’t intend to detonate the bomb at the game, the mere fact that he made it and detonated it in a public place is sufficient to make the memorial inappropriate and unseemly – and the appropriation of public funds for that purpose outrageous.

Posted by: Greg at 11:19 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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