An anecdote from Laura Bohannan’s “Return to Laughter” is well known to anthropologists and anthropology students. Bohannan, who spent years living with the Tiv of central Nigeria, describes the Tiv prank of yelling “Snake!” to a blind man. Since the blind man doesn’t know where the snake is, he is terrified and does not know which way to run. The Tiv found this hilarious; Bohannan found it cruel.

On Wednesday, we were only told that that someone had “a weapon” and to go to where we felt safe. However, we didn’t know where or what the danger was. At the University of Texas, the shooter was sniping from a tower, so one needed to get into the nearest building. At Sandy Hook, the shooter was in the building, so one needed to get outside.

On Wednesday, I found out very quickly that the shooter was a man with a handgun in a black SUV on Forsyth Boulevard, but only because I bumped into someone who was nearby when it happened. Washington University needs to get this sort of information out rather than just yelling “snake.”