The families of April 16 shooting victims Erin Peterson and Julia Pryde have filed lawsuits in Fairfax County Circuit Court, seeking to "reveal truths" they feel have been misrepresented.
Related: Suit, April 16 document archive
Two identical lawsuits allege wrongdoing against the administrator of Seung-Hui Cho's estate, the Commonwealth of Virginia, Virginia Tech, Cook Counseling Center and several individual university officials.
Each family is seeking $10 million in damages.
Celeste and Grafton Peterson and Harry and Karen Pryde made a joint statement on the lawsuits.
"Erin and Julia loved Virginia Tech and they felt at home there and were receiving a wonderful education," the statement said. "But, on April 16, 2007, the administrators who ran the university let our daughters down in ways we are just now learning."
The lawsuit names eight university officials as defendants, including President Charles Steger, former Executive Vice President James Hyatt, Provost Mark McNamee and Vice President for University Relations Larry Hincker.
Virginia Tech Police Chief Wendell Flinchum, five employees of the Cook Counseling Center and two members of the New River Valley Community Services Board are also named as defendants.
Specifically, the families accused university officials of making false statements, both to the Governor's Review Panel and to the public.
"University officials, it now appears, may have been less than candid and forthright in their responses to the questions put to them by the panel," according to the statement.
The Peterson and Pryde families were the only families that did not accept a settlement proposed by the university in the spring of 2008.
Documents made available to families that signed the settlement were later released to the public in December by the Collegiate Times and then again in February by the university.
"When the university subsequently released its document archives to the public in February 2009, we were convinced that we made the right choice to refuse the settlement," according to the statement.
Those documents, the families said, omit important information about Cho's mental illness and the activity of the policy group.
"One of the most troubling discoveries has come from our own investigations, a review of the document archives, and witness statements," according to the statement.
The lawsuit claims events recent as of April 16, 2007, such as an April 13 bomb threat and the escape of William Morva from a nearby jail, had led Virginia Tech officials to become more concerned with the university's image than with student safety.
"The university administration, and more specifically defendants Steger, Hyatt, Hincker and others had become sensitized to the impact bad news could have on the university's image, and how an impact on that image might in turn impact on public and private financing for the university," the plaintiffs said in the lawsuit.
The lawsuit takes particular issue with one inter-administration e-mail, asking, "Was the university fixated on its image to the exclusion of the safety of its students and faculty?"
President Steger received an e-mail on the afternoon of April 16, 2007, discussing the effects of the shootings on a fundraising gala scheduled for the following weekend.
"After expressing his condolences for the events of that morning, the gentleman said, 'I am also thinking of the ramifications to the (fundraising) weekend ... the tragedy ... also represents an opportunity to communicate ... and to solicit support both financially and morally.'"
The sender was identified by the lawsuit as the "Advisory Co-Chair" of the fund raising gala.
Documents obtained by the Collegiate Times in December include an e-mail from Gene Fife, a 1962 Tech graduate who serves on the Honorary Alumni Campaign Committee for the Campaign for Virginia Tech.
Fife sent the email to Elizabeth "Betsy" Flanagan, Vice President for Development and University Relations, and copied it to Steger.
The complete text of the e-mail relating to the gala reads as follows:
"I am also thinking of the ramifications to the Ut Prosim weekend," Fife said in the e-mail. "It seems highly inappropriate for a gala/party in the wake of the tragedy - but it also presents an opportunity to communicate and draw the VT family closer together. One idea might be to have a large but low key working dinner during which we review the facts of today, what we have and will be doing to deal with the situation and to solicit support both financially and morally. A revamped program - soberly presented, absent celebration or fanfare seems to the most appropriate. The only other alternative I see if to cancel the planned events and reschedule it at another time - probably next fall."
According to the lawsuit, "At that time the bodies of most of the victims still lay in Norris Hall."
The suit goes on to conclude that "On the 16th of April, 2007, the duly authorized agents of the university, seduced by the prospect of a successful fund drive, and driven to control the message of the morning of April 16th in fulfillment of that ambition and to protect the general reputation and image of the university, behaved in a deliberately indifferent way to the safety of the university's students and faculty, failed to warn them of the risks inherent in allowing a gunman who had already killed two to run loose on the campus."
Events scheduled for that weekend were canceled later in the week.
According to the lawsuit, division among the Emergency Policy Group, a group of high level administrators which convened in Burruss Hall on April 16, led to an insufficient attempt to warn students.
"As an inadequate warning, it constituted no warning at all, and in a sense artificially reassured the students, faculty and employees that whatever occurred in West Ambler-Johnston Hall that morning was of much lesser consequences and risks than the Morva incident and the two recent threatened bombings on the engineering campus. The language, content and lack of specificity of the alert clearly implied that there was no reason to take any specific action for one's own safety," the plaintiffs allege in the lawsuit.
Other claims allege the university failed to properly assess Cho as a threat. Furthermore, the lawsuit claims the university provided false information about Cho's treatment.
Several members of Cook Counseling center are accused of making false statements in interviews following April 16.
Ed Spencer, Vice President of Student Affairs, while not named as a defendant, is accused of aiding in a string of misstatements.
"The cover-up continues," according to the lawsuit. "As recently as April 9, 2009, Dr. Edward Spencer Vice-President of Student Affairs, being interviewed on the Diane Rehm Radio Show (NPR) asserted that three mental health professionals associated with Dr. Miller's Cook Counseling Center had independently done a threat assessment on Seung-Hui Cho and concluded he was not a threat to himself and others."
Later, the lawsuit claims no threat assessment of Cho was ever made.
Some facts of the day, according to the lawsuit, remain unknown. Reasons for waiting 40 minutes to assemble the Policy Group are questioned. Reasons for assembling the VT police emergency response team off campus also come into question.
"Our decision to file this suit against the university and its administrators has been made only after grave and serious thought," the plaintiffs said in the joint statement. "We believe that our suit is necessary to reveal truths that ultimately will benefit all those who have shared in this tragic loss, and that it will help heal the wounds that remain open because full disclosure of the facts has been denied."