These men’s lives were just as valuable as the women’s lives.

In the annals of news I have personally covered, I have rarely been so embarrassed by some members of my own sex as I have been this week, in the wake of the spree killing that took the lives of six young students attending the University of California – Santa Barbara.

Among the most egregious examples of inanity offered as sophisticated opinion on this tragedy:

These pundits would like to ignore several salient points in their mad scramble to promote their toxic worldviews. However, they seem to ignore the fact that four talented young men, guiltless of any race or gender sin these women decry, are dead.

I would like to take a moment to remember them.

Christopher Ross Michaels-Martinez

Michaels-Martinez was a 20-year-old sophomore at UC Santa Barbara. His parents told the LA Times that he was planning on becoming a lawyer and would soon be going abroad to London. As well as an avid reader, Michaels-Martinez is also remembered as an impressive athlete who played soccer, football, basketball.

Additionally, Michaels-Martinez was the only child of two attorneys. His mother is a deputy district attorney and his father, Richard Martinez, is a criminal defense attorney who is now being featured on mainstream media for his gun control advocacy.

If my son were slaughtered, my sanity would be shattered. If this is what Martinez needs to do to get through this horror, so be it.

Cheng Yuan Hong

When he was killed, we lost someone special.

Armin Samii, who was the teaching assistant in a class that Hong took as a high school student at the University of California at Berkeley, tells PEOPLE, “He was extremely bright. He outperformed 90 percent of his class of college undergraduates while he was still in high school (as the sole high school student in the class). He was always curious, always asking questions and always helping other students. I can only imagine what he would have achieved once he graduated.” “James was a nice guy,” Hong’s classmate Andrew Pagan tells PEOPLE. “I remember his laugh in class and his voice was unnormally deep for his figure. He had such a rich laugh. Anyone who heard it would remember it without a doubt.”

George Chen

George Chen’s parents wrote a message of love to their son using chalk outside the Capri Apartment building where he was stabbed to death last week. George Chen, 19, was the oldest of two sons. He grew up in San Jose and got good grades. He was studying engineering. The Chens said they expected to pick him up in three weeks to take him home for summer. Now they are having a difficult time realizing he is gone. Chen’s mother and father said the University of California Santa Barbara has set up a fund for a memorial or scholarship. They like the idea, they want to honor their son’s memory.

Weihan Wang

On Monday, Wang’s bereft parents, Jinshuang “Jane” Liu and Charlie Wang spoke exclusively to NBC Bay Area before heading to Santa Barbara to be with the parents of the other slain victims. “He was supposed to have come home for the summer soon,” Liu said, speaking from her doorstep, her words choked with emotion, her hands often covering her heart. Liu said that her only child – a basketball player who graduated from Fremont Christian School and who was studying computer engineering at UC Santa Barbara – had already found another apartment and planned to move with his friends next semester. …Wang’s plan, his mother said, was to return to the Bay Area on June 12, head out on a family trip to Yellowstone National Park two days later, and celebrate his 21st birthday in July. He eventually wanted to start a business with his friends. Wang’s mother said her son was very close with the other two young men stabbed in the apartment: 19-year-old George Chen and 20-year-old C.H., both of San Jose.

I have no doubt the two young women who died, Veronika Weiss and Katherine Breann Cooper, were equally as special in their lives as these men were.

However, the deaths of these young men is no less painful to bear and their loss is to be mourned, too.

Prayers for the spirits of all these young people and the consolation of their families.

(Featured image of Chen’s mother at memorial; Santa Barbara News Channel 3 video)



