Should: Sunday night, a new Miss America was crowned. The pageant is usually marked by attractive women in fancy dresses and swimsuits answering questions, and ultimately getting a tiara and bouquet of flowers.

The winner may go on a little press tour, but then she fades into relative obscurity. However, this year’s winner has already been shrouded in controversy.

It wasn’t anything to do with how revealing her outfits were or how intelligently she answered her questions (anyone remember the “some places don’t even have maps” girl from a few years ago?). In fact, it wasn’t anything in her control.

Nina Davuluri (Miss New York) has been at the center of a race-fueled Twitter firestorm since she was crowned last weekend.
It’s a shame that she’s gotten this much attention for her race.

A quick Google search of the 24-year-old reveals that she attended Michigan State University and graduated with a degree in brain behaviors and cognitive science, was regularly on the dean’s list, earned a Michigan Merit Award and was part of the National Honor Society.

As Miss America, she will work with the Department of Education in Washington, D.C. as a spokesperson for STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics), according to a statement from the Miss America program.

That’s so impressive! Her accomplishments say way more to me about the kind of person she is than the fact that she’s Indian-American.

When people on Twitter can turn something as harmless as the Miss America pageant into something worth spewing hate over, we should really be ashamed of our society.

A strong, beautiful woman won a pageant and that’s all that should matter.

***

Shouldn’t: Twelve innocent lives were taken on Monday. I for one don’t know anything about the victims, while the suspect’s name has been plastered on headlines everywhere.

With mass shootings becoming a more and more regular occurrence, we as a society, have to stop paying so much attention to the perpetrators of these violent acts.

Our culture is already obsessed with violence. Primetime TV, video games and movies all have violence on display prominently all the time.

Indulging in fake violence by watching an episode of “Law and Order” or playing round of “Call of Duty” is one thing.
Glorifying real life killers is an entirely different thing. And it’s not OK.

Obviously the suspect accused of killing 12 in Monday’s Navy Yard shootings in Washington, D.C. hasn’t been portrayed in a positive light in the media at all, but the fact that he gets his 15 minutes of fame, while the families of the victims are left to pick up the pieces is despicable.

It seems like the names of these criminals get etched into the history books while the names of victims are just added to an ever-growing list and get lost in the masses.

The violence perpetuated by our culture only encourages more real violence.

We need to rethink they way we cover tragic events. I know we’re always curious about why it happened and getting into the suspect’s head to find out, but those who are truly deserving of our attention are the victims and their families.

It’s easy to think if we can figure out why one person committed a mass shooting we can prevent them from happening in the future, but the truth is motives are different every time.

Instead of focusing on the bad, let’s use this time to remember those who were lost.