One morning in April...
What is man to do, when the wheels come off the world?
By Jeff Emanuel Posted in Featured Stories | Special Features | Virginia Tech — Comments (50) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
The morning of April 16 began like almost any other on the campus of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, also known as Virginia Tech. Students got up, went to breakfast, went to class, or went out for the day, blissfully unaware of the fact that, within mere hours, the worst tragedy ever to strike an American institute of higher education would take place on those very grounds, with the slaughter of 33 individuals by a single murderous student.
Cho Seung-Hui, a 23-year-old resident alien from South Korea who had lived in the United States for nearly fifteen years, apparently awoke on Monday morning with one singular purpose in mind: to murder as many of his fellow students as he could, before taking his own life. His killing spree began in a dormitory, where, at 7:15 am, he gunned down an 18-year-old girl and a 22-year-old young man. Two hours later, Mr. Cho crossed the campus, entered an engineering building, chained the doors shut from the inside, and proceeded to empty clip after clip of 9mm and .22-caliber ammunition into the crowded classrooms, firing through doors, lining students up against the wall and executing them one by one, and aiming for anybody he could find in the hallways or in the rooms. Students were reduced to barricading doors with desks, playing dead, and even jumping out of third-and-fourth-story windows to escape the scene of massive carnage, which saw over sixty people injured and, when all was said and done, over thirty dead, including the killer himself.
Read on.
Mistakes made by the university’s administration and the police have been made known. These include the temporary lockdown of the dormitory where the first murders occurred which was lifted despite the lack of any progress toward catching the killer (police believed, without any evidence whatsoever, that he had “left campus”), and the lack of any effort to notify students of the first events of the morning, other than a cursory, uninformative email sent well after the fact, just to name two. More errors will come to light as further investigation is conducted; however, blame cannot lie solely with police any more than it can lie solely with the administration. While both are tasked with protecting the welfare and ensuring the safety of Virginia Tech’s student body, none could have imagined a murderous rampage of this magnitude in their wildest dreams – let alone adequately prepared for, and reacted properly to, such an event.
The very idea of such senseless killing is impossible to comprehend for the vast majority of people. What could have driven a young man to such lengths that he turned to the vicious slaughter of his fellow humans as an outlet? We will likely never know; however, the content of the note Mr. Cho left behind, and information from classmates and teachers, combine to paint the picture of a troubled young man who was alone, unhappy, and likely unstable – in short, a young man who displayed virtually all of the warning signs one would look for if trying to identify a potential perpetrator of such a vicious act. The fact that little or no action was taken to intervene in the life of Mr. Cho before this incident will cause endless second-guessing, both of the university’s faculty and of the student support system in place at Virginia Tech; however, the answer is not to look around for a target of blame, but to seek to prevent such a tragedy taking place in the future.
The grief being felt by the families of these students, professors, fathers, sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, and friends is impossible to measure, or to put into words. As Nikki Giovanni, a University Distinguished Professor at Virginia Tech, said, “We are sad today, and we will be sad for quite a while. We are not moving on. We are embracing our mourning.” Those involved must be experiencing so many different thoughts, feelings, and reactions, and will deal with many more in the future. How can people respond to such an unthinkable atrocity, to the act of such reckless hate? Many of us “on the outside” are currently experiencing our own forms of sorrow, rage, and disgust in response to this tragic event. Debates over gun control have been re-ignited, with special attention being paid to a bill recently voted down in the Virginia state House of Representatives which would have allowed students and employees to carry registered handguns on campus. A Virginia Tech spokesman praised the negative outcome at the time, saying that the bill’s defeat would “help parents, students, faculty and visitors feel safe on our campus.” On the contrary – I do not wish to enter into a debate on gun control and the second amendment here, but had this passed, and even one student in that building been carrying a weapon on their person, how many lives could have been saved?
Pundits, politicians, and commentators have offered their own observations on the situation, as well. On ESPN Radio’s Dan Patrick Show, baseball commentator and hall of fame player Joe Morgan lamented that, since this did not take place during football or basketball season, the students will regrettably be “forced to heal on alone” - and then had the audacity to compare this massacre of over thirty innocent men and women to the Don Imus scandal of the week before. This latter sentiment was echoed by Democrat presidential candidate Barack Obama, who directly compared Monday’s “physical violence” at Virginia Tech to the “verbal violence” of the since-fired radio “shock jock.” Nikki Giovanni's address at Tuesday's vigil included this statement:
We do not understand this tragedy. We know we did not deserve it but neither does a child in Africa dying of AIDS, but neither do the invisible children walking the night to avoid being captured by a rogue army. Neither does the baby elephant watching his community be devastated for ivory; neither does the Appalachian infant killed in the middle of the night in his crib in the home his father built with his own hands being run over by a boulder because the land was destabilized. No one deserves a tragedy.
These statements are amazingly insulting to the victims of this act, and no greater purpose is served by comparing them to baby elephants, and equating the senseless loss of life to the offending of sensibilities.
Not all of the disparate developments and responses provoked by this tragedy are negative, though. The Virginia Tech family has been brought together, thirty-three people short, in a way that only tragedy can accomplish. Ordinary people, going about their ordinary lives, with ordinary quibbles, complaints, and trials, have had their lives once again forcibly put into perspective, and the entire nation has been made aware, once again, how precious life is, and how quickly – and pointlessly – it can be stuffed out. From the ashes of such a horrific series of events have also arisen tales of unimaginable heroism, such as that displayed by Professor Liviu Librescu, a Holocaust survivor and émigré from Romania who used his body to block the door, while being shot, to give his students an opportunity to save their own lives. As Powerline’s Paul Mirengoff so aptly put it, “More than sixty years after [the Holocaust survivor’s] liberation, the rescued became the rescuer.” He continued:
In a 1974 speech in which he introduced returning POW John McCain to the CPAC convention, Ronald Reagan asked where we find such men. He answered, “We [find] them in our streets, in the offices, the shops and the working places of our country and on the farms.” Professor Librescu's heroism reminds us that we also find them among those who come to this country from other lands.
It is difficult to put into words a personal response, or a personal reaction, to such heroism – or to the unspeakable act of barbarism which forced such people as Dr. Librescu to become the heroes that they became. As for the rest of the students and faculty in the vicinity, who acted to save their own lives rather than sacrificing themselves to save others, no ill can be spoken. An individual cannot be faulted for fleeing from danger, or for being less than prepared to act heroically in the face of mortal peril. Not everybody is created in the mold of a Todd Beamer and his companions on United Airlines flight 93; nor are they made of the same stuff as a Prof. Librescu, who had faced death so many times in the past, before rushing to finally meet it so as to stave off its arrival for the young people under his charge. This is not to imply that any of these men and women are lesser people for their acts of self-preservation; however, one can only wonder how many lives could have been saved had there been an active resistance on the part of students who were being lined up against the wall and executed, or who were jumping out of the windows to avoid the fate of their peers.
One fact remains above all others: a person never knows how they will react to a given situation until they have been placed in it, and those who have not been in such a horrifying, gruesome situation as those students at Virginia Tech faced Monday morning should be very slow indeed to judge the actions of those who were there. We all hope that we would react like Professor Librescu did; however, as commenter "lafleur2" put it, “Great people do great things. I like to say that in a moment of terror like that I would do the same thing, but in my heart, I don't know if I would have the courage.” Human nature being what it is, I have a hard time believing that many of those people who made it through the ordeal, while their classmates were perishing around them, will not spend at least part of every day for the rest of their lives reliving, rethinking, and second-guessing the events of that morning, and their corresponding actions, and wondering if there was anything they could have done differently – or could have done at all – which, though it would have placed them at even greater risk, might have saved the life of even one of their fellows.
I know that I would. Every day.
So let us keep in our thoughts, prayers, and memories those who were lost, and those whom they left behind, and contemplate how best to react and to respond to this tragedy. Rather than stepping onto a soapbox and beating a political drum, a far more productive response to this event would be to follow the lead of a Virginia Tech student, present at the scene of the killings, who wrote an email to his family in which he recounted the story told him, amidst the events of the morning, of her own ordeal, when she looked out into the hallway of the building where the murders were taking place, and came face to face with Mr. Cho.
"The girl told me that when she saw the shooter, she saw his face. She saw that he was sad, and she told me that she actually felt sorry for him. This didn't hit me right away, because at that time, everything was very chaotic. But after returning home later in the day and realizing the magnitude of this incident, I began to think about the girl's story and how personal this really was. I realized that this girl literally stared down the barrel of a 9mm handgun, but she looked beyond it and saw the man holding it. She had mercy on this man as he was threatening her life with his very presence. For the rest of the day, the death toll climbed, and I kept thinking about the victims, their families, and how this would affect the world's view of the school that I call my home. But still more, I thought about the gunman."
Then this student, in an act which we can only look upon in wonder, requested of his family that they “say a prayer for [the killer] by name.” He continued:
“Say a prayer for his family by name. Do not curse him, though you may curse this event. As Christians – as people – we are called to be merciful. I want to be as merciful as the girl I sat with…today. I know I will be filled with this inevitable feeling of anger, and maybe hatred toward this man when they announce his name, but I will put that aside, and I will ask God to bless the family that survives him. God loves this man as much as He loves the people he killed. So let us not pray for the 32 victims and the single gunman, instead let us pray for the 33 human souls that met God today.”
That this student, who saw the carnage himself, who lost friends, colleagues, and acquaintances, and who had his life changed forever by events out of his control, can approach the aftermath of this event with such maturity, serenity, perspective, and forgiveness should send a strong, clear signal to us all. Let us never forget the events of this tragic morning in April, 2007 – and let us come together as a stronger society, and strive to be better, stronger individuals as a result.
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More errors will come to light as further investigation is conducted; however, blame cannot lie solely with police any more than it can lie solely with the administration. While both are tasked with protecting the welfare and ensuring the safety of Virginia Tech’s student body, none could have imagined a murderous rampage of this magnitude in their wildest dreams – let alone adequately prepared for, and reacted properly to, such an event.
They were made. For goodness' sake, two students were murdered, a lockdown of one building was implemented, and them was released becuase it was assumed by authorities that the killer was "no longer on campus" - and then the same guy killed 31 others across the campus.
Yes, they were made. Acknowledging that, though, is not the same as issuing blame - a point which I did try to make clear.
I think these are two different things.
I think mistakes are things that may have been done with good intentions and honest belief, but with hindsight may not have been the wisests of decisions.
In the end I think most people would agree that the assumption that there was no longer any risk to the students without much evidence to go on was a mistake. I think with 20/20 hindsight it is pretty obvious that the police/administration should have let students and staff know that a gunman had killed two people on campus that morning and was still at large. Closing campus at the time may have been seen as overkill, but with hindsight, not so much.
Blame is something different in this situation. I don't think anyone acted with malice with regards to the decisions they made, or even at this point negligience. I don't think it is time to start hiring lawyers, and start heading to court. I do think in these situations, where the gunman ends up dead-it is sort of human nature to look for somebody or something to blame and focus the anger on. I don't know that at this point anyone deserves that kind of blame, other than the gunman himself.
But I do think there were mistakes, and I would hope in the future those mistakes wouldn't be repeated. A gunman shoots two people at 7am, the campus should do more to protect students until either the gunman is caught or they actually have solid evidence to suggest he is no longer a threat. That is where I htink the ball was dropped.
I think it is fair to say they screwed up. And they screwed up in ways that could have been avoided without any knowledge of the future. I am amazed that it is apparently standard operating procedure to leave the rest of the campus operating after you discover two murdered students in a dorm. I would have been just as amazed to learn that a month ago.
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Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. - Milton Friedman
I agree, blaming the campus administration is 20-20 hindsight. I'm not referring to what anyone on this forum said, but just the comments in general which I've heard. It's sickening that everytime there is some killing or disaster, society holds the criminal blameless and then attempts to blame the authorities. 9/11 is another example where there were months of investigations and lawsuits of the police department, fire, walkie talkies used, in order to find which of the "good guys" were responsible.
It's sad. It also increases my respect for the first responders like police even more, because in their place I would be tempted to rip off my badge and say "To hell with this. Protect yourselves."
It seems to be based on a leftist idea that if big brother government does its job properly, then nothing bad will ever happen to us. The unspoken assumption is if the government had done its job, then the murders could have been prevented.
Some of the specific problems with the complaints about this incident are:
1) 20-20 hindsight. Does it really make sense to try to shut a campus down everytime there is a shooting? If so, how many days does it get shut down for? It appears the killer shot two people, went back to his room for two hours, then shot the rest. What if the killer had waiting in his room for two days or two weeks before going on the second part of his rampage -- would the university have been responsible for not keeping the campus shut down for those two days or two weeks?
These are tough questions but they aren't even being asked because this is all 20-20 hindsight: knowing that the killer went on a second phase of killing after a short pause, people say the campus should have been shut down after the first one.
2) Could the campus really have been shut down? Would it have been more dangerous to do so?
Two other unspoken assumptions are that this large campus could instantly have been "locked down", as easily as flipping a light switch, and that doing so would be totally good, not bad, and would have prevented the crimes.
Both of these assumptions are questionable. By the time police were investigating the first crimes, tens of thousands of students who live off campus were in the process of their morning commute. Lots of those on campus were in motion too, with morning rituals like meeting friends for breakfast and then going to classes together.
Even in this internet age, there is no magical communications system which would contact each of those tens of thousands in two hours. Some people wouldn't check.
The results would partially be chaos, with some class rooms shut and some not, students wandering and confused. Such a situtation might have helped the killer, rather than hurt. If students were in their class rooms before the "lock down" took place, they would have been right where the killer shot them.
shooting and the gunman is still at large. Sorry, but they went on assumptions here that it was an isolated incident, and those assumptions were incorrect. Campus shootings aren't so common that shutting down for a day until the gunman is either aprehended or safety is pretty certain is the safest move for all involved.
It's sickening that everytime there is some killing or disaster, society holds the criminal blameless and then attempts to blame the authorities. 9/11 is another example where there were months of investigations and lawsuits of the police department, fire, walkie talkies used, in order to find which of the "good guys" were responsible.
I think this is probably a common reponse when you can't really bring the real perpetrator to justice. Somehow having the guy that did it, end up dead leaves things a bit unsettled. Humans like to have a nice neatly closed loop, and when people kill others, and manage to kill themselves and escape justice, the loop just feels unclosed, and people seek to close it by blaming others.
Like I said I don't think anyone made lawsuit worthy mistakes at this point, but I absolutely think a shooting at 7am, gunman still at large leaves plenty of time to warn students and faculty and to close down business for the day if neccessary. At the very least the students and faculty could have been given the ability to make a decision regarding how much risk they wanted to assume while the gunman was still at large. But they weren't given that ability.
2) Could the campus really have been shut down? Would it have been more dangerous to do so?
I can't imagine a campus that large not having some kind of emergency lock down plan or shut down plan in place.
Also the fact that almost three hours passed between the first shooting and the second would have been more than enough time to at least warn students and faculty, and to lock down at least some buildings.
The problem was that safety was assumed with little evidence to make the assumption, and nobody was given the ability to decide for themselves if they wanted to risk it.
This killer waited over a month before shooting anyone, which was the legal waiting period between gun purchases. He started working out in the gym, taking some sort of medication, and tested the universities alert system by making bomb threats.
The killer showed strange and potentially violent behavior since at least 2005.
If the university had locked down the campus after the first shootings, (assuming that was even possible), is it likely that the killer would have given up forever? Or is it just as likely that he would have done the class room shootings a day or two later, as soon as the campus was opened again?
(A side argument would be that the police would catch the killer in time to stop the second shooting. However, since they say they still can't prove his was the dorm room shooter, that seems unlikely. The only reason the police can connect his gun to the dorm room shootings is because they confiscated it after the school room shootings.)
Would you shut down a town of 20,000? How about a city of 200,000? For an hour, a day, a week?
How big an area gets shut down, for how long, and what triggers the shutdown?
It's so easy to look back with 20/20 hindsight and blame the authorities.
an undergrad an Penn State University, and, while I can't possibly comment on the atmosphere in Blacksburg, I can tell you that the type of unity expressed by the students of VT is shared across the academic community.
There are banners hanging all over campus with information on how to help the victims' families, complete with markers to sign a personal note to the VT community. Yesterday, as the news was breaking, there was upwards of 500 students congregated around the big screen in the HUB, eyes glued to the screen, imagining the situation at our own campus. We could not begin to. In every class I attended today, I realized the possibility of someone entering the room and shooting 50 of my classmates. It really is a scary feeling.
However, some good may come of this. In our campus newspaper, there was an article detailing how Penn State's administration would react to such a situation, and I'm sure that similar reviews are being conducted nationwide. Hopefully campuses across the country will revamp their security protocols and take additional steps to preempt such an attack. Here at Penn State they are also revamping our text message alert system, usually reserved for concert info and class cancellations. The administration is urging everyone to sign up for this program, and many are expected to in light of the VT shootings. The system will allow for instant broadcast of information during a situation comparable to the one yesterday in Virginia.
My message to Virginia Tech is this: stay strong, and know that we all feel your pain, in one way or another.
"Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it." -Mark Twain
Mistakes were indeed made. Let's review:
1. The dorm murders: As we now know, the murderer entered the fourth floor of the dorm early Monday morning. Following a confrontation, he shot Emily Hilschel, who was probably not his girlfriend but may have been a woman he was stalking, and the RA Ryan Clark who tried to protect her. (He may have left and returned to the dorm after getting a gun from his room -- details are hazy).
We know a few facts here. For one thing, the killer escaped after the murders. For another, there were no eyewitnesses, since the early descriptions did not mention an Asian.
The police decided very quickly that the killer (once they realized it was a double homicide and not a murder-suicide) was Hilschel's boyfriend, who did not live on campus. They based this assumption on NOT ONE piece of evidence (eyewitness, physical evidence, etc.) Rather they seem to have jumped for the most desireable suspect. One who was white (possibly jealous of Clark, an African-American) and who was said to own guns etc and best of all was off campus. It all seemed to fit some kind of preconception. As a result they made the fatal decision not to shut down the campus and not to set off an alarm, but rather to pursue the suspect.
Which they did. Indeed they were interviewing him off campus when the shootings in Norris Hall began --two hours later.
2. The classroom shootings. The killer had obviously made plans to trap students inside Norris Hall so that he could shoot a specific group. It's been said that he was killing engineering students out of some animus -- it seems to me however that he had narrowed down his targets to students who were attending classes in Norris Hall at 9 AM (or maybe 8:30) on the second floor. He entered five classrooms at least, shot the teachers and many students. It seemed to be indiscriminate as to gender, race, etc. But a number of people described his demeanor as calm but purposeful and that he seemed to be looking for someone. We will find out eventually. It will be on his computer or in his notes. It was certainly planned.
The dorm murders could not have been prevented, obvously. But could the classroom shootings hvae been prevented if the police had not settled on their (wrong) susect so quickly? That is the question, and I think it is a fair one.
to go to the boyfriend was the correct one. Almost every crime I read about here at school involves a boyfriend or girlfriend or at least someone the victim knows. The police certainly shouldn't have assumed it was some crazy kid who wrote plays about pedophilia. So in that respect, I think the investigators were just following the natural line of inquiry, one that has proven to be fruitful many times before. Also, it was 7:15 in the morning, so why not assume it was a disgruntled boyfriend who stayed the night? That's a much more plausible explanation than the actual one we know now.
"Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it." -Mark Twain
I have no problem with them assuming someone else at first, I do have a problem with them not leaving open other possibilities. Two murders in cold blood in a dorm should be considered an extraordinary circumstance. I just can't fathom shutting down classes for the morning to sort things out would be that horrible. The Police and University made an assumption, an assumption that may have caused many people to lose their lives.
But the more that is heard about the shooter, the more upset I get. His roommates were on CNN last night and said the cops had been called in twice because of stalking girls. Professors had reported his writings to the school and police. That other students were not comfortable with him in their class and he was tutored privately. There are also reports that he had vandalized the dorm and even set a fire. I know hindsight is 20/20, but he gave them a lot of warning signs.
Watching the coverage, it has made me upset. You wonder if someone had stepped up, maybe this could have been avoided. Had the police filed a charge, or a girl taken out a restraining order, would he have passed the background check for the gun? What if he had been kicked out of school or the dorms for his stalking? What if someone had notified his parents of his writing and depression? We all want answers to a tragic event that I don't think any of us will ever be able to comprehend.
The dorm victim's boy friend would have been one of the best sources of information about her, and during questioning he could have pointed police to other suspects like Cho. There are several reports of Cho stalking women. It still isn't clear if he stalked the woman killed in the dorm room, but if he did her boy friend would have likely known about it. So by interviewing her boy friend and room mates, police were following the angle mostly likely to lead them to other killers as well.
> But could the classroom shootings hvae been prevented if the police had not settled on their (wrong) susect so quickly?
The police didn't settle on anyone. The bodies were barely cold and they had just started investigating.
It's unreasonable to expect that the police would instantly solve the crime by identifying Cho as the criminal. In fact if Cho hadn't killed the other people, the police probably never would have realized that Cho was the dorm room killer.
How could they have? He took the weapons with him. The female victim's room mate said the victim didn't know Cho, and the room mate had never heard his name or seen him.
It sounds like there are no living eye-witnesses to the dorm room killings, and police can't legally prove Cho did it. All they can say is that Cho's gun was used.
I wasn't saying that they should have ID'd Cho specifically for the shootings. Obviously, the shooter was a John Doe at this point. Or even a Jane Doe, theoretically.
The question was, should they pursue the likely suspect, or should they assume the killer was still on campus and at large having already killed two people in an incredibly violent shooting?
If the latter they should have closed the campus down and issued warnings that the killer was theoetically still on campus, armed & dangerous.
Settling on the boyfriend meant a whole lot of contrary assumptions -- that the killer was no longer on campus (since he attended Radford not VT) and that since it was "domestic" meaning limited to a relationship there would be no more killings.
Recall that for much of Monday, hours after the Norris Hall shootings established that their hypothesis was probably wrong, the police remained wedded to the idea that the first killings were domestic. Among the explanations floated were that there were two killers -- the boyfriend at the dorm and the Asian at Norris Hall who were some kind of confederates, or that the events were completely unrelated.
Even after they reluctantly gave up the boyfriend as a suspect, they remained wedded to thelief that the first shooting was domestic. Now the Asian classroom killer was also the boyfriend in the domestic killing. As we know now, of course, the first killings were also stranger killings and not the result of a relationship gone bad.
What this tells me is that they made up their minds very early and did not consider any other alternatives. They tried to make developments fit the hypothesis, rather than changing their hypothesis to fit facts. This is not good police work. They are supposed to test their hypotheses -- what if it isn't the boyfriend?
I haven't seen evidence that the police "made up their minds". Interviewing the friends and relatives of the victim is standard procedure, even if all of them are believed to be innocent. It's like a web, or a bunch of expanding circles. Each of the first five people the police interview might lead them to another person to interview, which might lead them to more people and so on.
One of the best ways to find a strange killer in a situation like this is to ask the victim's boyfriend and roommate if anyone stalked her. If Cho had, that might have instantly led to him.
I don't see that the police did anything wrong, although I understand the argument that the university should have sent a message earlier, and tried to shut classes down, etc. As I said in other postings, a lockdown might have been impossible / too late, the lockdown might have caused more harm than good, and the killer might have just waited a day or two until the campus was reopened. I'll make my mind up about that once the facts are available. In fact an independent commission is going to investigate.
A pint of sweat, saves a gallon of blood. --Gen. George S. Patton
I would expect security cameras will be installed at Virginia Tech. Maybe he still could have killed the 30, but they also might have been able to track his movements and get him after the first attack if there had been security cameras.
You’re a persistent cuss, pilgrim.
John Wayne to Jimmy Stewart in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
cameras are less proactive than reactive. They might have been able to retrace his steps afterward but it is unlikely they would have been able to literally sit there and watch him run across campus.
You make my point. Security cameras might have been able to retrace his steps after the first shooting, and before the second shooting. Unfortunately this tool was not available to them.
You’re a persistent cuss, pilgrim.
John Wayne to Jimmy Stewart in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
and ask, "could anything have been done"? I think the second guessing as to if anyone could have "recognized" signs, or intervened prior is very unrealistic.
Aside from two aspects, buying the gun and some of the strange plays he had written..why would anyone single this guy out as different? Jeff, your description and the medias description of this guy could be Joe high school or college student anywhere in this country.
Are we going to have an army of counselors ready to intervene the minute a despondent youth is identified?..
Maybe, but we'd be creating that dreaded "state" we all know so well.
I think it was said best in a prior diary..people kill people. Not to be cold..but what really can be done?
" in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years."
Abe Lincoln
Moe and I were talking about this yesterday while reading the play Mr. Cho wrote, which is available online. The point I made - and tried to touch on in this already-too-long post - was that there is, like the head of VT's English department said, an incredibly blurry line between a person being an "individual," a "nonconformist," and exercising "creativity," and a person being a borderline psychopath whose art (in this case, his creative writings) is a predictor of his behavior.
The stuff he wrote can be seen (perhaps slightly less graphic) in the "plays," creative writings, and other "art" at any college or university, and it's incredibly difficult to determine what is art, and what is a signal that the person is a threat to his peers - and attempting to treat every person and every case like the latter is simply not an option, for a host of reasons (the least of which being that it is simply wrong).
my point wasn't to single you out...more that I just don't get the broad "could we have done something" thought process.
I just think that, terrible as it sounds...this stuff happens. Nothing will change that.
" in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years."
Abe Lincoln
> I just think that, terrible as it sounds...this stuff happens. Nothing will change that.
I largely agree with that. I see that as being the starting point, the initial attitude after something like this, instead of assuming it could have been prevented, and this is someone besides the criminal's fault. Support the police until proven otherwise. Investigate in a spirit which respects that they risk their lives for us every day.
my first exposure to mass murder was Berkowitz (was only 4 at the time of Speck)...were they nuts?...probably. Has any work been done to understand that type of behavior?..Sure...has it stopped it...NO! Can you stop someone that is intent on doing something this crazy? I think not.
Live life the best you can, and be prepared for craziness.
" in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years."
Abe Lincoln
The fact that little or no action was taken to intervene in the life of Mr. Cho before this incident will cause endless second-guessing, both of the university’s faculty and of the student support system in place at Virginia Tech; however, the answer is not to look around for a target of blame, but to seek to prevent such a tragedy taking place in the future.
There will be extensive discussions of gun control laws and gun carry laws. But these discussions completely miss the point. Cho was a resident alien on a student visa. According to reports this this morning (Tuesday) faculty members have had serious concerns about his mental health for some time. Some say he has been receiving counseling for more than a year.
According to these same reports, there was nothing the anyone could do. That as far as I am concern is pure BS. He is a foreign national, send him home. They should have taken that action last year. Cancel his visa, flag his passport as a mentally unstable individual who had dangerously violent fantasies. Keep him out.
No one is talking about the real problem here. Liberalism has become a sickness. The academic community, the vanguard of liberal activism doesn't just allow questionable foreigners into the country, they seek them out. The problem is liberal relativism, everybody is ok, there are no bad people, only bad situations. If we could just get all the crazies and terrorists here, we could help them understand us, and we could undertand them, then everyone could live together in peace. Wrong.
We live in a dangerous world. But liberals in academia and politics can't recognize the danger. Look at Nancy Pelosi's visit to and endorsement of Syria's terrorist sponsoring government. She is convinced it is all just a misunderstanding. If only we could understand one another. Liberals have a blind spot terrorists can fly a plane through.
What we have here is an indictment of liberal policies especially in academia, and of our immigration laws. If we want to protect our children from attack by foreign students who are unstable or embrace violence against Americans, then what we should be talking about is toughening our immigration laws. We should be talking about taking back our control of colleges from liberal administrators hell bent on social experimentation. We should replace liberal legistlators and their socialist internationalist idealogy with nationalists who recognize the unique role America has to play in the world. But we won't.
America's colleges will be a safer place when liberals love their children more than they hate conservatives.
My prayers go out for the families of the victims, and for the wounded still clinging to life. Period.
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> He is a foreign national, send him home.
Cho was home. He came here legally at 8 years old with his parents. He was an American.
My understanding is that he was a resident alien. Unless some new information came out, he came over legally but was not a citizen.
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He lived here since he was 8 years old. His parents were here. It was all done legally. America was his home.
in all these mass murders is the perpetrators were suffering from serious mental illness.
We need to change the way we handle this severe health issue. Currently, public safety is dependent on a person who cannot think rationally to commit themselves for treatment.
The seriously mentally ill are not at fault for their condition. Schizophrenia and other serious mental illnesses are caused by dysfunctions of brain processes. These people cannot just snap out of it as people can with conditions like normal depression.
Cho Seung-Hui’s was identified with a mental health problem and referred to get treatment. The treatment he did receive is currently not publicly known but was obviously not adequate to allow him to safely remain in the community.
He should have been committed to a hospital, put on medication, confirmed doing better, released, and have a health care worker follow up with him few times a week to check his progress. This level of care and protection of public safety does not currently exist.
The rights of the mentally ill currently take precedence over the safety of the public. We would rather leave seriously ill people to suffer on their own and remain a threat to the public rather than take responsibility for someone who cannot think rationally for themselves. This is the real reason we have and will continue to have these rampage killings.
people that commit mass murder suffer from mental illness?
I'd also be curious as to how we "handle" the snap factor that seems to occur in some of these cases.
I don't think we can prepare for certain things.
" in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years."
Abe Lincoln
respond differently to people behaving like this person. We need to commit people like this against their will, give them medication, when the symptoms improve released them to out patient care where a health care work follows up with him a few times a week to monitor progress and respond appropriately if symptoms return.
Why do we rely on someone out of their mind to do the right thing and commit themselves?
The killer was forced to visit a mental hospital because of his behavior. He reportedly had mental illness drugs, meaning someone may have been treating him. Ultimately there weren't enough signs to keep him in the hospital forever. To be locked up, a person must be shown to be a danger to others. Even though Cho talked about violence a lot, up until the shooting he never acted violently against anyone, or even threatened them directly.
We need to change the standard for commitment to be more than the simple question " are you planning to hurt yourself or others?". There needs to be some way we can ask enough questions to identify violent thoughts and compulsions. The current standard does NOT protect the public.
Secondly we need better outpatient care for people released from mental hospitals to assure they stay on their medication and can safely remain in the community. This doesn't happen because nobody wants to pay for this level of care.
The quality of mental health care in the country must change if we have any hope at preventing the next rampage killing.
You are talking about enabling a huge medical bureaucracy with the power to imprison, medicate, and stigmatize anyone they consider unfit.
Welcome to the Brave New World.
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Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. - Milton Friedman
" in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years."
Abe Lincoln
He should have been committed to a hospital, put on medication, confirmed doing better, released, and have a health care worker follow up with him few times a week to check his progress. This level of care and protection of public safety does not currently exist.
Hindsight's 20/20.
Some people are evil. They act funny, but they can function. Sometimes they go postal.
The murderer, whose name I will not repeat, may or may not have been "mentally ill". And that's a pretty broad category. Maybe someday there will be a way to screen for "tendency to go on murderous rampage", but I doubt it.
It may turn out that this guy's actions were informed by some religious or political radicalism, rather than the personal demons you suggest.
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points to a seriously mentally ill person. Healthy people don't just do these kinds of things. All these mass shootings are from people with serious mental illness. This is often only minimally identified and quickly hushed up as the mental health profession and the media worries about a back lash against the mentally ill.
There is a big distinction between "mentally ill" and "seriously mentally ill". Mentally ill is a general term that includes "personality disorders" which are relatively minor problems with which the public is more familiar. Serious mental illness are brain dysfunctions and have nothing to do with circumstance and the character of the individual.
While a seriously mentally ill person is off medication they should not be trusted with their own health and the safety of the public.
We can do something about this problem. We just don't want to.
...like that young student's e-mail you cited, I am shamed. I pray that I am one day able to attain a similar level of Grace, a similar capacity for forgiveness. Reading or hearing the Gospel is one thing - living it is something else all together.
(If you could provide a link to that e-mail, I'd much appreciate it.)
We all witnessed a similar sort of Grace and forgiveness after the Amish school shootings last year, when that small, grieving community prayed with the family of the gunman.
Witnessing acts such as this reaffirms my faith.
Thank you very much for this post.
Vaya con Dios.
...I sent it to the email address you registered with.
JE
This is one of the saddest things I ever read. Not just that people got shot. It's that a whole group of people just laid on the floor, let the killer shoot them one by one, then when he left the room the survivors just laid there, and continued laying there and playing "dead" when the killer came back and "continued to shoot everyone over and over".
Following the gun was a man.... I quickly dove under a desk — that was the desk I chose to die under. He then began methodically and calmly shooting people down. ...he took his time in between each shot and kept up the pace, moving from person to person... Shot after shot went off... I played dead...Sometimes after a shot, I would hear a quick moan...
After some time... he left. The room was silent except for the haunting sound of moans... I [propped] my head up just enough to mutter in a harsh whisper, "play dead. If he thinks you're dead then he won't kill you."
Shortly after, the gunman returned... I continued to play dead. He began unloading what it seemed like a second round into everyone again — it had to be the same people. There were way more gunshots than there were people in that room. I think I heard him reload maybe three times... they were long pauses. He continued to shoot everyone over and over... I had come to accept my death
The cops ... eventually ... came in and told us to walk out if we could. I got up and put my hands up. Just me and that one girl next to me got up.
No, in our politically correct universe, you're supposed to kneel submissively for execution, and calmly tell the shooter how you feel his pain!
I don't think Jeff or anyone thinks that the administration should have foreseen the future. I do, however, think that the administration made a terrible mistake in allowing students to attend class after two murders were committed on their campus and the killer had not been found.
You're asking them to have known the future, and to have instituted temporary martial law.
Pointing fingers of recrimination is patently unfair.
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