THE MASSACRE AT VIRGINIA TECH

Having spent many years as a college faculty member, and also having a daughter who lived on campus when she was in college, violence on college campuses has always been a particular concern of mine. I have read several books that discuss college campus violence, security measures, security systems, faculty training, and all other aspects of minimizing possible violence. There appear to be two questions that the media are focused on at this point. First, could more have been done to prevent this from happening? And second, did the university act appropriately after the first incident occurred early that morning?

With a student population of 26,000 plus a faculty and staff of another 10,000 people, there is bound to be violence. Comparing this to a city of this size, even the largest, best trained, and efficient police department could never have stopped this event from occurring. When a disturbed person like 23 year old Cho Seung-Hui decides to go on a killing rampage and can carry everything he needs in a backpack, how can this be prevented? We live in an uncertain world. This type of violence can happen anywhere, at anytime, for any reason. Have we come to the point that we need gun detectors on EVERY SINGLE BUILDING in the United States? And even if we did that, a disturbed person can open fire outside anywhere at any time. We saw this with the Tulsa shootings from an overpass on a turnpike. How can those types of incidents be stopped? They can only be stopped after there are deaths and the police can finally track them down and arrest them. It is impossible to watch and regulate 3 million people, 24/7.

However, this particular student should have been on a watch list. He was a senior and an English major. His writings in his Creative Writing class were so disturbing that his teacher turned them over to the counseling department. So was he being watched? The teacher obviously saw him as dangerous. Having taught Creative Writing for years, I have seen some disturbing writings, but never anything that indicated a psychopathic personality or I would have done the same as his teacher did. As this story continues to unravel, there may be many factors that will come to light that will help explain why he did what he did, although that will be of absolutely no comfort to the families of the victims. America is a violent nation. It always has been, and a study of our history clearly indicates exactly how violent we are as a people. I wish I had an answer to this problem, but I simply don’t. My concern is that we will give up yet more of our own personal freedoms in our desperation to be “safe” in an unsafe world. I do not believe it is possible to prevent everything that can happen in the modern world.

Regarding the Virginia Tech’s response to the events, I must say that I am very disappointed. From the moment of the first shooting at 7 am, the entire campus should have been on lockdown and all students notified to stay where they were, with doors locked. Security and police should have been immediately brought in – full force, and I also believe that this delay resulted in the mass murder that ensued. When the shootings occurred at the Fort Gibson School in Fort Gibson, Oklahoma, I was teaching at a college campus about 4 miles away and even though this had not occurred on our campus, we immediately went into lockdown mode. Virginia Tech administration should have assumed the worst – that there could be more than one killer on campus. Had they not learned anything from the Columbine school shooting? How could they possibly make the decision that it was an isolated incident? They keep saying that they were acting on what limited information they had at that time. Well, that is exactly my point. They did not have enough information and it is better to be safe than sorry. Lock down the campus and figure it out later is much better than allowing innocent people to continue about their day, believing that they were being protected by the security measures in place at their school. I believe in the days and weeks to come that their responsibility for making a very bad judgment call will haunt them. Personally, if I had a child going to school there, I would pull them out of that college based on this incident alone.

My heart goes out to the families of the victims of this horrible tragedy.