It’s not entirely clear what Stephani Clemons Thompson, assistant director of residence life at Ohio State, had in mind when she took to Facebook to threaten to “unfriend” anyone who failed to share her view. Nor is it clear whether her inclusion of “DO NOT SHARE THIS POST,” twice, in all caps, was somehow going to dictate how her post would be received.

The post refers to Abdul Razak Ali Artan, the Ohio State junior who attacked, first by car and then by knife, eleven people, whereupon he was shot dead by a campus officer. Pics of his dead body were posted online, along with the expressions of outrage for his attacks. Thompson’s post was in reaction.

Granted, Thompson’s manner of expressing her reaction was surprisingly aggressive under the circumstances. In the grand scheme of victims, it remains worse to be dead, run down, cut by a butcher knife, then to be thought ill of. But here, Artan was dead as well, though with some justification, and to significant appreciation in that it prevented him from harming more people.

Not only was Thompson’s post shared, despite her command that it not be, but it resulted in a petition, signed by 3066 people as of this writing, demanding that she be fired from Ohio State.

As a community and university, we cannot allow our leadership to justify and defend the horrific act of terror against dozens, potentially hundreds and thousands, of innocent Buckeye students and staff on Monday morning.

We cannot allow someone in her influential position to be an apologist to these acts of violent terror. This deranged and disturbed man drove his car through a crowd of students, only to then exit said vehicle wielding a butcher knife, slashing and stabbing as many people as he could before he was stopped by brave Officer Alan Horujko.

Stephanie Clemons Thompson used Facebook as a public platform to shame those who were grateful and relieved the terrorist was taken out so quickly, preventing even more unthinkable terror and destruction in his wake. Because this man was taken out so quickly his goal of murder was foiled and his victims will live on. Stephanie Clemons Thompson, however, condemns this sentiment of relief by prioritizing the feelings of the terrorist over his innocent victims, their families, and the Buckeye community as a whole.

Jeff Gamso offers a poignant rejoinder to this characterization of Thompson’s purpose.

Because as true Americans and patriots (and Buckeyes it seems) it is important that we remember to hate and never to show compassion for those who do wrong.

Jeff gets there by running through a series of examples from our history of simplistically vilifying people, groups, and how well it’s worked in retrospect.

So much for the better angels of our nature.

The thing about compassion is that it’s not a scarce resource. Use all you want, we’ll make more. But we’re in a very curious phase of the American experience when it comes to outrage. Maybe Thompson’s attempt to blunt the overt joy at the death of a person would have been better expressed with more Gertruding up front?  Would that have been sufficient to overcome the interpretation of her words as “prioritizing the feelings of the terrorist over his innocent victims, their families, and the Buckeye community as a whole”?

Or perhaps that’s exactly what Thompson intended to do, and her post, sans any recognition of the harm done the innocent victims beyond calling his life “as troubled as it clearly was,” was a reflection of greater concern for the attacker than the attacked? And, as noted in the petition, her inclusion of hashtags for #BlackLivesMatter and #SayHisName invoked causes for which there is no apparent connection or justification. This may suggest that Gamso is more generous toward Thompson than she deserved.

But all of this reflects our obsession with outrage. The attack itself. The reaction to the attack and Artan’s killing. Thompson’s opposition to the reaction and the sur-reaction of the petition for her termination.

Every turn of events evokes extremes. Was this attack a product of anti-Muslim anger? It could be, as reflected by a rant from Artan, but that doesn’t explain what caused him to turn to violence, particularly against random innocent people. And it hardly seems unreasonable to feel relief at a violent attack being brought to an end before more people were harmed. But cheering pictures of a dead body? Cheering the death of a human being? That takes it down a very different path than relief at violence being ended.

That Thompson would call for calm, for some balanced understanding rather than ever-greater outrage and extremes, shouldn’t give rise to an opposite cry for her head on a platter. The problem is that her post doesn’t quite make clear what she is calling for. Gamso gives it a generous reading, and he may well be right. But it similarly has indicia that would give rise to a new wave of outrage, as if Artan’s attack is just like #BlackLivesMatter, even though it’s nothing whatsoever like it.

Did Thompson speak “hard truths,” which would justify speaking “hard truths” in return? Or did Thompson just speak inartfully, demonstrating a marked lack of concern for those harmed by Artan while expecting compassion for the attacker?  Would Thompson have demanded compassion for Dylann Roof’s pain as well, had he been a Buckeye?

We have become addicted to outrage, looking for it, calling it out, being the first to find the next, newest, thing to be outraged about, to the point where everything is a cause for outrage. What’s unclear is which way the outrage will go. I suspect Thompson thought that her post, along the spectrum of victimization, would evoke a strong emotional reaction in favor of Artan and against the “reactionary” forces of those who applaud the killing of a Somali immigrant. It didn’t work out that way. Not at all.

Whether Artan’s attack deserves any sympathy is a hard question. Whatever he felt, because feelings, fails to explain his harming others. Of that, there can be no rational dispute. And so it hardly seems unreasonable to appreciate that the attack was quickly quelled, even with extreme prejudice. But if Thompson’s point was to remind people not to rejoice in any harm, any death, any dehumanization, whether of the victims or the attacker, then she has been wrongly maligned.

But then, it was incumbent on her to express herself better rather than open herself up to outrage because of what she very clearly wrote. Her post was offensive, and did appear to be more of an apologist argument for the attacker, conflating #BlackLivesMatter to try to bring it within the broader scope of college empathy at the expense of the victims. Now that we’re on the slippery slope of outrage and victimization, it’s nearly impossible for one outrage not to evoke another, and another. And another. Who doesn’t enjoy being outraged these days?