Collegiate Times

good job ct

Interesting...

I lost a lot of respect that day when our administration FAILED to give us adequate warning of a shooting at large. I didn't receive an email until 9:29am, nearly two HOURS after the first shooting. This only contributes to the argument that the situation was not handled with the seriousness and caution it called for.

There's more to it than an event-immediate response chain here. . .I for one am actually glad that an email wasn't sent out until some real facts were known. Nothing causes mass pandemonium like 'someone might have been shot and killed this morning - we don't know who did it, though, nor where he is . . .' What was really exposed was that VT didn't have a contingency for such a crisis - but that's an oversight that can be blamed on every previous administration as well.

When someone is shot on campus, you cancel class immediately.

Why? And what difference does canceling class make? I mean, let's take a look at it from the top down. Someone is shot on campus. What does canceling class do? Functionally, nothing - students are still free to move around as they please, they just don't have to have a structured schedule for the day. So you haven't ACTUALLY made anyone safer. Do you lock everyone in the dorms? If that's the case, and the victim was shot in a dorm, all you've done now is increase the risk that another shooting will occur, since in such a case the shooter would have knowledge of the fact that nobody is allowed to leave. So many arguments about the 16th have revolved around hypotheticals - ie, if class had been canceled sooner, or if the campus community had been notified earlier, then no further murders would have happened - when there is absolutely no evidence at all to suggest that such an outcome would have been guaranteed. The forensic evidence in AJ was inconclusive, and Cho was only definitively linked to that incident once his weapons had been recovered. But up until the point where his body was found in Norris, he wasn't even a suspect - so nobody would have known even to look through his possessions for guns.

The issue here isn't about what Tech did or didn't do, that has been argued to death for over a year, and there is no right answer. The issue is these e-mails, were they doctored? Good looking out CT, nothing says sketchiness like not commenting or returning phone calls. How could Mondy have included an e-mail in her first message that wasn't written until 40 minutes later? And why would she randomly include a comment about national media coverage before our own student paper even broke the story? There is something going on with these e-mails and it doesn't make sense. Grenier is a glorified ambulance chaser anyway.

exactly. did anyone else read the story? or am i just not aware of some new tech that lets you attach emails before they come out?

I can see it now: There's been a shooting in a dorm. Please leave class and return to your dorm. Brilliant

Don't you think that if we were notified earlier, the people in Norris Hall would have been more aware of anything odd going on. Even if they didn't cancel class, just making everyone aware of the situation would have made people aware OR given them the opportunity to have chosen not be in the classroom that morning.

No, Mike, I don't think it would have stopped much. It isn't like Cho broadcast his intentions - so 'preventative measures' wouldn't have accomplished much. And keep in mind that Cho himself would have been privy to any such announcement as well - so he would have been just as likely to know that class was cancelled (or people had been suggested to stay home) as anyone else. Lastly, we need to assess what 'odd' things SHOULD have been noticed but weren't. It isn't like Cho walked in and opened fire; he chained the doors shut first. That seems pretty odd to me - something DEFINITLY out of the ordinary which merits concern immediately regardless of the circumstance. And yet, by the time the 'odd stuff' happened, it was too late.

Kyle, you need to stop voicing your opinions on every news posting. Your arguments are ridiculous. It is true he could have received the same warning the student body received, but so what, thats not an argument to withhold important information. Thats called negligence. Furthermore, it should be the student's choice to go to class or not and they should be warned about situations like this. Especially when a significant portion of the student body commutes and has limited access to the news. More awareness does help, instead of getting testimony "we heard shots but thought it was construction work" you will more likely get "we heard shots, and decided to act on it." You are right, chains on the doors is suspicious, but how often do you go and check all the doors when you are in class? Do not try to compare these 'odd' things with an official warning from the campus administration, its not even on the same level of awareness and alert. Maybe if this was treated as if a police officer/prison guard was shot (cough cough - fall semester) we would have received prompt action from the authorities.

Kyle, you need to stop voicing your opinions on every news posting. Your arguments are ridiculous. It is true he could have received the same warning the student body received, but so what, thats not an argument to withhold important information. Thats called negligence. Furthermore, it should be the student's choice to go to class or not and they should be warned about situations like this. Especially when a significant portion of the student body commutes and has limited access to the news. More awareness does help, instead of getting testimony "we heard shots but thought it was construction work" you will more likely get "we heard shots, and decided to act on it." You are right, chains on the doors is suspicious, but how often do you go and check all the doors when you are in class? Do not try to compare these 'odd' things with an official warning from the campus administration, its not even on the same level of awareness and alert.

Kyle, you need to stop voicing your opinions on every news posting. Your arguments are ridiculous. It is true he could have received the same warning the student body received, but so what, thats not an argument to withhold important information. Thats called negligence. Furthermore, it should be the student's choice to go to class or not and they should be warned about situations like this. Especially when a significant portion of the student body commutes and has limited access to the news. More awareness does help, instead of getting testimony "we heard shots but thought it was construction work" you will more likely get "we heard shots, and decided to act on it."

All I can say is coulda, woulda, shoulda, but HAD the administration canceled classes there would not have been so many pointed fingers at them. People wouldn't still be sitting here arguing about it. Yes, they would still have something to complain about... Cho could have shot people other places, but canceling classes would have been the right thing to do. Anyone who says its not just wants to force this pretend front that Charles Steger is Mr. Beloved, did everything he could, Best President.

But it would be a detriment to the academic process to cancel class for every incident, regardless of the amount of information known. Keep in mind, the initial reports on the dorm shooting led police to believe that the shooter had exited campus - and in truth, he had (as the postal records indicated). Hokie, the fact that you assess my arguments as ridiculous doesn't actually make them so. What would a potential warning have said from the administration? "A shooter is . . . . .somewhere. We don't know where. Do whatever you want." The fact is, not enough information was known at the time to make a decision on a definitive course of action. In hindsight, it's easy to say that it could have been handled better. But to be quite honest, I thought the whole thing was a joke until I tried to go to class and a policeman pointed his gun at me. Not all information is beneficial. . .

continued.......The one thing that hasn't changed is that VT administration and VA general assembly continue to let us down. The anti-common sense, anti-self defense, anti-life policy restricting a freedom guaranteed by the 2nd amendment is still in place. Most of us follow it I imagine, I do even though it is grotesque. While we wait for another mass shooting to occur in a gun free zone (on paper only of course) let me hit you with this knowledge. Writing more laws, and passing more regulations simply increases the number of things with which we could charge a criminal once he is caught committing a crime. If he is still alive that is. However, Cho and others like him usually seem to plan to commit suicide which is all the more problematic for us. They probably won't care about the laws of not killing others, and of course they will laugh if they ever see VT's policy, they will laugh as they go about killing they innocent, unarmed, and virtually defenseless victims. Then another time to mourn for the rest of us, then we can continue to repeat our mistakes yet again. Fact is, these mass killings would result in far fewer casualties if the psychos were met will swift and equally deadly force.

continued.... The actions of the good folks, pushing towards desegregation got us where were are today. So what is our problem here at Tech? We have a policy, but it isn't backed up by actions. There are no metal detectors, being operated by police, screening people coming into our campus buildings. There is no active enforcment of the policy. Therefore, we should not expect it to keep us safe. Another person, with motives similar to Cho, could cause another 4/16 on campus tomorrow. He/she couldn't chain the doors shut but that wouldn't make much difference. As long as violent criminals and psychopaths continue to exist, there will be times when we will have to rely on paper policies to protect us. This just seems like a bad idea to me. For you young people out there don't be mislead. Sure many people feel compassion and mourn our losses, but that is about as far as it goes. Your own personal protection is your responsibility, and 30 dead students ambushed on 4/16/07 prove that. So a memorial is built, the community says goodbye, and Tech gladly brings in another increasingly large freshman class. There are plenty of students wanting to come to VT to fill the seats in our classrooms.

Think back to your history classes folks. There was a time when this country was segregated. Things changed as policies and legislation came around moving us towards desegregation, right?. Did it work immediately and completely? No, some people resisted and many more minorities continued to suffer at the hands of bad people. The point is that policies, like the one you will find here, http://www.bov.vt.edu/minutes/05-06-13minutes/05-06-13AttachmentG.pdf, do not help. I guess I am stating the obvious, but a piece of paper containing a policy or a file on a computer somewhere cannot keep us safe. As you can see the BOV adopted this policy back in 2005. You will find a well written document, so well that it almost seems at times that it could keep us safe. You see, VT wants everyone coming on campus to leave their guns at home. "YOU DON'T NEED THEM HERE." Well tell that to the dead and injured, a simple policy did not protect them. You see, in life things still need to be backed by actions. If everyone were still foolishly resisting desegregation today, this country would still be segregated. It may be written into law, but it wouldn't be so.

Did anyone look at the email headers to see what time it moved through the VT out-bound mail server? If it was sent from campus, it will have this. In cases like this, you can't look at when the email said it was sent, the persons computer clock could have been an hour fast (the way it seems in this case) or something else screwy with the computer. Mail servers are much more dependable in these situations.

Continued…People need to stop trying to use an amendment to the Constitution (a document written on paper quite similar to those policies you bashed in your post) as though it's the end-all of laws for us. You might recall from your history class another Constitutional "law" stating that all people of African-American heritage will count as 3/5 of a person instead of 1 (not to mention that they didn't actually get to cast their own 3/5 of a vote, their "owners" did it for them). The point is, just as you said, policies and laws written on paper do not always help. The 2nd Amendment is as old and outdated as the 3/5 Compromise...the only difference being that the American people realized that the 3/5 Compromise and slavery in general were exceedingly inhumane and bigoted, and did away with them. How much longer until we wake up and do the same for some of our other ridiculous, outdated laws?

So "Truth" would have us believe that the best thing for everyone is if EVERYONE who wanted to just carried their weapons around with them. This way, when a deranged person decides to go on a shooting spree in a building full of students, there will be 200 guns instead of 2. Clearly what we needed that day is a bunch of lunatic gun-toters with itchy trigger fingers ready to "use swift and equally deadly force." This way, with everyone armed to the teeth, anytime there is a noise or disturbance of any kind, we can feel safe in the knowledge that it will always be handled in the best way possible...45 caliber bullets. Please. What a ridiculous, outdated idea. More guns in this country is certainly not the answer. How about less? Take a look at the numbers of shootings that occur annually in countries where guns simply aren't allowed. You'll find they are much less than here in the United States, where all our wannabe heroes get to hide behind the 2nd Amendment anytime the question of gun safety or regulation is raised....

continued.....Physically disadvantaged people (small in stature, handicapped, elderly, sick, etc.) may only have one option when it comes to facing bad people. A firearm might be the only solution for a good person trying to protect them self when a bad person tries to harm them. I hope you wouldn't want anything bad to happen to these people, why would you want to take away their means of self defense? Being an adult you must be aware that bad things happen and that law enforcement cannot always stop it. Well lets be real, they actually almost never stop a crime and after it happens they might catch the bad guys. When it takes just moments for murderers/rapist to commit crimes but minutes/hours/days for police to arrive, I can't see any other solution than to maintain the right guaranteed by the 2nd amendment (even though nobody should need a piece of paper to let them know they are allowed to protect them self). If you disagree I urge you to provide some solution for our safety problems. By the way, people use guns for target practice and hunting as well so even if you solve our safety problems I am sure some of us will still want to hang on to our guns just a little longer.

VTC, I never said EVERYONE should be able to have a gun and carry a gun (criminals should not have them although criminals don't care what we think). I pretty much agree with background checks the way they are now. Law abiding people should be able to purchase guns. Carrying guns is also something I believe in and many states agree (see gun laws). As for your notion that this idea is "outdated," it is not. We are not hiding behind the Constitution, we are claiming rights protected by the Bill of Rights. I do not mind when people use the Bill of Rights to protect free speech, why do you have such a problem with respecting my rights sir? Gun safety? Being forced or agreeing to be defenseless while there is no safety at VT or anywhere else (no metal detectors in our buildings, not enough police to respond quickly enough and criminals get guns guns anyway) is not a good idea in my mind. I am sorry I disagree, but I do. I do however agree with you about the horrible slavery that took place in this country. I will hopefully never know if death or slavery is worse, but I am sure that slavery is a most terrible crime that nobody should ever be put through. Surely you weren't trying to prove my argument for more guns. Not to be silly, but I am sure slave owners restricted slave access to firearms.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26012011/ Here is one good reason we need guns. This guy stabbed person next to him on a bus dozens of times, cut off his head and ate parts of him all in front of 40 passengers. I wonder why nobody helped? Oh its Canada, they have strict gun laws and nobody is going to step in to help against a crazy guy with a knife if they don't have a weapon of their own.

An article in today's Ronoake Times quotes Mr. Hinkler "that first e-mail went out within about an hour after he found out about the dormitory shootings. He said he later went back and researched the previous dozen or so campus shootings across the United States and found that no other school had sent out an alert as quickly". The offical message of the shooting was posted by Unirel@vt.edu at 9:26 to a listserv. It was received at 9:34. That's just 8 minutes. I do not understand how Mr. Hinkler can justify his statment (unless he was out of the loop from the time of the first shooting to nearly 75 minutes later at @8:24 AM, or it took 60 minutes for the message to be routed to all the cc.vt.edu servers.)

Being a student who was on campus near Norris Hall at the time of the shootings, I can guarantee that none of us had any idea what was going on until the second round of shootings began. We received no email about even the initial incident in West AJ until 9:30 that morning. Why no one thought that 2 people being murdered in the dorms was not important enough to close campus or at least tell people, I will never understand. As far as weapons on campus, I'm all for it. That is, provided the carriers hae concealed carry permits. Those people have been through background checks and are recorded by the state. When you make something illegal (i.e. - guns or weapons on campus), you are only giving more power to those who creak the law. People who break the law are going to bring a gun to campus regardless if it's legal or not. At least those of us who are responsible gun owners would feel a little safer. The notion that we all have "itchy trigger fingers" and would be shooting at "every strange noise" is preposterous and offensive. I don't care what anyone says, as a Tech student who lost friends and all sense of peace over this incident, if students/faculty could have legally had weapons, it would not have been a tragedy of this scope.

Agreed. It really takes me by surprise when folks refer to those of us that want to carry as cowboys. How false is that? Cowboys is a more appropriate reference for criminals and assorted law BREAKERS. Criminals are in the minority (figure 5 to 10 million criminals versus 300 million relatively good people in this country) yet we let them run around causing serious problems. There would be a lot less criminal activity if the majority of the good population decided to protect themselves with the right tools. Secondly, to the antigun folks I would ask; 1) do you think you are capable of learning to use a firearm? 2) do you think that if you barricaded yourself in a classroom and someone was trying to shoot their way in, could you properly identify the bad guy? 3) if you can do 1 and 2 then how is it that you couldn't properly use a firearm to defend yourself? Doesn't seem complicated to me.

Not to equivocate, but there are really valid points on either side of this argument, which is one of the reasons that problems like this will never be resolved in a someone's right/someone's wrong decision. When its all shades of gray like this, there isn't that much of a way out of it. Now, there is truth in the fact that if guns were allowed, it is very possible that some of this tragedy could have been prevented. The real question is where should the line be drawn? Now, there is truth in the fact that if guns were allowed, it is very possible that some of this tragedy could have been prevented. So does that mean that guns should be a standard issue for every new student so that they can protect themselves against would-be killers? Probably not. The problem is that while there are those people who would behave properly with these weapons, those who would adhere to the proper uses of the weapons, and would in the end feel safer with them, there are also those people who have become so desensitized by media and our general culture to view weapons use as something as trivial as going to the bathroom. In a campus of 29,000, how can you guarantee that everyone will behave properly with a firearm, and a concealed one at that?

continued...Basically, the problem is not the people who know how to use and respect the abilities of these weapons, like the people in this comment list, but those who don’t know, or don’t care. But now is when people can say “Well, with a background check we can rule out those people.” How can you do that? A background check rules out those with criminal records, questionable pasts, etc. But how do you protect against someone like Cho, who had no questionable background? There is no way of knowing if the people that purchase these firearms are capable of adhering to their intended purposes, whether that be hunting, enjoyment (like ranges, etc), or protection. Herein lies the fundamental problem with gun rights: How can you distinguish the sane from the psychopaths? The thing is that you can’t. Those people that end up being classified as “psychopaths”, the kind of people that can simply kill 32 people and themselves with no qualms, more often than not appear as normal as the next people. This is why there are these blanket “no-gun” laws on campuses. If there were 29,000 people carrying (assuming the most people possible purchased a weapon), how can you guarantee that one person won’t try the same thing? That’s only .00034 % of the population.

. Also consider that many people wouldn't be able to bring themselves to do the same thing, and act out in retaliation against the person. SO to wrap up this increasingly long comment, while I feel that I personally would benefit from a protective measure such as a personal weapon, the laws were put into effect to apply to EVERYONE's needs, not just those who feel they can handle the responsibilities. I'm sure I left something out, so comment back, as I'm sure some will, to harass my views so I can return the favor.

To either way.....I may be wrong, but I do not see people advocating that "guns be standard issue for all new students." In fact, unless these new students are over 21 and have a clean record, they would not be eligible to purchase a handgun or obtain a concealed carry permit. Obviously not everyone will all of a sudden start carrying concealed handguns, at least not legally. Also, your average good college student may or may not want to carry. Just because Tech's ban will eventually be undone, does not mean that 100% of the population here will start carrying in fact far from it. Of the general population of law abiding, eligible VA citizens only approx 1% take steps to obtain concealed carry permit. As for guaranteeing that somebody else won't try the same thing as Cho, that is impossible. There are no guarantees. However, having responsible, good people carrying will surely be a more effective means of protection than our current security plan.