According to the Feb. 1 issue of the San Jose Mercury News, police, friends and fellow students are still struggling to find why anyone would plot a mass attack on De Anza College.

Theories and speculations are easily found in the news media and overheard in talks between students on campus. The assumption of Al DeGuzman, the suspect, being an anarchist developed in the last few days, mostly due to various websites that were either put up by DeGuzman or indirectly linked with him.

One of the websites directly attacks presidential contestant Al Gore and President George W. Bush and accuses them of “dishonoring the memories of the revolutionaries who took up the gun to assure that the soil we stand on would be free.”

According to the Webster New World Dictionary, Anarchism is “the theory that all forms of organized government interfere unjustly with individual liberty and are therefore undesirable.”

Some anarchists legitimate their beliefs by saying that anarchism is a philosophical theory which addresses a crucial moral dilemma: if a person is responsible for his actions, then it necessarily follows that autonomy of that individual should be all-encompassing.

People, thus, could not retain their autonomy while a government has the supreme authority over them. Anarchists argue that when faced with this dilemma between being ruled by an authority or having complete autonomy, they choose the latter.

This standpoint can lead to resistance to organized government in some form of terrorism, including armed attacks on public places or institutions.

Some students say, however, that it has yet to be seen whether DeGuzman is in fact an anarchist and was actually planning a terrorist attack on De Anza.

Some say the media hyped up on theories about the psychological and ideological profile of this De Anza student.

Rose Dungan, a morning student swimmer, says she thinks the media exaggerated speculations about possible motives DeGuzman might have had. “They expressed too many ifs,” she says.

Information about anarchism can be found in the publications “In Defense of Anarchism,” by Robert Paul Wolff, “The Psychology of Political Violence,” by Emma Goldman and “Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Anarchy,”by the Anarchist Media Group.