Please attend a memorial vigil for Dr. Glenda Vittimberga at Cal State L.A. on Tuesday, February 24, at 6:00 P.M.
in the Free Speech Area (north end of campus, outside the University-Student Union).

According to police, Dr. Vittimberga was brutally murdered and beheaded in her Pasadena home on Monday by a
university employee and former graduate student, who then apparently committed suicide.

Dr. Vittimberga taught in Administration and Counseling in the College of Education; her specialty was clinical
psychology. Ironically, she was currently teaching a course on "Intervention in Severe Behavioral Problems" when
she died. I never met her; one of my best friends took four courses from her, and my professors definitely knew
her. By all accounts, she was friendly, open, caring, helping, ready with a smile for everyone and, yes, I hear she
was attractive as well.

There was almost ZERO television news coverage of this horrible crime. As far as I have been able to find out,
only Channel 5 mentioned it. The rest of the stations were busy with wall-to-wall coverage of the city's "shock"
over the killing of an LAPD officer. (Compared to Glenda, the officer was lucky; he wasn't killed by someone he
knew and trusted, and he wasn't mutilated.) What's a mere professor compared to a cop? Ah, priorities.

Or perhaps the TV stations ignored the story because initial reports said the Dr. was killed in a "domestic dispute"
by an "ex-boyfriend." According to the victim's closest friends, it could not have been a domestic dispute, because
the killer was never her boyfriend; and even if that were true, what would it matter? The sheer numbers of
"relationship murders" are already at holocaust proportions. Choosing the wrong person for a relationship (or in
Glenda's case, for a friendship) seems to be an automatic invitation to murder, as far as the media is concerned.

Usually, the news of a horrific crime like this would go national. It didn't even go local. The fact that society seems
to assign no importance to the life and death of this remarkable human being only makes the pain worse.

The only good coverage was in the Pasadena Star-News and CSULA's own University Times. The Los
Angeles Times had something, but their story repeated the misinformation that it was a lovers' quarrel, and was
never corrected.

Apparently, the killer wanted a romantic relationship with the professor, feelings which she did not reciprocate.
Nobody will ever know for sure, but rejection may have been his excuse for doing the most petty and self-centered
thing he could have done, which was to deny her to everyone else by ending her life -- even by making her "ugly"
in death. What could have inspired the intense hatred that caused him to hack off his friend's head and put it in the
fireplace? Nobody will ever know. Was his rage fueled by alcohol or drugs? We may know that soon.

"Nobody will ever know." That's the double tragedy of this murder. By walking into freeway traffic one hour after
the murder, the putative killer cheated us. He will never suffer incarceration, questioning or guilt. We will never be
able to find out about his motives, something that could help us protect potential victims in the future.

Another tragedy is that the putative killer, a convicted felon with a history of violence, had been trying to turn his
life around. He had even gotten a master's degree, and Dr. Vittimberga, who was apparently aware of his past, had
been encouraging of his efforts to change the circumstances of his life. Obviously, in the end he failed, and took
other people with him. What about other felons and ex-convicts? Their numbers are increasing, and eventually
most of them will be back in society and will need help. But who risks helping them after something like this??

In the end, we are left with these painful questions:

Who can you risk befriending?
How do you tell ahead of time that a potential relationship is dangerous?
What do you do if you find out you're in a dangerous relationship? What do you do if you hear the words, "If you
ever leave me, I'll kill you"?
Are those words said more often than we realize? When we hear them, do we ignore them or think the utterer is
indulging in hyperbole?
Should women just carry guns everywhere from now on? Can any woman trust a male friend?
Does the fact that someone is attractive, friendly and open mean that they have to be regarded as an "easy mark" for
some asshole who wants to either control their life or take it? (Yes, the killer's death is also a tragedy. Yes, he was
a selfish asshole who should burn in hell.)
Why does "relationship violence", or violence by people you know, get such short shrift on society's list of
priorities? Why are people more afraid of being killed by strangers?
What about woman-on-man violence? Or man-on-man, or woman-on-woman? Do the same concerns apply?
Can you trust anyone not to "snap"???
Is it dangerous to try to help someone to "turn their life around"????? I mean....why risk it?? (I don't like asking
this question.)
Are we doomed as a society to withdraw into our shells of paranoia? Should we regard all relationships as
danger-fraught and potentially deadly??
How is it that, in our society, frustrated affection so often turns into insecurity, striving for domination, and
eventually violent, soul-destroying hate?
And what else could be the result of this but even more frustrated affection?

Perhaps someday we can try to find the answers together.

--30--

Apparently the ruling-class media were too busy exploiting the death of one of their hired goons to exploit the death of this unfortunate professor. So Tom Louie steps in to do their job for them -- their job of focusing our fears and anxieties on one another rather than on the capitalist class and their murder machines.

Rather than answering Tom Louie's mostly unanswerable questions, or even spending time thinking about them, it's much more productive on all levels to focus on stopping the capitalists from murdering us with their pollution, death-dealing austerity policies, and wars.

In all of this you forget that Glenda was a PERSON. A wondeful person, a great friend to me and to many others. Now she is gone. To state that we should ignore that or make light of it is horrible! We should use this as (a) an example of how to live a life fully and creatively--as Glenda did and (b) a call to action to figure out how we might better prevent murder from occuring. This needs to occur early on--this guy was very troubled--had a horrible past, and little help was available for him.

Morn Glenda's loss, don't discount it as "just another killing." To those left behind, there are no "just another killings." I will never get over the loss of my friend.

What is a jealous rage, except an expression of our own failure to be happy about being ourselves.

Americans do a great job of killing ourselves and each other. We have the kind of crime you'd expect in a poor country. Maybe within this rich country, there's a poor country.

Life is a search for meaning. I hope that we take from all death the knowledge that life is something to be shared and lived, not something to be consumed and destroyed.

The first thing you learn in LA is that life means nothing, unless it makes someone a dollar. LA is one of the worst.

Flee the place. Do not become a statistic. An earthquake or something is scheduled there for 2005 anyway.

Los Angeles new logo...I"t is the place where the dog pays to puke."

May the instructor see? Who knows.

Free aRt music and details of my exile by LA courts, forced injections at the LA VA and forced procedure with their admitting to edit of medical files. Au Revoir de bouqete de femme magnifique scholar.

Dr. Vittimberga was one of the kindest people I know, she always had a smile on her face and took the time to stop and talk to you whenever she saw you. She is one of the very few faculty members that I know that never had a bad thing to say about anyone. She was caring and compassionate, sincere and giving. For the last 6 months, I was no longer working in the department, but I was still on campus and I went up there daily, because that is where I felt my home was. She would stop and talk about certain things with me, always about her dog Fred, and other things that we talked about one evening last summer, when her best friend was out of town, and she was filling in for another professor who had just had surgery. She stayed after with Helen and me, and that night will always be special. Dr. Vittimberga was the ONLY faculty member who stood up for Helen and I, and that is something that I will always remember. It was comforting to me to see so many students at the wake and funeral. Some current, some I hadn't seen for years, and I know that they had all moved on with their lives, and yet they came together for her out of their love and respect for this incredible person. I was angered when I read things in the paper that I knew were not true, but no one seemed to care about that. I thank God that Dr. Vittimberga had a good friend like Margaret Garcia, who in what must be a most diffucult time for her, set the story straight. I find solace when I see it stated, "Those close to her deny any relationship..." For whatever short time I knew Glenda Vittimberga, she is someone who has changed my life from knowing her, and I will miss her greatly.

Dr. Vittimberga's death was a tragedy, no one denies this, but we cannot allow the circumstances of her murder to overshadow the accomplishments of her life. She devoted her life to the service of others and was a model of compassion for all to follow. As a former student I sat and listened to her stories of her experiences and the one that always rang clear was her genuinue respect for others and desire to help others. We can do more than just honor her memory, we can continue to do the work she was so passionate about - improving the lives of others.

I attended Jr. High and High School with Glenda. We are so saddened by her violent death, but proud of her many accomplishments and the wonderful things written about her. Perhaps our class prophecy will show that this was her chosen career. In our 1985 yearbook, classmates wrote, that in 1995, "Glenda is a world famous psychologist who has her own nationally syndicated column..." Seems she was on her way there. We hope that she accomplished what she wanted to. She will be missed.

Twelve years later, 11:00pm and Dr.Vittenberga pops in my mind as she does every now and then as I say my prayers. I was a student of hers, and admired her charisma, kindness, and beauty. As stated above, there was hardly any news of her murder. I couldn't believe that this happened to her. It seemed like a nightmare. Life can be so unfair! So sorry this happened to her and her family!! God bless her family and may she rest in peace away from this monster!