The Roanoke Times: RoundTable

Comments

# 1

[August 30, 2007 2:40 PM]

Lori

I have to respectfully disagree with the finding that an earlier warning would have made a difference in the number of casualties, and there are two reasons why.

First, if the same warning to "take caution" had gone out immediately after the first two shootings, would that have changed the behavior of the students that morning? At that point in time, students would have considered a classroom to be a safe place. If the message contained information that the shootings occurred at a dormitory, they would have likely felt that the classroom was indeed a safer place than the dormitories. In reality the only people who might have chosen to stay away from campus would have been those students who live off campus, and faculty members. Nevertheless, since an event like this had ever happened in neither Virginia Tech nor general collegiate history, such a warning may have well gone unheeded. Even if it was heeded, Cho may very well have simply gone to more classrooms in order to kill the same number of people if there were fewer students per classroom during the attack.

Second, if the warning had gone out, been heeded, and the resident student population had remained in the dormitories, would Cho have not simply changed his chosen venue for the massacre to where the students were at the time? After all, he would likely have received the warning as well, and would have known exactly where to find students to kill. They may not have been the same students, but students still would have died. Since we have no clear motive as to why he killed the ones he did, it may not have made any difference to him whether he cleared a floor of classrooms or a floor of dorm rooms.

I also respectfully disagree with the finding that broader investigation of the first two shootings by the campus police could have prevented the larger shooting spree. My understanding is that they had little or no reason to suspect Cho at that time, so he would not have been singled out for detention. Even if he had, it would have been difficult for law enforcement to apprehend him in the limited time between the two shootings. He was not in his dorm room, nor in a classroom, nor likely even on campus at the time since this is when he is placed at the post office mailing the NBC package. Since there are so many routes into and out of the Tech campus, especially by foot, there would have been no way to set up any checkpoint system to look for him. The sheer manpower it would have taken to search all possible dorms, buildings, classrooms, and the area surrounding the campus would have been completely unavailable to the law enforcement officers on the scene in the two hour window between the two events. Furthermore, nothing at the scene of the initial shooting would have given police any indication that the second event was even a possibility, so why would such an intensive campus-wide manhunt even been organized at that point? To all appearances, the initial shootings were a domestic crime, not part of what was to later occur. In my opinion, the campus law enforcement did nothing wrong during the initial investigation given the lack of evidence at the original crime scene and lack of historical precedence for the second shooting spree itself.

Where could this have been prevented? In this case I think that early detection and adequate treatment of Cho's psychological problems would have been our best bet. I do not blame the practitioners and professors who interacted with Cho. In all honesty, they did what they could to bring him to the attention of the appropriate authorities for intervention. Rather I think the system was more at fault. Understaffing has always been a chronic issue, which really translates into a funding issue on the part of the state and the university. Inadequate training for the appropriate implementation of privacy laws, which themselves have an inherent ambiguity, are very much at fault. Lack of adequate reporting to state and federal databases is certainly at fault. These are things that are now clear in hindsight and are being corrected (hopefully). However, we need to take a more proactive stance in examining ways that people like Cho can fall through the cracks of our mental health system, and fix those cracks before they happen.

Lastly, I would point a finger squarely at all of us as a society. Over and over and over again we see that kids like Cho, like the Columbine killers, like almost every other school shooter in recent history, have identical stories. These are children who are marginalized by other students (and sometimes by teachers and parents as well). They are humiliated, picked on, cast out of social groups, and generally made to feel both unwanted and defective. If we are to solve the problem of school shootings then we need to solve this problem in our society. It is our responsibility as adults, as parents, as educators, as members of the media and entertainers, and as politicians to create a society which does not allow children to be socially estranged and frustrated to the point where they feel they must either take their own lives, the lives of others, or both. That ultimately will be the only way we will prevent tragedies like this from occurring, and we owe it to every single person who has lost their lives in this tragedy and in others to do our very best.

# 2

[August 30, 2007 5:00 PM]

Henry

While we are playing Monday morning QB

What if the gunman hadn't killed anyone? If we knew everything we should know, would he be locked up? If he had been arrested and locked away, what would we be saying? Would we be lamenting the decision to lock up people for being different?

That's why you can't play this game in hindsight.

# 3

[August 30, 2007 8:17 PM]

Joe Hokie

Lori gets it. Some other do, too. This was a random act by a disturbed individual and the VT administration and police acted on WHAT THEY KNEW AT THE TIME! How anyone can point a finger and call for Dr. Steger to resign or take "responsibility" is beyond me.

From the last time this was discussed, I again offer my comments:

Please, somewhere in the process, ask some hard questions of the critics who are clamoring for someone to blame for April 16. There are those who believe that locking down the campus would have prevented Cho from going on his spree in Norris. Please ask those people how they know this would have stopped him from acting somewhere else or at some other time. Ask how they know he wouldn't have begun shooting people in his residence hall had he been caught there in the "lockdown." Ask how they know he wouldn't have gone off in Squires or the library or another location that he was moved into at the time of the lockdown. Ask how they know he might not have postponed his actions by a day or two when he was blocked from his original plan to go to Norris Hall.

Then ask just how the campus was supposed to be "locked down" and by whom. The police were busy investigating an active crime and pursuing a suspect (based on what they knew AT THE TIME!). Were the VT Police supposed to drop everything and rally out to barricade the campus streets? Were they supposed to request mobilization of all the New River police departments, plus the State Police, to shut down the university? Do the critics know that this could have been accomplished in a timely manner that would have stopped everything before 9:30 am? How do the critics know this would have been effective? Look back a year to "Morva Day" when students, despite warnings and descriptions of William Morva, still walked around campus and town wearing a tie-dyed t-shirt and khaki shorts. Then ask the critics why they aren't marching on the Roanoke City Hall, demanding that Roanoke be locked down whenever there is a shooting -- after all, what's good for protecting Virginia Tech ought to be good for any other locality in the state.

After you have analyzed the university and the state reports to the nth detail, after you have written about how the students are handling all this (lucky them, they got a bit of a break and were gone for the summer), then take a look at the faculty, the Blacksburg residents, and especially the staff people who have had to deal with, work with and around, and have had little escape from the events of April 16 -- ask them how life is. A lot of people are going above and beyond to make things happen, support everyone else, and deal with hearing complaints from Monday-morning quarterbacks who have the benefit of hindsight and lots of after-the-event details to "analyze" what should have been done.