This essay explains thoughts that were going on in my head all night. There was mention over and over again of the Jefferson Davis statue. I did some research and found the shootings were not all that was disturbing to me and lots of other people.

Last night PBS broadcast a documentary about the U.T. Tower sniper shooting on August 1, 1966. It was shocking to everyone, but I was 10 years old and had more trouble than most adults in processing the mass murder. That was the worst mass shooting on a school campus with 16 people killed and over 30 wounded. It was unthinkable.
Fast forward to August 2015 and the U.T. Board of Regents pays a company called Vault Fine Arts Services $15,000 to remove (not restore) the Jefferson Davis statue on the South Mall of the U.T. campus because some uneducated folks found it to be offensive. The significance is this is hallowed ground where Austin police officer Billy Speed, age 22, was fatally wounded and several more people hid behind the statue, which saved their lives. The only memorial of the shooting ever placed on the campus by the University of Texas was “a pitiful granite marker hidden behind the Tower”.
On August 1, 2016, there was a 50th anniversary of the shooting to memorialize the victims and a statue was dedicated during the ceremony. This long overdue monument was paid for by the Cook Walden Funeral Home who had supplied funeral hearses to supplement the ambulances in order to remove dead and wounded bodies during and after the shootings.
The University of Texas should have paid for this monument decades ago and left the statue of Jefferson Davis alone, not just because it was placed there to honor American heroes, but also because it is in a sense a memorial to the victims of the U.T. Tower Shooting. Just look at the weasel words used as an excuse by the U.T. President:
The campus did not fully grieve before trying to return to normal 50 years ago, in part because society responded differently to tragedy back then, said UT President Gregory L. Fenves. “The new memorial and today’s remembrance is long, long overdue,” he said. (U.T. Honors Victims of 1966 Sniper Attack….---American-Statesman Staff).
The U.T. Board of Regents exercised their quasi-legal authority to remove the bullet ridden statue of Jefferson Davis and they should have it moved back to its original site. And that pitiful granite marker that was hidden behind the Tower should be placed at the base of the statue.