The Herd, The Borg and Crowd Madness

The New Religion of The West

Akos Balogh
The Gospel Coalition Australia

‘There are 2 gunman at the university – tell your friends on campus’.  The text arrives from a friend, who knows I’m often on campus. But I can’t believe it: surely this is spam?  So I ring my friend to confirm. Yes, the text is legit: A collegue of his has a contact at the university.There really are gunmen at Southern Cross University in Lismore.

I well up with anxiety. My head starts racing. Is this really happening? A gunman, on the campus where I’ve spent the last decade of my life? This only happens overseas (or at least, in major cities) – but never in laid-back Lismore. It feels surreal.

Thankfully, I decided to work from home. But I text some student friends who study at the uni. They’re also off campus, and are OK.  I look online, and see that Southern Cross university really is in lock-down. Police have cordoned it off. And they’re bringing in the heavy firepower from the Tactical Response Group (SWAT) to help out. This is serious. And I could have been caught up in it all.

My kid’s primary school tells me I have to go pickup my son – he can’t ride home (his school is close to the uni). I meet him at school, with other anxious parents. I hug my son, thanking God it wasn’t his primary school that was targeted.

He tells me there are bad guys at the university. Yes, I say: but the police are taking care of the situation. And we’ll be safe. (Interestingly, my son isn’t scared. If anything, he’s a little excited by it all. I’ve probably got former Navy SEAL turned children’s author Jocko Willinck to thank for that).

But we’re all in the dark. Nobody knows what’s going on. The most we know is that there are gunmen walking around on campus.

It’s scary stuff.

Thankfully, by the end of the day it turns out there were no gunmen walking around. The whole situation was sparked by a threatening phone call to a local police station. (It must have been very threatening to launch such a massive police operation).

But there was no active shooter walking around at the university. It was all a rumour.