Written by: Jennifer Craig

Trayvon Martin’s shooting is a national news event that many are talking about, but there seems little being done in response. To fully understand the case at hand, we must investigate the details.

Neighborhood watch groups are just that, a watch group. They are not told to confront, not encouraged to carry weapons. As neighborhood volunteer positions, watch groups basically allow people to be nosey neighbors.

If something or someone suspicious is seen, they are encouraged to call the police, and George Zimmerman did just that. But he then chose to confront the person he saw as a threat. Whether there was a scuffle or not, George chose to put himself in that situation, and he was wrong for doing that.

How a grown man could feel threatened by a 17-year-old boy with a bag of Skittles is beyond me, but no matter if he was threatened by that bag of Skittles, it is never okay to shoot to kill.

George’s family members are claiming he had a broken nose, which to me looked just fine in the police videos, but if it was broken, he chose to initiate that confrontation. He clearly chose to confront and intimidate, and it ended in him killing an innocent boy.

Whether it was racist should not take away from the fact that it was morally and ethically wrong. The fact that he is a free man is nothing short of an outrage. At the very least, there should be a manslaughter charge.

You cannot say that people are not outraged, but what can simply a public outcry do?  I am sure we all remember Occupy Wall Street, and what good did that do? Don’t just jump on a bandwagon; read the facts and make your own decisions.

Don’t let Jesse Jackson showing up automatically make it about race. This is a case with two visible minorities. For those who just jump to the conclusion that it was a white guy shooting a black kid, you need to look again. That being said, what we should be outraged about it the lack of ethics and morals of the case, not the skin color of those involved.  How is it self-defense, when Zimmerman chose to put himself in the confrontational situation?

Is it the student’s job to hold rallies and scream really loudly? Well, no, and the world has changed since the days of hippy protests and sit in rallies. The lack of public demonstration doesn’t mean that the world is not watching or listening.

To quote John Mayer, “It’s not that we don’t care, we just know that the fight ain’t fair.”