Virginia Tech President Charles Steger, former Vice President James Hyatt, and several university mental health professionals will have to face trial in suits brought in relation to the April 16, 2007 shootings on campus.
Related: Judge's ruling (PDF)
Judge William Alexander, of Franklin County, sent out his rulings Tuesday on several motions argued in a December hearing. He ruled that many university officials originally named in identical suits filed by two victims' families were covered by the state's sovereign immunity, and had no stated duty to warn students of the first two shootings on campus.
The families of Julia Pryde and Erin Peterson brought the charges against many university officials on April 16, 2009, each seeking $10 million in damages.
Charges against Provost Mark McNamee, university spokesman Larry Hincker, Dean of Undergraduate Education David Ford, and Executive Director of Government Relations Ralph Byers have been dismissed. Alexander ruled that sufficient allegations of gross negligence had not been made against these officials, as they were simply named as members of the policy group.
Alexander ruled Steger and Hyatt were covered by Virginia's sovereign immunity, but that they had a duty to warn the students of the shootings, and charges against them will move to trial.
Charges against former Cook Counseling Center director Robert Miller will also move to trial. Alexander's ruling said he and Cook employees Cathye Betzel and Sherry Lynch Conrad were not covered by sovereign immunity. He also said they had a duty to care for the mental health of shooter Seung Hui Cho and protect other students on campus.
Miller located Cho's mental health records in his home in July 2009. They had previously been labeled as missing by the university.
Ed McNelis, Miller's attorney, released a statement in response to the ruling.
"While we respectfully disagree with the Court’s ruling, we remain confident that the facts will show that the therapists at the Cook Counseling Center were not negligent and were not the cause of the tragedy that occurred some sixteen months after Mr. Cho was treated at the Cook Counseling Center," McNelis said.
Charges against employees of the New River Valley Community Services Board were dismissed.
A trial date has yet to be set.
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Robert Miller deserves to be tried for this, as does Steger. One sought to wash their hands clean of Cho and not have his office follow up on connecting the dots, the other sought to delay, demur and defer on how the university should react to the news of the West A-J shootings, followed by discussion after the fact as to how to capitalize on fund raising as a result of the calamity.
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This suit is waste of money on both sides. 20/20 hindsight makes all clear but no one could have prevented this. No matter how clever we think we are there is always someone who will work to game the system with their misguided anger and judgment.
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They should be tried, if they are going to arrogantly assume an authoritarian we know best policy that even interferes with constitutional liberties than they need to be held accountable.
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This has nothing to do with Cho or anyone gaming the system. It has to do with university officials being negligent going way back before 4/16. In summer 2005 university adopted campus and workplace violence prevention policy which stated that stalking and other offenses could/should carry the punishment of permanent dismissal. Cho of course was left alone (even knowing his mental state and previous stalking of fellow students). He should have been kicked out of school long before 4/16. Maybe he would not have returned here from NOVA to carry out these acts if he had already been permanently suspended.
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This isn't so much about not stopping Cho in the act, but rather not following university guidelines concerning threats and overt behavior in the community. The policy committee dithered on the morning of April 16th, 2007 as to how to inform students and faculty of what happened at West AJ. They should have sounded the alarm asap. Instead they hemmed and hawed and put out a trite message of caution just moments before Cho burst into Norris Hall and mowed down 30 people.
Miler is responsible for the Cook counseling center not asking critical questions of third parties about Cho's erratic conduct. If they had, they might have then looked deeper into his background and discovered he had indeed acted out and made overt Columbine massacre fanboy references in high school.
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Cho was a 23 year old adult not a legal ward of the university. Besides the fact to predicate $20 million of damages you have to link cause and effect. How are you going to prove a warning would have prevented their murders? You might have just locked him in the building which he wanted anyways. A mental health facility and its staff do not have the power to involuntarily commit someone unless they have done overt violence to themselves or others. Neither can you determine that potential after only after only one interview.
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Tech's Steger in top 10; compensation overall...
Daniel DeVise, B03 (Post)
...Virginia Tech President Charles W. Steger ranked eighth, at $732,064.
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On 4/15 VTech web site had its policy for campus alert in case of emergency which used of a immediate campus wide siren, loudspeakers, radio emergency alert, lockdown procedure, etc. There was a prior drill. It was also all documented in prior issues of this paper. VTech simply failed to follow its own policy. Case closed. $ is to punish defendants - but they all have huge ins policies!
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I think it's great they're putting these people on trial. To this day, I was dismayed driving to class at 7:30 passing Emergency vehicles flying around on campus replying to the dorm room shootings. As I got to my class, I asked some students what was going on and they said "an ex BF shot his ex GF and lover in the dorm".."WHY ARE WE ON CAMPUS RIGHT NOW?" I replied....HMMMMMMMMM. The police captain, administration leaders and many others need to be punished for risking 30,000 students lives and allowing the unfolding when they KNEW two people were already shot on campus and the perp was not apprehended!
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OK, so cancel classes after the first shooting. Cho then goes and kills people in a dining hall, or the student center, or the library. But at least those students in Norris aren't killed. Everything is better now, right?
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If campus was closed after the first shooting, no one would be in the dining halls.
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After every unsolved homicide on campus, all students will be sent home and the campus closed until the killer is found. It sounds like a sound sensible solution.
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Yep, I totally agree that they need to be tried for this.
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And regardless of the outcome, nothing will be different, and the side that "loses" will be posting the same comments. . .
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If you screw up at the office and lose a major file, you typically lose your job. At Virginia Tech, it seems that you can screw up, cost 30 people their lives by not issuing a timely coherent warning as specified in DEPARTMENT POLICY and yet NO ONE loses their job.
Instead, there is much back scratching and convenient retelling of the facts, delayed release of documents and general shoulder shrugging among members of the administration.
They KNEW at 8 am that two people had been shot and seriously wounded by an assailant at West Ambler Johnston, but instead of issuing a warning, they hemmed and hawwed and thought about how to best "spin" the situation.
Steger is the man in charge and now that the "rah rah we are Virginia Tech" chants have died down, it is time for he and those at the Cook Counseling Center who clearly treated Cho as a lost file and not of real and pressing concern, to be held accountable in civil court.
It's not about money, it's about accountability and with ZERO firings, the VT administration shows it watches it own.
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Zenobia Hikes delayed warnings by continously reviewing and scrutinizing the release statement being prepared..
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I am concerned that the Judge has dismissed charges against Larry Hincker. I guess the Judge is not aware that Hincker was the one who decided to close the University, the size of a small city, during the William Morva incident. Hincker was/is the person responsible for sending out the alert notifications. Hincker is the one to delay sending out a notification on April 16th at 8:50am so not to cause panic, even though the system takes up to an hour to process. It is clarified by his title, University Relations. Judge Alexander needs to wake up and realize that McNamee, Ford and Byers were also responsible. Byers was communicating with Governors Kaine office, 300 miles away before 9am that there had been a shooting on campus. Cho was on their radar in 2005 and the Administration failed at their professional responsibilities then and on the morning of April 16th.
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