Tragedy in the land of the Hokies

[mountain bed]

from a random mom of college-aged kids. pass that long to anyone you know who needs one.

I'm with that. As soon as I heard about this, we talked to our oldest who is at BSU. Of all the things I would worry about with a college aged kid, this type of thing wouldn't have even crossed my mind. I can't imagine how the parents of those kids at VT must feel. My thoughts are with them.

[Col. Hapablap]

from the Chicago Sun Times:

 

 

http://www.suntimes.com/news/nation/343354...h041607.article

 

 

 

April 16, 2007

BY MICHAEL SNEED Sun-Times Columnist

 

Authorities were investigating whether the gunman who killed 32 people on the Virginia Tech campus in the deadliest shooting rampage in U.S. history was a Chinese man who arrived in the United States last year on a student visa.

 

The 24-year-old man arrived in San Francisco on United Airlines on Aug. 7 on a visa issued in Shanghai, the source said. Investigators have not linked him to any terrorist groups, the source said.

 

Police believe three bomb threats on the campus last week may have been attempts by the man to test the campus

[solace]

^^ was already disproved last night

[cryptique]

So, I had a thought...

 

They still haven't announced whether this was all the work of one gunman, or if the first shooting in the dorm might have been done by a different perp. This makes me wonder...

 

There are two big anniversaries this week: April 19 (Thursday), which is the anniversary of both the David Koresh debacle in Waco and the Oklahoma City bombing, and April 20 (Friday), which is the anniversary of the Columbine shootings.

 

It has been suggested that the shooter in the academic building may have been testing campus security response with the bomb threats from last week, which would show considerable advance planning on his part. What if he intended to carry out his attack on one of those anniversaries, but the dorm shooting made him alter his plan? He may have figured that the first shooting could prompt security measures that might hinder his own plan, so he decided to move forward ahead of schedule. That would at least explain the two-hour gap between incidents.

 

Anyway, it's just a thought. I guess I'm still trying to make sense of the whole thing, and the idea that there could have been two different shooters just got me thinking. If ballistics links the two crime scenes, it'll be a moot point.

[darkstar]

CNN is now reporting it was some 23 year old South Korean guy that was a student at VT.

 

crazy crazy crazy

[quarter23cd]

It has been suggested that the shooter in the academic building may have been testing campus security response with the bomb threats from last week, which would show considerable advance planning on his part. What if he intended to carry out his attack on one of those anniversaries, but the dorm shooting made him alter his plan? He may have figured that the first shooting could prompt security measures that might hinder his own plan, so he decided to move forward ahead of schedule. That would at least explain the two-hour gap between incidents.

An interesting possibility. Could possibly be true, though you may be stretching a bit here trying to make connections. I think everyone wants to try to make sense of this--to find some order, some reason why it happened. I think right now its still so early that I think I'm trying not to speculate until we know more.

[Lammycat]

Killer id'd:

http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=3048108&page=1

[ction]

Supposedly the shooter's family lives in Centreville. The psycho who shot up a Fairfax County police station last year was also from Centreville (my old neighborhood, in fact). I'm glad I don't live in Centreville anymore...although I guess there are countless people in every community who are capable of this kind of horrible stuff.

[cryptique]

An interesting possibility. Could possibly be true, though you may be stretching a bit here trying to make connections. I think everyone wants to try to make sense of this--to find some order, some reason why it happened. I think right now its still so early that I think I'm trying not to speculate until we know more.

The article Lammy linked to says they've now linked one gun to both crime scenes, so it sounds like it was just one shooter after all.

[LouieB]

This is the worst security gaff ever. Once a murder that was so unclear occured, the campus should have been locked down immediately, which should have included canceling of all classes and everyone put on alert. The daughter of a friend of mine is on a campus on the east coast where a suicide occured and the campus was immediately locked down while they figured out how the person died. You just can't wait hours and assume that whatever occured is all that is going to occur. You would think with all the homeland security crap that goes on now after 9/11 that everyone would be way smarter, but I guess not. I wouldn't say that nothing else would have happened, but if classes had been immediately canceled, there would not have been the same opportunity for this guy to strike a large group.

 

LouieB

[solace]

thing is Louie, where should they have told people to go?

 

stay in their classrooms? stay in their dorms and then have the gunman go crazy in one of those dorms? run outside into the open giving them a free shot at thousands? it would have been impossible to predict where (if) this guy was going to strike again.

 

i'm not saying it could/should have been handled differently, but it's not as easy as people are making it out to be here....

[LouieB]

thing is Louie, where should they have told people to go?

 

stay in their classrooms? stay in their dorms and then have the gunman go crazy in one of those dorms? run outside into the open giving them a free shot at thousands? it would have been impossible to predict where (if) this guy was going to strike again.

 

i'm not saying it could/should have been handled differently, but it's not as easy as people are making it out to be here....

It would have been far safer to send everyone home, meaning to their off campus homes or the dorms. Like I said, that was no guarantee, but informing people by email and not sending out a general full campus alert to be on the lookout for some guy with a gun was just plain dumb. Of course more people very well could have been killed, but if they weren't in a vulnerable position (uninformed) and in one place (classrooms), the kind of bloodshed that did occur would not have occured.

 

In most schools the minute something relatively serious goes on, everyone knows and if it is a life threatening situation some kind of action is taken. Even on a big campus like the one Virginia Tech apparently is, word of mouth would have gone a long way to putting everyone on the alert. Crises are never easy or fool proof, but allowing students and staff to be sitting ducks (locked in a classroom??) was inexcusable.

 

Oh yea, I guess they didn't want to panic anyone.....right....

 

edit - Here is a good article in the Trib describing the timelines and actions taken. Hindsight is 20-20, but as I said, my friend's daughter's classes were canceled immediately upon finding a dead person in order to determine what actually happened. As it turned out it was a suicide, but they took the precaution anyway.

 

LouieB

[Big Perm]

So - bomb threat here in Austin, at St. Edward's University, I really hope we don't see this all over to day. If this is not legit, it's really shitty.

[LouieB]

So - bomb threat here in Austin, at St. Edward's University, I really hope we don't see this all over to day. If this is not legit, it's really shitty.

As always, every goddam nutcase in the world will do some sort bullshit after having seen this.

 

LouieB

[ction]

My first instinct would have been to keep the kids in their classrooms too. In hindsight it ended up being the wrong decision, but like Kyle said, who knows what the shooter is up to at that point. He could have been holed up somewhere with a rifle, shooting students as they walked back to their dorms. Then the administration gets slammed for cancelling classes and sending kids out into the open.

[solace]

yep.

 

unfortunately there is no real "right" decision in cases like this one.

 

no matter how they handled it, there would have been critics and armchair quarterbacks

[Sir Stewart]

Yeah, I guess it's human instinct to place blame, particularly when the offender is dead and gone - but I don't see anyway the authorities could have acted differently prior to the second round of killings that would have helped them now escape blame from some.

[LouieB]

My first instinct would have been to keep the kids in their classrooms too. In hindsight it ended up being the wrong decision, but like Kyle said, who knows what the shooter is up to at that point. He could have been holed up somewhere with a rifle, shooting students as they walked back to their dorms. Then the administration gets slammed for cancelling classes and sending kids out into the open.

That may have been the correct decision, but not keeping them in the classrooms uninformed. That was dumb.

yep.

 

unfortunately there is no real "right" decision in cases like this one.

 

no matter how they handled it, there would have been critics and armchair quarterbacks

Sure....all that is true, but once again, people unaware are more likely to be victims than those who are aware.

 

LouieB

[ction]

It's unfortunately another case where someone can manage to take a lot of lives if they don't care about losing their own.

[cryptique]

It's been pointed out that VT is, to a large extent, a commuter campus (something like 11,000 people come from off-campus each day). How do you reach 11,000 people who live off campus?

 

The task may have been monumental, but I still have to question the decision not to at least try to do something to secure the campus after the dorm shooting. Heck, when there's a shooting in Detroit (i.e., every day), they cordon off whole neighborhoods ASAP while they look for the shooter. They couldn't do that here?

 

I'll refrain from further comment, because I simply don't know enough about the circumstances to judge how law enforcement responded. I think it's fair to ask why more wasn't done, but criticism beyond that is premature at this point.

[owl]

Bush Admin spokesman: "The president believes that there is a right for people to bear arms, but that all laws must be followed."

 

It's been pointed out that VT is, to a large extent, a commuter campus (something like 11,000 people come from off-campus each day). How do you reach 11,000 people who live off campus?

 

Hopefully, out of this, schools will opt for more positive changes in communications and procedures during crisis response, and not merely turn themselves into maximum-security prisons full-time. Some (relatively inexpensive) things that could be done:

 

Electronic message boards in high-traffic areas, maybe even outside of campus

Intercom systems in dorm hallways

Remote lockdown mechansm

Catastrophe training at student orientation

 

There should also be gov't funding for this kind of thing. Even if this one was not a terrorist act, it is obvious that every school is another highly vulnerable place. It still burns me up that we've spent over $200,000,000,000 in Iraq when we could've spent much of that to increase U.S. security and still prevent the "evil-doers" "bad guys" from murdering "here at home."

[quarter23cd]

It's been pointed out that VT is, to a large extent, a commuter campus (something like 11,000 people come from off-campus each day). How do you reach 11,000 people who live off campus?

Not sure if "commuter campus" is the right word--the majority of off-campus students are probably in apartments or whatever in the immediate vicinity of the campus, but yeah, same difference I guess as far as trying to notify them. Email seems a lousy way of doing it, but I'm not sure how else you go about notifying tens of thousands of people to stay away.

[darkstar]

Bush Admin spokesman: "The president believes that there is a right for people to bear arms, but that all laws must be followed."

Hopefully, out of this, schools will opt for more positive changes in communications and procedures during crisis response, and not merely turn themselves into maximum-security prisons full-time. Some (relatively inexpensive) things that could be done:

 

Electronic message boards in high-traffic areas, maybe even outside of campus

Intercom systems in dorm hallways

Remote lockdown mechansm

Catastrophe training at student orientation

 

There should also be gov't funding for this kind of thing. Even if this one was not a terrorist act, it is obvious that every school is another highly vulnerable place. It still burns me up that we've spent over $200,000,000,000 in Iraq when we could've spent much of that to increase U.S. security and still prevent the "evil-doers" "bad guys" from murdering "here at home."

 

 

Sadly there is no one single thing anyone can do when a determined nut case has it mind to cause mayhem. This guy was hell bent on causing max destruction and did it. No amount of planning or spending can possibly mitigate every circumstance and prevent these things. I think in the next days and weeks there is gonna be a lot of wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth over this. There are already calls for the heads of the university president and the campus chief of police.

 

I think given what information they had at the time they proceeded as they felt best. I'm not saying they did everything right but in situations like that you have no idea how difficult it is to process information. You go on your best assumption and plan to react as the situation changes. Situations like yesterday's are never static, they are constantly evolving, let the dust settle and have all the facts researched. Only then can this situation be critiqued. But with that said, like I stated before there is nothing anyone can do to keep something like this happening again. When dealing with an individual that simply does not care whether they live or die the rules change. There are no rules...it's chaos pure and simple and no amount of planning can possibly be enough in these situations. The only thing that made this stop was when that guy knew he was done for and he shot himself. That was his goal all along he was going to kill as many as possible then do himself, and he did so when faced with overwhelming police presence.

[owl]

I think you're right to a large extent, but I think it's also obvious that communication and procedures were inadequate.

 

Whether the administrators and police made the right decisions with the resources they had is important too, and people will probably justly and unjustly be lauded and fired, etc., etc.

 

But at this point, determining absolution or blame is probably not as important as identifying what could've helped the situation, and implementing those changes wherever applicable at VT, in Virginia, and anywhere else.

 

I guarantee you, in the next few months/years, schools everywhere are going to look for possible ways to minimize and prevent tragedies of this scale. The government should also get involved to provide the funding necessary to facilitate these discussions or fund them as needed.

[Lammycat]

The "person of interest" who now turns out to be the same gunman in both cases, may have been observed leaving the scene (as well as the campus) of the first crime scene(the double murder in the dorm). The police were basing that information on how to handle the scene, from some reports.

 

It's easy to point fingers at what should have been done, but I'm not ready to point fingers at the president of VT or the police just yet.

 

As has been stated, how the hell do you "lock down" an enormous campus? What if the police/president believed the gunman to have fled the campus after the first shootings?

 

Lots of questions, but the media sure seems determined to really get a shitstorm going before all the facts are weighed. I've seen reports on CNN, etc. of reporters repeatedly veering interviews with students back to the"did they do all they could have done" angle.