And stuff like this is why internal reviews are worth their weight in... poop.

[kellinator]

Virginia Tech probe finds no fault in massacre response

"Seung-Hui Cho 'was determined to commit murder, planned the crime meticulously and managed to conceal his homicidal urges from all of law enforcement authorities, and the mental health experts who tried to help him and presumably from his own family,' Virginia Tech president Charles Steger said." 

Yep, he concealed his homicidal urges so well that Nikki Giovanni (you may have heard of her; she's a prominent American poet) had him removed from her poetry class for writing violent poetry and harrassing female classmates. The department head who afterwards worked with him one-on-one was so scared of him she devised a duress code to call security in case he became violent. And the violent plays he wrote in his other writing class had to be at least somewhat well-known, as former classmates posted them on the Internet within hours of the shooting. But never mind the writing, which last I checked was still protected by the First Amendment; university officials were aware that he had stalked at least two women. After the fact, said stalking seemed to provoke less outrage in the media than his writing; of course, they were only girls. < / SARCASM >

"In the days following the shooting, Steger defended the university's actions, saying that he initially thought the dorm room shooting was 'a domestic fight, perhaps a murder-suicide.'"

Tell me, President Steger, who did you think pulled the trigger? Was it Emily Hilscher, the animal-loving freshman? Or was it her resident advisor Ryan "Stack" Clark, a triple-major Habitat for Humanity volunteer who was reportedly beloved by everyone who knew him? Well it must have been him, after all he was a black guy and you know they all have guns. < / MORE SARCASM >

And why alert the rest of the campus about a domestic shooting, anyway? It's a private matter. Girl probably got what she deserved. < / EVEN MORE SARCASM >

...If you guys ever wonder again why I'm so shallow and devoted to celebrity gossip, here it is: When I look at the real world, I see all sorts of stuff just like this, stuff that I'm powerless to fix, and it makes me so angry and frustrated I can't see straight.

Comments

[skellington.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry, but if cops find 2 bodies in a dorm room, the assumption will be that it is either a murder-suicide, or perhaps a love-triangle double-murder (with the shooter having left.)

(There was, in fact, a murder-suicide among by someone who worked in the building with me in 1998. There was certainly no expectation that the company would close down the next day until the circumstances were verified.)

The number of shooting sprees that have started with 2 unrelated deaths and spread to another location are, perhaps, one. (And in any event are a tiny fraction of the number of double-murders out there.)

There were plenty of break-downs BEFORE the first shooting happened, but I can't fault campus cops (whoo! talented crime scene investigators!), with not much information, not realizing a mass shooting was in the works.

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

There were men killed, as well as women, in this horrible incident. It's obvious that this man showed homicidal tendencies, but there is only so much people can do. Yes, he was kicked out of a class for his writing. Think he's the first? And yes, the female department head was scared. I know I would have been. But think about it. (I'm not making excuses for him.) He was an Asian student. All that had to happen is for them to make noises to dismiss him and he could threaten them with discrimination. I'm not holding myself up as any shining example, but I work on a campus and when someone like that has a problem, there ARE attempts to help. We have all kinds of 'safes' installed. If anyone shows any problems or psychological disorders, send him to...

All for naught if the person doesn't WANT help. And he obviously did not.

Yes. It's awful. And there must have been something that could have been done. But I agree with the above posted that the two unrelated deaths did not indicate a shooting spree had started. The worst is seldom thought until it happens.

You are not the president of Va. Tech. You don't know what avenues were open to him or how much information he was given. Do you not think that he lies awake nights thinking of all those people- faculty AND students - who were murdered on his watch? Do you not think that if he could go back and do things over again, he wouldn't change SOMETHING so that all those people would not die?

[kellinator.livejournal.com]

No, I'm not the president of Virginia Tech, but you don't have to be a carpenter to know when a chair is badly made (paraphrased from Samuel Johnson). Do I think he feels bad? Certainly. But I find his claim that the university did nothing, nothing at all wrong to be a piece of cover-your-ass bullshit. Things ALWAYS could have been done differently, in any situation. To claim it's not the university's fault at all certainly smacks of "let's do something before we get sued" to me. I expect that from captains of industry, but I expect better from those charged with molding young minds.

And geez, thanks for getting all up in my shit. There are people who need champions, but I've never heard of college presidents being among them. Hell, for what they pay those guys, they SHOULD be up at night worrying.

Finally, your going on about MEN were killed too pretty much proves my point. People sure started caring then, huh? The hyperbole is to make my point -- seems that his earlier menacing was overlooked, and I'm betting people assuming "oh, Asian nerd's acting weird because he can't get a date" was involved. My university wasn't as big as Virginia Tech, but I know stalking was taken seriously there. Even large universities assume some responsibility for the well-being of their students and employees. I'll save my sympathy for the victims' families, thanks.

[kellinator.livejournal.com]

Did your building notify you that there had been a shooting?

[skellington.livejournal.com]

Personally, I only heard about it after the funeral had been announced. So, no, I didn't hear about it for almost a week. There was certainly no mass announcement immediately after the bodies had been found or anything. Management might not have even been informed for several days.

Of course, in a circumstance like this, who do you notify? In my case, the guy down the hall died. So if it was a love triangle, who else would the killer go after? Even assuming you know who the killer was, who do you warn? Where I was working? Where the wife worked? Where the possible killer worked? Related schools? Churches? And what the heck does a "warning" mean? That everyone should bring a gun to work?

If they find a body at Emory, or a Tech student goes missing for two weeks, what do you do? Close the whole campus? Announce "bring a gun to class" day?

I just don't see any really good options for the administration (or the owners of a business) once you get to that point.

[smibbo.livejournal.com]

whenever a body is found in a building, investigators notify everyone in the building on the off-chance the killer is still around. This is SOP. If there is more than one body? Doubly so. Because, regardless of immediate appearances and assumptions, investigators are required to treat all dead bodies as possible signs of danger. Period. Even if a body is found dead for days, they draw their guns and move about the scene on red-light until the area has been "secured" this is SOP. I am surprised it is not SOP for security of a dorm as well.

[skellington.livejournal.com]

In this case, the question was, who ELSE do you notify?

The murder-suicide happened at their home, and his place of work wasn't notified.

In the case of VT, I assume the dorm residents were aware of it, but the rest of campus wasn't notified.

Where do you draw the line for "locking things down" when you find a body?

I personally don't see that closing down an entire campus with tens of thousands of students and staff makes sense.

[leezechka.livejournal.com]

I got pretty fed up with people saying, "how could anyone have known?!?!" This guy was obviously a nutjob with a love of violence.

I personally think noone with charges of stalking should be allowed to get a gun, we are not talking about one girl saying OMG he calls me, like, alot, but actual scary stalker stuff. When you add those on top of adults being terrified of him... there were more than a few red flags here and frankly the university did fail its duties to protect it's students. They knew about the guy and did not suspend, expel or from what I can tell even mandate therapy (with follow-up and expulsion if not done ASAP).

[jerel.livejournal.com]

Usually, you need a reason to remove a student from your class. I'm sure Ms. Giovanni gave them one, but it sounds like they didn't take it too seriously.("It's creative writing, he's being creative.") She could tell the writing came from the kid, not from a poetic persona.

Knowing how big state universities work, the paperwork having him removed from a class was probably in one office, and the department chair's was in another, and the stalking complaints were somewhere else. And college professors don't talk to each other the way high school teachers do (if I'm having trouble with Johnny, I will ask his other teachers "Hey, is Johnny giving you problems?") The other professor probably just thought she had a weirdo in class--lord knows we all get at least one each class.

So anyway, my point is that all of this evidence only comes together when someone is actually looking for it. If different divisions on campus, at all colleges, only talked to each other maybe there can be an intervention. But no, college offices would rather bitch about other offices than work with them.

[miintikwa.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, this is too correct.

And having been on the VA Tech campus, and having several friends who actually attended school there, I can vouch that it's a huge campus, with all the attendant politics and byplay that happen on a large campus.

The departments were, sadly, probably too busy jockeying for funding too get together and say "hey, this one kid is a problem in ALL of our various classes... maybe we should look at this..."

[kellinator.livejournal.com]

Like I was saying to jerel, I can't argue with issues like these being legitimate problems. It's the attitude of "oh well, we did all we could," when they really didn't do anything, that leaves the sour taste in my mouth.

[miintikwa.livejournal.com]

Yeah. But really, I never expected anything different.

Cynical? A little- but I also know from experience that they didn't do much wrong.

The good news? I read on a VA Tech website (that I cannot now find, to my chagrin) that they are planning on creating a department that will now monitor student complaints, so that something like this won't happen in the future-- and other schools around the country are going to copy their model, so that the Cho Massacre (I refuse to call it the other thing) will not be repeated.

THAT gives me hope.

[miintikwa.livejournal.com]

Student complaints= complaints about possible violent/problem students/students who need counseling.

[kellinator.livejournal.com]

Hey, that is encouraging. If some good can come of it, well, then that makes it a little less terrible.

[miintikwa.livejournal.com]

I agree. I just hope they go through with creating the department. :)

[artricia.livejournal.com]

I think not getting this kind of information centralized *is* doing something wrong. Ostensibly, that's what the college office/dean's office is for, and there should have been policies and practices already in place for monitoring students -- not only for violence, but for all kinds of concerns.

[kellinator.livejournal.com]

Your points about campus bureaucracy (spelling?) are well-taken, and a hearty amen to college offices and their bitching. Not that I have any idea how to fix that... it's just that for the administration to say "yep, we did everything we could," when really nothing got done, rings hollow to my ears.

[artricia.livejournal.com]

I'm with you, especially with your disgust that stalking isn't taken seriously, and "domestic disputes" are seen as violence. *Any* murder should be taken seriously.

[artricia.livejournal.com]

Oh, and I would have thought this would go without saying, but felt compelled to reply when I saw that other people were disagreeing with you. !!!!!

[blackacre.livejournal.com]

Curious, what do you THINK should have been done?

The problem I see with the entire situation I see from a legal situation - yes, he had mental health problems, yes, there were stalking complaints, etc...but he hadn't been charged with anything yet. He wasn't found mentally disturbed enough to be held in a nut house (civil confinement laws don't allow you to keep anyone in there unless they are an IMMEDIATE threat to themselves or others, and its a high standard...) long term, and I don't believe he had anyone press charges against him (generally speaking, universities discourage this - so this is a good place to point fingers). So were campus officials supposed to kick him off campus because he MIGHT go crazy? And was campus safety supposed to have a dossier of troubled students immediately avaliable when there is a shooting? (and as someone noted above, when a man and woman are found shot together, thats going to be what people first suspect - its playing the odds, statistically speaking.)

My point is its easy to look at the situation and see things that bother us in retrospect; but at the moment how was anyone supposed to know what exactly was going on? By no means was Va Tech perfect here, but I have a hard time thinking of what they could have done better. Given the time between the first shootings and the rampage - would they have had enough time to lock down a campus that massive?

Though as an interesting aside: as soon as this happened I remember looking through MSNBC's photogallery and finding a picture of Campus Safety officials pinning down and detaining a random Asian student and propping him up against a wall. The caption was just something to the effect of "An unknown student is detained by safety officials." I do not know at what point in time this actually happened, but it makes me wonder when they actually had a description of Cho.

[ryver.livejournal.com]

The university I work at is less than 20 miles away from Tech and is their "sister" school. I politely disagree with your opinion. When the first 2 bodies were found, Emily's roommate told the police that Emily's boyfriend and she had a fight the night prior and he "had guns" They were trying to locate the boyfriend at the time when the 2nd shooting happened. At 8am more than half the university was either in transit to campus or on campus and if classes had been released the entire drillfield would've been full with students with an easy vantage point to take out as many students as possible. I believe had classes been released instead of lockdown, more people would've died.

I lost 2 friends in the massacre and still feel hurt and upset by it but after talking to police on the scene, EMTs and 2 FBI agents, I have to agree that within the limits set by the state of VA, nothing more could've been done. If a student displays mental health problems in a class it is almost impossible to have them removed from your class. I have personal experience with this one. I have to believe that the University did nothing wrong, but the state laws need to be changed.

We are all entitled to our opinions but again, I'll have to disagree with you on this one.

[ryver.livejournal.com]

And I have to add, both Tech and my school (and I'm sure many others) have added MANY security measures to help students which btw they complain about more than anything else.

[kellinator.livejournal.com]

which btw they complain about more than anything else

This so totally does not surprise me.

[skellington.livejournal.com]

Let us, for a moment, assume that there's 1/100,000 chance per year of you being murdered by some random nutjob on campus. (The odds are actually much lower than that in fact.)

Now, how many minutes a day are you willing to sacrifice "improving security"? Would you spend 2 minutes to detour through a single door with a guard (and have them close the other entrances)? Would you spend 10 minutes a day waiting to go through a metal detector? What about 20 minutes with everyone getting a strip search and having to wear lab gear?

We have the same problems with the absurd over-reactions to airplane security. Adding reinforced, locked cockpit doors did some good. Making me throw away my 8 oz water bottle-- not so much.

You have to do a cost/benefit analysis for all of these changes. (And unfortunately, the "benefit" is all for the TSA and the school administration on the off chance they prevent a problem, and the "cost" is all borne by the travelers and the students in inconvenience.)

[kellinator.livejournal.com]

Thank you for sharing this information (and doing so so civilly, too, which I really appreciate). I did not know that about the boyfriend, and the thought of a drillfield full of targets is horrifying. I wish the article had mentioned that information, as it presents the university's actions in a much better light.

I'm very sorry for your losses.

[ryver.livejournal.com]

Thank you for your concern.

The National Media did a terrible job with this story. So much was left out and in my opinion made Steger WAY too much out to be the bad guy. It is a sad reality of today I fear, and I work in Media Studies!

[kellinator.livejournal.com]

Would it be okay with you if I quoted/linked to your previous comment?

[ryver.livejournal.com]

Sure, where might I ask?

[elorie.livejournal.com]

UGA notifies the campus via e-mail when something is going on. (Recently there was a stabbing in a UGA parking lot at 3 am). How *quickly* that actually happens is another question.

Also students actually aren't allowed into dorms they don't live in, unless they are accompanied by a resident. In theory; in reality it's pretty easy to get in, at least during the day, no matter how much students are told not to claim someone they don't know as a visitor. There are also security cameras.

If he lived in a dorm, he broke the rules as soon as he brought a gun into the building, and if he'd been caught, he would have been kicked out of housing (at least). But that's IF he'd been caught.

[stevietee.livejournal.com]

See, to me, I could possibly see them saying that there's "no fault" in stopping the initial shooting... but the fact that he killed the other people, what, an hour later, and no one on campus had been informed? No way. Totally their fault, whoever it was who determined not to say anything.