Christ on a Crutch

:(

This is indeed very tragic :( ---

I don't know why it has happened or what the motive behind it was. But I do think that the things maybe could have been handled a bit better by the university & the police.

According to my info on this, the university didn't inform the students :( - when the first shooting happened :( --

I hope that maybe, just maybe, the authorities and the people in charge will learn from this so a tragic & frightening thing like this doesn't happen ever again...
 
in their defense, it is indeed a fucking huge campus (28.500 people? dedicated airfield? sjeezes...). kinda hard not to know that the first shooting wasn't an isolated incident.

after 2 hours you'd expect the shooter to have run away, no?
 
In any case, 32 killed and up to 30 wounded?

That dude must've carried loads of ammo.
 
Bow down anti-gun lobbyists! I bring you an irefutable argument: Alien 3.

Give guns to prisoners! The free people have the right to defend themselves against those pesky deer and their squirrely minions of death! Free drugs with every purchase!
 
Yes, I know it has a huge campus (with about 30,000 people).
However, I don't know why the university's PA system wasn't used to warn people after the first incident at about 7AM happened ?

And yes, I agree, these things can be hard to call. And I do also partly agree that anyone at all simply couldn't have realized that Cho (as we know how is the gunman or killers name) would return.

I just hope that the police etc. have learned something, but hopefully there won't be a next time...
 
I believe that many people are mislead into a discussion about weapons because it is a hot button issue. For the issue to degenerate to the point where the question of students at an educational facility should be armed for protection is seriously considered indicates a massive failure at some previous point. I believe that Virginia Tech failed immensely in not identifying and trying to get help for Seung Cho before this incident. If Virginia Tech acted anything like what I can recall from my experience there, every indication was likely ignored.

Apparently there were warning signs, such as this play.
Ian MacFarlane said:
What happened yesterday:

When I first heard about the multiple shootings at Virginia Tech yesterday, my first thought was about my friends, and my second thought was "I bet it was Seung Cho."

Cho was in my playwriting class last fall, and nobody seemed to think much of him at first. He would sit by himself whenever possible, and didn't like talking to anyone. I don't think I've ever actually heard his voice before. He was just so quiet and kept to himself. Looking back, he fit the exact stereotype of what one would typically think of as a "school shooter" – a loner, obsessed with violence, and serious personal problems. Some of us in class tried to talk to him to be nice and get him out of his shell, but he refused talking to anyone. It was like he didn't want to be friends with anybody. One friend of mine tried to offer him some Halloween candy that she still had, but he slowly shook his head, refusing it. He just came to class every day and submitted his work on time, as I understand it.

A major part of the playwriting class was peer reviews. We would write one-act plays and submit them to an online repository called Blackboard for everyone in the class to read and comment about in class the next day. Typically, the students give their opinions about the plays and suggest ways to make it better, the professor gives his insights, then asks the author to comment about the play in class.

When we read Cho's plays, it was like something out of a nightmare. The plays had really twisted, macabre violence that used weapons I wouldn't have even thought of. Before Cho got to class that day, we students were talking to each other with serious worry about whether he could be a school shooter. I was even thinking of scenarios of what I would do in case he did come in with a gun, I was that freaked out about him. When the students gave reviews of his play in class, we were very careful with our words in case he decided to snap. Even the professor didn't pressure him to give closing comments.

After hearing about the mass shootings, I sent one of my friends a Facebook message asking him if he knew anything about Seung Cho and if he could have been involved. He replied: "dude that's EXACTLY what I was thinking! No, I haven't heard anything, but seriously, that was the first thing I thought when I heard he was Asian."

While I "knew" Cho, I always wished there was something I could do for him, but I couldn't think of anything. As far as notifying authorities, there isn't (to my knowledge) any system set up that lets people say "Hey! This guy has some issues! Maybe you should look into this guy!" If there were, I definitely would have tried to get the kid some help. I think that could have had a good chance of averting yesterday's tragedy more than anything.

While I was hesitant at first to release these plays (because I didn't know if there are laws against it), I had to put myself in the shoes of the average person researching this situation. I'd want to know everything I could about the killer to figure out what could drive a person to do something like this and hopefully prevent it in the future. Also, I hope this might help people start caring about others more no matter how weird they might seem, because if this was some kind of cry for attention, then he should have gotten it a long time ago.

As far as the victims go, as I was heading to bed last night, I heard that my good friend Stack (Ryan Clark) was one of the first confirmed dead. I didn't want to believe that I'd never get to talk to him again, and all I could think about was how much I could tell him how much his friendship meant to me. During my junior year, Ryan, another friend and I used to get breakfast on Tuesdays and Thursdays at Shultz Dining Hall, one of the cafeterias on campus, and it was always the highlight of my day. He could talk forever it seemed and always made us laugh. He was a good friend, not just to me, but to a lot of people, and I'll miss him a lot.
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This has to be the worst play I've ever read. How can you get away with writing such a piece of shit in University, when you're an English major?
 
Tannhauser said:
I believe that many people are mislead into a discussion about weapons because it is a hot button issue. For the issue to degenerate to the point where the question of students at an educational facility should be armed for protection is seriously considered indicates a massive failure at some previous point. I believe that Virginia Tech failed immensely in not identifying and trying to get help for Seung Cho before this incident. If Virginia Tech acted anything like what I can recall from my experience there, every indication was likely ignored.
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AFAIK leaving students without any psychological/emotional help is a norm in high education? No one paid attention to me this year despite that I always had the postal_dude face expression, I missed classes and walked with hands behind my back :| .
 
I've waited till someone else said this stuff, for I may be biased.

I am proud of my fellow country man, and he died for the country that helped him better acheive his aims - giving young students a proper education. Though he could have done it here, beleive me, good teachers are needed at home.

You will be remembered, Liviu, not only by Romanians, but by Americans and Israelites too.

We all survived much worse than Ceausescu, John. I hardly think that's bravery.
 
I have read parts of the play. And as a teacher I couldn't have foreseen this incident coming just from reading this play. In fact, some of the stuff in the play could be in Harold Pinter's plays or in a Swedish playwright, called Lars Noren's plays.

When I read the play, it is obvious that he, Cho, have very strong emotions about life in general, mostly negative, though. And I can see some talent in his writing(s) that with a bit of honing could be better.

Apparent, according to CNN, Cho had a problem with rich kids... Don't know this info relates to as why hed did it, though ?
 
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18148802/?GT1=9246

More info that includes a interview with the teacher.

Another report suspects that it's the same gunman for both of the incidents in the school. Apparently, there were false reports that the gunman for the first incident 2 hours before the shooting was actually caught.

Someone from the school claims that the serial numbers on the guns were filed off, but there are reports here:

http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2007/04/17/virginia-tech-070420.html

Virginia Tech Police Chief Wendell Flinchum confirmed investigators recovered two weapons at the scene — a 9-mm handgun and a .22-calibre handgun. Cho's fingerprints were found on the two handguns, said two police officers who did not want to be identified.

Cho was found with a backpack containing a receipt for a Glock 9-mm pistol that he had bought in March, the police officers said.
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So I am not sure what the truth is. Can it be a set up? It seems to be too convenient, who carries receipts of their guns in their backpack? :shock:

All of the sudden I am reminded of the XXXholic incident involving the wings. In the story, there is a wing incident where something takes control of a human's soul who desperately wants to be free.

Sigh.
 
I find one thing disturbing - the guy killed 32 people and now almost everyone talks about him, reads his play, etc.

Damn.
That's why school shootings happen so often :/ .
He kills and wounds people and they make a hero of him so that another loser that doesn't know what to do with his life may take example of him.
Media are so stupid...

Why they don't write about people with mental problems that deal with them without commiting massacres :evil: ?
 
The shooter, a Hero? He was mentally disturbed. Most papers I've read mentions this. So I guess it's up to the reader to interpret it that way.
 
So are most school shooters.

He is known, his face is known, people read his plays, talk about him...
[sarcasm]A great example for other mentally disturbed people...[/sarcasm]

There were school massacres even before WW II, but they were very rare, because they didn't get so much media coverage which meant no copycat crimes.
 
This cynical piece was dug up from after the WTC attack.
Why the Bombings Mean That We Must Support My Politics

Of course the World Trade Center bombings are a uniquely tragic event, and it is vital that we never lose sight of the human tragedy involved. However, we must also consider if this is not also a lesson to us all; a lesson that my political views are correct. Although what is done can never be undone, the fact remains that if the world were organised according to my political views, this tragedy would never have happened.

Many people will use this terrible tragedy as an excuse to put through a political agenda other than my own. This tawdry abuse of human suffering for political gain sickens me to the core of my being. Those people who have different political views from me ought to be ashamed of themselves for thinking of cheap partisan point-scoring at a time like this. In any case, what this tragedy really shows us is that, so far from putting into practice political views other than my own, it is precisely my political agenda which ought to be advanced.

Not only are my political views vindicated by this terrible tragedy, but also the status of my profession. Furthermore, it is only in the context of a national and international tragedy like this that we are reminded of the very special status of my hobby, and its particular claim to legislative protection. My religious and spiritual views also have much to teach us about the appropriate reaction to these truly terrible events.

Countries which I like seem to never suffer such tragedies, while countries which, for one reason or another, I dislike, suffer them all the time. The one common factor which seems to explain this has to do with my political views, and it suggests that my political views should be implemented as a matter of urgency, even though they are, as a matter of fact, not implemented in the countries which I like.

Of course the World Trade Center attacks are a uniquely tragic event, and it is vital that we never lose sight of the human tragedy involved. But we must also not lose sight of the fact that I am right on every significant moral and political issue, and everybody ought to agree with me. Please, I ask you as fellow human beings, vote for the political party which I support, and ask your legislators to support policies endorsed by me, as a matter of urgency.

It would be a fitting memorial.
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On another note, Boing Boing has another interesting post about Cho's behavior before the shooting. Laura Petelle's comments correspond to part of the reason I think there was so little reaction to the first shooting by the campus administration. I have a cynical suspicion they were planning to downplay it as much as possible and keep the students uninformed.

Boing Boing said:
But there's another security story that's not mentioned in this article. The part of the story that unfolded before Cho bought the guns and ammunition. He exhibited antisocial, threatening behavior for quite some time before he packed up weapons and killed 32 people. Much of that threatening behavior was directed at women. One female teacher reports being afraid for her safety when tutoring him alone. Cho is reported to have obsessively, persistently stalked (online, via instant messaging, and in person) a number of female students who lived on campus. By accounts now surfacing in the news, police came to speak with victims in one case (maybe more? maybe not), but no charges were ever filed, no further action taken, and the behavior continued to escalate. If even a misdemeanor charge had been on record, would he have been able to obtain those weapons so easily? Did nothing happen because the law enforcement system involved -- really, all of us -- don't take violent crime and threatening behavior against women as seriously as we should? Maybe none of that would have made a difference, but it's a question worth asking.

Reader comments: Attorney Laura S. Petelle of Peoria, IL, says,
Re: the lack of misdemeanor reports about the student -- I would suspect that most of these allegations were made to campus police, and there is not a university in this country that accurately reports its crime statistics because they are now made public every year. There's rampant massaging of statistics and lots of pressure from campus police and administration to NOT report. Students are often railroaded into a "campus arbitration" system under the belief that by reporting to the campus police, the crime becomes reported, when in fact it falls into the administration's hands and doesn't join the crime statistics. Then they're put through a campus arbitration if the administration is seriously concerned they might proscecute, and these things can be dragged on long enough that the Statute of Limitations runs out for the victim to report and prosecute through traditional channels.

I'm most familiar with a particular sort of crime -- acquaintance rape -- because I went to a Division I football school, and we had a handful of women run off campus while I was there for having the temerity to report a rape by a scholarship football players, which was then generally played off as "she just feels guilty about it the morning after, so she's crying rape." (In the "small world" file, a football player - I can't for the life of me remember his name - sexually assaulted a woman four doors down from me in the dorm, and her parents were wealthy and powerful enough that the school quietly made him transfer to a DIFFERENT Division I football school, wherefrom he popped up at a summer camp for pre-teens where I was working as a camp counselor and he was an "inspirational speaker." Charming.)

If you speak to student editors at independent student newspapers, particularly at sports schools, you'll get an earful about the crimes they hear about (and sometimes report on) that are somehow miraculously kept off the crime reports. I'm seven years out now, so I'm not very connected with the current issues with crime reporting, but I'm sure student editors could give you a complete rundown.

If these women who were being stalked complained to campus police and no charges were pursued, this is the heartbreakingly inevitable outcome of campuses pursuing a policy of lying about campus crime statistics to worried parents to protect the school's image and tuition dollars.

Author and journalist Charles Platt says,
After a mass shooting, many people feel a strange need to claim prescience. "We always knew there was something about him ... the clothes he wore ... the poems he wrote ... the funny way he looked at me...."

This is bogus, especially in the current case. The two plays that the student wrote were unremarkable; far less violent than many comics. If I had seen this text in one of the writing classes I used to teach, I would have thought nothing of it. The student did not have a large gun collection (two handguns only, apparently); was not a goth; did not target only women.

He did apparently leave a long note explaining why he did it. This would be a lot more useful than pontifications from those claiming retroactive diagnostic abilities.
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In the news, armed and armored policemen surrounded Burruss Hall earlier today, and a state policeman said it involved a threat against the university president; but no-one will elaborate further.
 
Foreign people who never owned a gun in their contry, first thing when they come to the US is to buy a gun or two.

Gun laws should at least apply to citizens.
 
Sadly the trend which involves ignoring warning signs continues today. Each one of the previous school shootings could have been prevented if someone had paid more attention to the students. But at a college its a lot harder a lot more students to deal with. However the teacher of that playwrighting class should have sent a report to the college counselor.
 
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