We have seen clearly the damage that ignorance can do in our society - but that ignorance can also extend to one another. If we are not aware of our neighbor, have no love or care for them, then we may be just as unaware of other dangerous forces in the world. Caution and awareness, not paranoia, is the answer.

One year later, we still don’t understand what it’s like to go through that. We never will. But that doesn’t preclude us from feeling. We can empathize. We can remember. We can reflect.

A year following the unfortunate massacre at Virginia Tech, which claimed the lives of 33 people, colleges across the nation have stepped up their mental health services in order to better reach out to potentially troubled students.

Members of the local community should take a moment of silence of their own to remember the losses and gains of shootings at a university not much different from their own.

Three UW-Stout students had been killed in a house fire earlier in the week, and according to four protesters from the Westboro Baptist Chuch, the deaths of these young people were because America has “brought the wrath of God down on their heads.”

By airing the ads, the NCAA is not encouraging underage or binge drinking — or even endorsing drinking at all. The suggestion that the NCAA is expressing an opinion in favor of the products it allows to be advertised is absurd.