Students dismayed by verdict

Hours after Gregory Pennington, 17, and Anthony Archer, 17, were found not guilty of the murder of fifth-year Mathematics graduate student Al-Moez Alimohamed, fellow graduate students tried to make sense of an unexpected verdict. "I have thought about it a bit and cannot seem to make myself happy with the verdict," Physics doctoral student Surya Ghosh said. "Of course the jury was not at fault," he added. "But the system seems to accept a difference between robbery with a gun and murder by a gun." Ghosh explained that as far as he was concerned, there was no concrete difference between the two crimes, because either way, the scenario ended with Alimohamed's death. "This is a tragedy," said Graduate and Professional Student Assembly Chairperson Victor Prince. "I'm particularly saddened by the role our justice system played in this devastation." Prince added that because more than half of all graduate students live off campus, the reality of the situation was terrifying enough even without taking the verdict into consideration. "It's bizarre to think that this kind of thing happens every day," he said. "If it's particularly sad, it might have a chance of making the evening news." Alex Welte, another member of the GAPSA executive board, said he agreed. "The verdict is a bad sign because it is as if society only considers them guilty of murder if they actually pulled the trigger," the Physics graduate student said. "It's a pity that we use such weak language to condemn what they did." Welte explained that until students really look closely at the fact that teenagers are committing crimes such as these, verdicts are not as much the issue as preventing the crimes before they happen. "We need to take action to stop these tragedies from occurring in our community," he said. "Maybe then, we won't have to cope with verdicts in these kinds of situations." Although many graduate students who were friends of Alimohamed attended the trial regularly, they were "too upset" to comment, according to Mathematics Graduate Chairperson Wolfgang Ziller.