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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.