March 13, 1964. 3:30 AM. Twenty-eight year-old Catherine “Kitty” Genovese returns to her home in Queens after her shift as a bar manager. After parking the car at a train station, she starts to walk the hundred feet to her apartment building in darkness. Just as Kitty reaches the glow of a streetlight outside her building, a man attacks her, stabbing her once. Kitty cries out, and the man is frightened away. Minutes later, he returns, stabs her again, and again disappears. Kitty manages to crawl inside one of the doors, but the assailant returns once more, and stabs Kitty a final, fatal time. More than a half-hour has passed since the first attack, and 38 of Kitty’s neighbors on Austin Street watched some or all of the assault.

None called the police.

Genovese was not an isolated case, recent victims such as Breann Voth have suffered in similar circumstances. So how could otherwise good people allow such a thing to happen? Pyschologists have a name for the phenomenon: “diffusion of responsibility”, a condition where people in groups assume that others, more qualified than themselves, will take action. This effect, a component of “bystander apathy”, grows stronger as the group grows larger.

I think of Kitty Genovese and the concept of diffusion of responsibility quite often, and not just in the morbid way of watching a violent crime and doing nothing about it. I also think about it in terms of voter apathy, media bias, corporate excess, government corruption, and any other situation where we’re all tempted to say “there’s nothing I can do about it, someone else will take care of the problem.”

Politicians are supposed to be public servants, acting solely in our interest. Yet lobbyists seem astonishingly successful. Corporate officers are supposed to bow to the shareholders. But unless that shareholder is Carl Icahn, CEO deals for tens of millions in annual compensation will often go unchallenged. The press is supposed to act as a watchdog. Yet no one is held accountable for a bogus war with a constantly shifting rationale.

I certainly don’t claim to have the answer for any of these problems, but I strive not to ignore them and trust that someone else will do all the work. If there comes a time when I can speak up and make things better, in whatever small way, I will try to be there to do it, as I hope others will.

We all deserve nothing less.

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