As I was reading a summary of this year’s normally entertaining White House Correspondents Dinner, President Bush’s decision to not perform his yearly self-standup deprecating routine in the wake of the Virginia Tech killings stood out to me. No major newspapers saw the choice as particularly newsworthy.

But it had great importance. Three years ago, at the similarly comical Radio and Television Correspondents’ dinner, a video showed President Bush rummaging under furniture in the White House, saying, “Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere.” The video caused only a minor uproar.

How could those two divergent reactions coexist? How could society accept this presidential double standard by which he mocked the justification for one set of deaths (the war) but didn’t make a single joke after a different set of deaths (VT)?

College campuses have had similarly strong reactions to VT. For example, Loyola Maryland students organized a memorial with hundreds of bodies spelling out “VT” on their lacrosse field.

I do not condemn President Bush or the Greyhounds from Loyola Maryland. Their motivations emerged from compassion. But I want to look at some explanations for why people reacted with overwhelming compassion to this tragedy and not to others.

I see at least two straightforward explanations for the discrepancy. At VT, the innocence of the victims, who were just performing their daily college routines, made students feel closer to the tragedy. The repetitiveness of the Iraq war, and the suddenness of the VT shootings, could have also contributed. But these explanations seem to only touch the surface of the larger issue.

Maybe society finds it easier to mourn when it knows it has no culpability. Most agreed that the Blacksburg, Va., murders constituted a madman’s deed. But when anyone died in Baghdad, the country had to admit some blame because the war was launched with popular support. So President Bush didn’t attend soldiers’ funerals. Hundreds of Loyola Maryland students haven’t formed a memorial for fallen soldiers.

I see at least one more fundamental reason for this discrepancy, though. Americans valued the lives of citizens more than the lives of soldiers and the lives of all Americans more than the lives of non-Americans. Over 3,300 soldiers and 60,000 Iraqis have died in Iraq. More horrifically, the genocide in Darfur has killed over 400,000 Africans. This country has seen very few memorials for those lives lost.

I have noticed these discrepancies in my reactions. I wept over Blacksburg, yet haven’t shed a tear about Baghdad. This response conflicted with the Jesuit principles that I, and many at Loyola, consider fundamental. Am I really a “man for others” when my emotions reveal me as a man only for the others to whom I can relate?

This line of questioning cannot be solved just by lining up on a football field or politely abstaining from making jokes because of sensitivity.

Maybe things might’ve just been better if President Bush had told some cheesy jokes after all.