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<p>Thursday, April 19, 2007
I first saw Blacksburg, and what was then V.P.I., almost fifty years ago, the summer of 1960. A member of my high school's chapter of the Future Farmers of America, I was attending the FFA's Virginia state convention - a wide-eyed rising 9th grader. About 5 foot six, I weighed little more than a large sack of chicken feed. I was a member of our school's second-string crop judging team; we did surprisingly well.
Blacksburg was the "sleepy little college town" in the mountains then, home to a small agricultural and mechanical/military school and little else. You could count the traffic lights and have fingers left over. V.P.I. was essentially all-male and all-white; being a member of the corps of cadets was the norm. Foreign students and women on campus were not. The student body generally came from rural and small-town Virginia, where it was highly regarded. A turkey was the school mascot. It was so not UVA, William and Mary, or Hollins. It was not even V.M.I.
Things change and stuff happens. By the time I graduated from high school V.P.I. was beginning its remarkable transformation into a major university. My lackluster high school record and vague aspirations did not make me highly sought after college material. But V.P.I. took a chance and accepted me. They had probably seen worse. After purgatory at their Danville Branch I finally arrived in Blacksburg in the fall of 1966.
Evidence of the major commitment to transform Tech was everywhere: new buildings, overflowing dorms, expanding academic programs, a much larger and more diverse student body (though still not enough girls), and a major emphasis on athletics, mainly football. We even managed a traffic jam on some Saturday afternoons in the fall. Off-campus housing grew, a fine off-campus book store opened, along with a decent restaurant or two. Long hair and an underground newspaper appeared. The 60's arrived at Tech and Blacksburg sometime in the 70's, but it arrived.
I should have been happy at Tech and Blacksburg, but I was not. Blacksburg seemed like the end of the earth. I called it Bleaksburg, a reference to more than its weather three seasons of the year. Driving into town one Sunday I nearly ran off the road laughing at a road sign where someone had written "armpit of the nation" under the word Blacksburg.
The school's administrators - many holdover's from its days as a military school - seemed to be truly hostile to students. Their martial vision of what college life should be was not my vision. It was a conservative campus and I was, without much self consciousness, becoming quite liberal, at least by Virginia standards. I began to enjoy walking on their grass.
My first fall on campus saw the football team invited to what I believe was its first bowl game, the Liberty Bowl in Memphis. We were to play the University of Miami. I remember walking across campus one cold, cold night headed downtown for some food (I hated the food at Shanks) and seeing a student-made sign hanging in the wind. "Beat Miami" it said. Blacksburg, Miami. Blacksburg, Miami. Hunkered into the wind I had a hard time wrapping my mind around any idea that contained those words together. Yes, true to my school, I did drive what seemed like halfway across America in my Corvair to attend that game. But I wanted out.
That would not be easy. I had just changed majors, from engineering to political science. PoliSci allowed the most electives at Tech and this would give me the chance to pretend I was at a liberal arts college where, by that time, I discovered I wanted to be. My academic record at that point was not much better than my high school record, making a transfer problematic. And there was a war on and a military draft, not something to be taken lightly. I needed that 2-s deferment. And I doubt I could have convinced my parents that it was a good idea to transfer. After all they were paying for my little adventure in academia.
My salvation came from an unlikely series of events. That January a friend at UVA invited me to Charlottesville for a week-end. He said he would get us some dates from Mary Washington College and we would have a great time; might get lucky. I was all for a great time and good luck, so plans were made. That Friday came and with it a snow storm. I said what-the-hell and made for Charlottesville. The weather worsened and I was lucky to make it to campus. The train from Fredericksburg was canceled, as were the events of the week-end. What to do? He had a friend who had just returned from a semester aboard a ship that had sailed around the world. We went to see him. Still very much overwhelmed by the experience, he told stories for hours. When we left he gave us literature about the college program and said we should apply as soon as possible. Sounded good to me.
Fast forward and I returned from that Semester at Sea with a larger view of myself, my world, and Blacksburg. Virginia Tech would continue to annoy me from time to time as it seemed slow closing the gap between what I wanted of it and what it could deliver. But I finally had matured enough to begin to take advantage of what it did offer, and to appreciate that wonderful place in the Virginia mountains, Blacksburg.
I now have two degrees from Tech, having returned in the '80s for a Master's in Urban and Regional Planning. My wife also has two degrees from Tech. She grew up just outside Blacksburg. Her sister in-law works in Norris Hall, second floor. I have wonderful friends in Blacksburg who worked for Tech for many years. Even though I also have a degree from UVA and have great respect for the University, I am a Hokie. I have marveled at Tech's growth, been amazed at the transformation of Blacksburg into a world-class small city. So watching the news over the past few days has been hard.
The violent death and injury of so many students and faculty at the hands of a psychopath renders words inadequate to convey the horror. One cannot look into the faces of horrified students and anxious or grieving parents without becoming one of them. Trying to make sense of it all seems overwhelming. And yet that is what each of us will try to do, needs to do. The young man with two handguns shot at us all.
As tragic as the events of last Monday morning were we have the ability to make them worse. And we will. I could feel it as I was watching the first reports on CNN. Even as the news was happening I could feel the ramp up to what was coming: the second guessing, criticizing, the self-righteous placing of blame, the spin in service to political agenda. Even before we had time to learn the fate of friends and family, grieve, or learn the name or fate of the gunman, the process was well underway.
Our TV hosts struggled to learn just where Blacksburg was and fumbled about trying to describe a university they knew little about. Tech was both a major university with 26,000 students and "insular" according to Brian Williams, who also placed it in the Smoky Mountains. While we were all trying to reconcile the image of a peaceful, semi-rural college environment with violence we usually associate with our urban areas or foreign theaters of war, the talking heads moved from conveying what little they knew about the horror unfolding on campus to asking leading questions and poking around trying to find an angle. They think they are reporters.
It bled and it led for hours on end. After asking students what they saw or heard Wolf Blitzer and the other CNN reporters (I use the term loosely) made a point of asking if they still felt safe, if they blamed the University and if the were planning to transfer. It took a while before they stopped seeming surprised when the students usually said they loved their school, the community, and had not considered leaving. I thought generally the students interviewed sounded much more thoughtful than their hosts. And without the "like, you know what I'm saying." I was proud of them.
Once it appeared that the gunman was dead and there was a two hour gap in the shootings the focus shifted to finding a way to question the University's handling of the situation. Well before any of the details were to fill out the timeline our TV hosts were pouncing, safely behind the camera miles away from danger or responsibility past filling commercial-safe airtime. Without possibly having the facts with which to assess situation they began to invite questions of competency of local law enforcement and the judgment of school administrators. When will we come to understand that when someone prefaces a statement, "I don't understand why ___", they really don't. You are being set up.
Soon "experts" with little or no knowledge of the specifics began to appear and try to shape our view of the tragedy. Dr. Phil appeared early. We eventually heard from Ted Nugent (FOX?) who said this would not have happened if students were allowed to legally carry guns on campus. He did not mention bows and arrows. Can they work in Springer next? If we were not dealing with a real human tragedy, real suffering and loss, this would almost be funny. It is not funny.
Once we learned the gunman was a student and was born in South Korea the press was perplexed. Even though he had lived in the US most of his life - since he was 8 years old - he was Korean. Since South Korea is an ally of the United States it has been difficult for the press to figure out how significant that was or how to play it. Now if he had been from the Middle East...
Few bothered to remark that the killer was a young man and that young men are have almost exclusive ownership of this type of serial murder. You assumed the killer was male, didn't you? I did. I didn't expect the media to go there and they didn't.
We now know he was recognized as a loner and "troubled," and had come to the attention of the school as such. He had received at least some attention from mental health and law enforcement professionals. The NYTimes gave us this morning, "Officials Knew Troubled State of Killer in '05." Well he was not a killer in '05. He was just a student with problems, probably not that unlike any number of other students on campuses from coast to coast. The headline whispers that the "officials" are now partially responsible for the crime. I am sure that these professionals wish now they could have seen into the future and done something. But I doubt even Cho Seung-hui could have done that in '05.
Being "troubled" and dead brings us to the possibility that the tragedy includes Mr. Cho. While I am sure many would recoil at this so soon, the compassion and forgiveness that my Christian countrymen so often trot out as a model for others, might not be misplaced for this very mentally ill young man and provoke wonder how he became so bitter and twisted. No, it is much easier and entertaining to now find fault with the living, those doing their very best to ensure safety of others when that still, unfortunately, was not sufficient.
Yes, I am sure campus police and other university officials wish they had done some things differently Monday morning. Given the contents of the package Mr. Cho sent to NBC that morning between shooting it is certainly possible only the location, names and number of future victims would have changed. What is likely however is that the number Mr. Cho's victims will continue to grow as some try to use the tragedy for their own ends.
Regarding making sense of it all, once again our dim-bulb President got it wrong. He said on campus trying to mean well,</p>
<blockquote>It's impossible to make sense of such violence and suffering. Those whose lives were taken did nothing to deserve their fate. They were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Now they're gone - and they leave behind grieving families, and grieving classmates, and a grieving nation.</blockquote>
<p>Well, George, making sense of things is what what people at Universities try to do, and with some success. The question is what sense we will make of it. Don't try to suggest impossibilities at a place based on possibilities. And they were not in the "wrong place at the wrong time." A convenient cliche, but again off the mark. They were in the right place, Blacksburg, Virginia Tech.
Go Hokies.
posted by Bibb at <a href="http://bibbedwards.blogspot.com/2007/04/virginia-tech.html">5:13 AM</a>
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Original Source: <a href="http://bibbedwards.blogspot.com/2007/04/virginia-tech.html">http://bibbedwards.blogspot.com/2007/04/virginia-tech.html</a>
Licensed under <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0</a>.</p>
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<p>Beauty and Depravity | eugene cho's blog [eugenecho.com]
weeks have now passed. perhaps, it's become an afterthought for many. personally, a day hasn't gone by without some thoughts of the <a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Tech_Shooting">virginia tech tragedy</a>. the tragedy exposed a great deal - it exposed what we all already know: we live in a broken and fallen word. it was never meant to be like this. i say that not for it to be an easy exit or answer but to illuminate <strong>the deep nature of jesus' redemptive live, death, and resurrection</strong>. it also exposed the reality that "race matters" and that race is something the human collective will never fully understand, grasp, and elevate.
in addition, i was exposed. <a target="_blank" href="http://eugenecho.wordpress.com/2007/04/18/making-sense-of-virginia-tech/">one poorly written post</a> attracted about 16,000 hits in a span of two days. it wasn't the kind of notoriety i was hoping for but this blog became one of the most visited wordpress blogs during that span. local papers called [eventually had a chance to write a <a target="_blank" href="http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/312786_techkorean24.html">guest column</a> for the seattle pi]. churchgoers called. friends around the country emailed. and like many, i found myself glued to the TV until i had to just pull the plug. because of the high traffic through the blog, i received my share of some interesting emails - those that were thought provoking and those that were <strong>downright scary</strong>. i sort of freaked out because of some of the emails which prompted me to go through the blog and delete all pics of the family and kids.
it also exposed my depravity. this was a snapshot of the progression of some of my thoughts:</p>
<blockquote>"wow, how could this have happened? what a tragedy. i must pray for these folks."
"what? they think an asian man did it? that's impossible. asians don't do stuff like that. but just in case, i hope it's not a korean person."
s#@t. it is a korean person. why do the news keep insisting he's a foreigner?!? there's going to be backlash. do i send my kids to school today?</blockquote>
<p>as i shared in the message i taught at my church the sunday after the shootings, amidst many things, the incident exposed my self-centeredness. while i do still believe the concerns i raised are legitimate and important conversations, it's so easy to park your thoughts on the SELF. the truth is i am a selfish, self-centered, wicked, and depraved man. thank God for his mercy and grace. <strong>only through Him can i see hints of the beauty i was intended to embody.</strong>
anyway, i ran across this article from christianity today entitled, <em>"nightmare of nightmares: virginia tech's korean christians wrestle with the aftermath of a massacre,"</em> and was particularly intrigued by the following quote:</p>
<blockquote>In the meantime, Korean Americans continue to grapple with the massacre. Korean Baptist's Chung quotes Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who wrote, "The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being."
Kang said the fundamental issue is the problem of evil. "We ask, 'Why does God allow these things to happen?'" he said, "rather than seeing this as the natural consequences of sinful society that Christ came to redeem.
"Western Christians struggle to make meaning of what happens in America because we're insulated. It's a dying and degenerate world. We're [experiencing] the consequences of sin." <a target="_blank" href="http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/june/16.52.html">[read full article]</a></blockquote>
<p>april 16, 2007...it's been nearly two months. <strong>how are you processing the events of virginia tech? any thoughts on the article or the quote above?</strong>
This entry was posted on Thursday, June 7th, 2007
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Original Source: <a href="http://eugenecho.wordpress.com/2007/06/07/reflections-on-virginia-tech-and-new-article/">http://eugenecho.wordpress.com/2007/06/07/reflections-on-virginia-tech-and-new-article/</a></p>
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Eugene Cho (eugene@seattlequest.org)
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reflections on virginia tech - 2 months later
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<p>Beauty and Depravity | eugene cho's blog [eugenecho.com]
Here's the guest column I had the privilege of writing for the Seattle Post Intelligencer [published for Tuesday, April 24, 2007]. I've also included some other reads I have personally found very moving and insightful. I was limited by time and a word count, but hoped that this <a target="_blank" href="http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/312786_techkorean24.html">'guest column'</a> would be a source of healing, deeper understanding, and blessing to many. I wish I did a better job, [and given them my own title], and spoken from a larger Asian perspective. One clarification I want to make - while I and other Koreans/Asians grieve and feel pain and 'shame' over Seung Hui Cho, <strong>we are not the victims in this tragedy.</strong> My hope was to convey that no matter who or what we are, we are all connected to one another - not just because of our ethnic identity but our larger <strong>human collective and narrative</strong>. Because of the invitation to address the larger Washington readership, I chose not to be preachy. Much of this editorial comes from some initial thoughts shared in a blog entry from last week entitled, <a target="_blank" href="http://eugenecho.wordpress.com/2007/04/18/making-sense-of-virginia-tech/">'Making Sense of the Senseless.'</a>
<strong>Worthwhile Relevant Reads:</strong> <a target="_blank" href="http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1110AP_Virginia_Tech_Family_Statement.html">Cho Family Statement</a> [Sun Kyung Cho], <a target="_blank" href="http://elderj.wordpress.com/2007/04/23/guilt-shame-and-corporate-identity/">Guilt, Shame,and Corporate Identity</a> [elderj], <a target="_blank" href="http://www.jameschoung.net/2007/04/18/to-blame-is-human/">To Blame is Human</a> [James Choung], <a target="_blank" href="http://www.philly.com/inquirer/opinion/20070420_Editorial___Letter_to_South_Korea.html">A Lesson in Your Apology</a> [Philadelphia Enquire Editorial], <a target="_blank" href="http://bolim.wordpress.com/2007/04/25/hello-world/">One of Our Own</a> [Bo Lim], <a target="_blank" href="http://www.vt.edu/tragedy/giovanni_transcript.php">Nikki Giovanni Convocation Address</a> [N. Giovanni], Making Sense of the Senseless <a target="_blank" href="http://eugenecho.wordpress.com/2007/04/18/making-sense-of-virginia-tech/#comment-1414">Comment</a> [rk], Va Tech Victims <a target="_blank" href="http://www.nytimes.com/ref/us/20070418_VICTIMS_GRAPHIC.html">Pics & Stories</a> [NY Times], and <a target="_blank" href="http://www.beliefnet.com/blogs/godspolitics/2007/04/diana-butler-bass-silence-of-murderers.html">Silence of a Murderer's Mother</a> [Diana Bass].
If you have a lot of time and are bored, here's the <a target="_blank" href="http://www.seattlequest.org/sermons/2007.04.22.m3u">mp3 of the sermon [57.12]</a> I shared last Sunday at <a target="_blank" href="http://seattlequest.org">Quest Church</a>. I preached from 2 Corinthians 5:17-21, Isaiah 1:17, and Matthew 5:9 entitled, <strong>'Love Wins.'</strong> Yes, it is very long but I also have to stay true to my preaching nickname: 'Fiddy.'
Here's the direct link to the <a target="_blank" href="http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/312786_techkorean24.html">Seattle PI column</a>:</p>
<blockquote>Like everyone else — here (Seattle), there (Virginia), West (United States), East (Korea) and everywhere (the larger world), I have been shocked and horrified over the Virginia Tech shooting. I have been trying to make sense of something that is senseless.
Personally, the emotions have been even more convoluted because of my bicultural identity. I was born in Korea, immigrated to the United States at the age of 6 and thus am Korean American. I am also a U.S. citizen; I am a Korean American male immigrant and even share the same surname as the gunman, Seung-Hui Cho.
Once I discovered that the gunman was Korean American, I had some initial fears of racial backlash. As a proud citizen of this country, I do not believe there will be any overt backlash. It would be nonsensical for people to associate the heinous crime to Koreans or Korean Americans simply because of Seung-Hui Cho's ethnicity.
In that same vein, it would have been preposterous and unjust for us to place blame on African Americans for the actions of John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo in the Beltway Sniper attacks of 2002 or to ask white Americans to share blame with Timothy McVeigh in the Oklahoma City bombings of 1995.
But in the days after the identity of the gunman was revealed, many in the media and larger culture may have been perplexed by the responses of Koreans and Korean Americans. Many Koreans expressed embarrassment, shame and even guilt. State Sen. Paul Shinn fought back his tears as he apologized to fellow lawmakers. Even despite being reassured by others that an apology was not necessary, he continued.
Although I personally don't feel the need to directly apologize for the actions of Seung-Hui Cho, I understand why Shinn and others feel the need to do so. Although not apologetic, I share in deep pain, embarrassment and shame. I share in the deep pain because when I see images of this young man, I don't just see a "crazy Asian killer," I also see someone whose life story sounds very similar to mine. Such words as lonely, isolated and quiet were often used to describe my younger life as I struggled to fit in as an immigrant.
I share in embarrassment and shame because I see Seung-Hui Cho as a part of my larger community. As Koreans or Korean Americans, we share not only similar life stories but also a communal bond. Contrary to perhaps the more "individualistic" worldview of Westerners, Koreans have a certain communal identity.
One can contend that to be Korean is to be communal. No one is an island to themselves. For that reason, Koreans tend to rejoice and mourn on the successes and failures of fellow Koreans. We rejoice with individuals such as James Sun ("The Apprentice"), Michelle Wie (LPGA golfer), Yul Kwon ("Survivor: Cook's Island), Hines Ward (NFL player) and Yunjin Kim (ABC's "Lost").
And because we are a communal culture — not only as Koreans but also within our Korean American immigrant experience — we mourn and feel deep pain and shame over Seung-Hui Cho.
Last week, someone asked me "Why am I mourning? Is it because of the one or the 32″? For me, and many Korean Americans, the answer is both. We are mourning because of the 33. We are mourning because great pain and harm have been inflicted upon the lives of 32 individuals and their loved ones — each one with beautiful lives, stories, dreams and futures.
We are mourning because the one, Seung-Hui Cho — a part of us — chose to commit a horrible act of violence and devastation. Last week, my wife and I have broken down in tears in random situations. We cry and pray for the 32, their families, the students and community at Blacksburg, but also cry for Seung-Hui Cho and his family. We cry because in him, we see a younger brother. And so, we grieve for the 33.
Although I know that it is not necessary to apologize, I do want to share these words. On behalf of Koreans and Korean Americans, I want to extend our deepest condolences and love to all the families of those affected by the tragedy at Virginia Tech. It is my sincere hope and prayer — that no matter who or what we are — we grow to understand we are all connected to one another.
The Rev. Eugene Cho is lead pastor at Quest Church, a multiethnic church in Seattle <a target="_blank" href="http://seattlequest.org">(seattlequest.org);(</a><a target="_blank" href="http://eugenecho.wordpress.com/">eugenecho.wordpress.com</a>).</blockquote>
<p>May each of us take to heart the ministry of reconciliation, the pursuit of justice for the oppressed and 'other' and be peacemakers.</p>
<blockquote>Now we look inside, and what we see is that anyone united with the Messiah gets a fresh start, is created new. The old life is gone; a new life burgeons! Look at it! All this comes from the God who settled the relationship between us and him, and then called us to settle our relationships with each other. God put the world square with himself through the Messiah, giving the world a fresh start by offering forgiveness of sins. God has given us the task of telling everyone what he is doing. We're Christ's representatives. God uses us to persuade men and women to drop their differences and enter into God's work of making things right between them. We're speaking for Christ himself now: Become friends with God; he's already a friend with you. <strong>2 Corinthians 5:17-20</strong></blockquote>
<p> This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 24th, 2007
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Archived with permission of the author.
Original Source: Beauty and Depravity | eugene cho's blog [eugenecho.com]
<a href="http://eugenecho.wordpress.com/2007/04/24/seattle-pi-column/">http://eugenecho.wordpress.com/2007/04/24/seattle-pi-column/</a>
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Eugene Cho (eugene@seattlequest.org)
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seattle PI guest column on the tragedy of virginia tech
asian american
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cho
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seattle
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<p>Beauty and Depravity | eugene cho's blog [eugenecho.com]</p>
<p>Like everyone else - here [Seattle], there [Virginia], West [United States, East [Korea], and everywhere, I am trying to make sense of something that is simply - <strong>senselesss.</strong> Personally, the emotions have been even more convoluted because I am <strong>Korean-American</strong>. I am a <strong>Korean immigrant</strong> [immigrated at the age of 6] and understand the <strong>immigrant experience</strong>; I am a Korean-American Immigrant <strong>Male</strong> [who even shares the <strong>same last name</strong> - '<strong>C-H-O' </strong>- as the gunman]. I am a <strong>Christian pastor</strong> involved in the institution of <strong>Religion</strong> that Seung Hui Cho criticized and expressed disappointment. For these reasons, many have asked, called, IM'd, and emailed asking me to share some of my thoughts - as a person, a Christian, an immigrant, a pastor, but especially as a Korean-American man. I'm sharing some thoughts [some which are still in vomitaceous process] in hopes that we can dialogue here - <strong>that it may serve as part of the healing and redemptive process.</strong></p>
<p>Monday night was an incredibly eerie day for me. After watching the news with incredulity and horror, I posted a <a target="_blank" href="http://eugenecho.wordpress.com/2007/04/16/tragedy-at-virginia-tech/">blog entry about the tragedy in Virginia Tech</a>. About 9pm [PST], I began to literally have over hundred people instantaneously get to my blog in a span of two hours.</p>
<blockquote><strong>Search Views | </strong>seung cho blog 18, cho virginia tech myspace 17, virginia tech shooting cho 17, cho 15, cho virginia tech 15, virginia tech cho 13, cho virginia 9, virginia tech student shooter Cho 9, virginia shooter cho myspace 8, Sung Cho Blacksburg 7, virginia tech blog cho 7, blog virginia tech 2, cho seung virginia tech shooting 2, Cho, Korean, Blacksburg 2CHO, virginia shooting korean 2, Virginia Tech Myspace Cho 2, Cho myspace virginia tech 2, Cho Seung virginia tech 2, virginia tech cho shooting 2, Myspace Cho Virginia Tech 2, "Cho" Blacksburg 2, viginia tech cho korea shooting 2, "Cho" virginia tech korea myspace 2, cho virginia tech shoot 2, korean virginia tech cho 2, pastoral health 2, quest eugene cho 2, cho virginia tech shooting 2, virginia cho 2</blockquote>
<p>As I examined my dashboard through wordpress, it was fairly obvious to me that while the news wouldn't be shared to the larger world until the next morning, there was strong suspicion - perhaps through authorities or through some of the student body - that the gunman may have been someone named Seung [Hui] Cho. I was speechless, ashamed, angry, and afraid. [You can also add 'guilty' because of my selfishness. Like others, I felt "pathetic" in wishing the person wasn't Korean or Asian...I became more self-focused rather on mourning with those who have suffered in the tragedy].</p>
<p>Some vomitaceous thoughts, questions, and reflections:</p>
<p><strong>1</strong> We need to <strong>remember, foremost</strong>, that lives have been dramatically impacted. 33 people have died. 32 who were completely innocent. E<strong>ach person that died or was severely injured has a name, a story, a family, a passion, a dream, and a life.</strong> Let's not forget that in the midst of the media frenzy. <a target="_blank" href="http://www.nytimes.com/ref/us/20070418_VICTIMS_GRAPHIC.html"><strong>This is a must read</strong></a><strong>.</strong></p>
<p><strong>2</strong> It's clear that Seung Cho was unhealthy, unstable, disturbed, ill [schizophrenia?], angry, lost, and [place your words here]. But that's the only clear thing. I needed the turn the TV off because the 'stretching' for information, analysis, scrutiny, and answers to who, what, where, when, and why was overly speculative. Compare the reporting of Fox News and <a target="_blank" href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/">BBC News</a>...</p>
<p>While I understand the need for 'why,' we're simply not going to know the full picture. While Seung's action were horrible and evil [<a target="_blank" href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6570241.stm">and premeditated</a>], we must remind ourselves that he too is a human being - <strong>as difficult as that might be</strong>. Knowing some of the dynamics of the Asian/Korean culture and the synthesis of pain, guilt, and shame, I am sincerely worried for his family - particularly his parents. They, too, are victims in this story. Update: read the <a target="_blank" href="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003674966_webfamilystatement20.html">statement issued by Sun Kyung Cho and her family.</a></p>
<p>One thing that the media won't touch is the simple and painful matter: Evil exists in our world. There is a spiritual dimension that the media won't discuss but the church must engage. As much as we seek to create a perfect world [and it is a worthwhile pursuit], this will not be the first nor will it be the first murder or tragedy.</p>
<p><strike>3 why do the media keep calling him 'cho'? he has a first name... maybe it's me, but i'm tired of hearing and reading my last name. couple folks actually emailed me [from other parts of the country] through the blog to ask if i'm related to seung.</strike></p>
<p><strong>4 </strong> Will there be racial backlash? Do Asians and Koreans need to fear? On the most part, I do not believe there will be overt backlash but there are always going to be pockets of people that will be stupid and do stupid things. It would be nonsenical for people to associate this violent act to Koreans or Asians simply because of Seung Hui Cho's ethnicity. In that same vein, it would have been preposterous and unjust for us to place blame on African-Americans for the actions of John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo in the 'Beltway Sniper attacks' of 2002 or to ask White Americans to share blame with Timothy McVeigh in the Oklahoma bombings of 1995.</p>
<p>But the question must be asked. How is the media influencing <strong>the construct of the national consciousness?</strong> That's a worthwhile question for me. In the early reporting, I was perturbed that Seung was being referred to as <strong>'the Asian killer'</strong> and <strong>'the Korean killer.'</strong> While he is Asian and Korean, the media needs to be more responsible in their sensational reporting. What do you think?</p>
<p>As one commenter replied in an earlier posting:</p>
<blockquote>i definitely wish/ hope that most would not see the shooter as representative of all asians, but in america, if the person in question is not a white, heterosexual, protestant, middle class, educated man, then their race, creed and color seems to always be part of the equation. he has been marked as the resident alien from abroad who came into our land and terrorized us, and with our heightened fear of the other, this situation seems to be full of potential for type casting and APIA caricatures. and i think if these kinds of caricatures flourish (as they did with mid-easterners post 9/11), then it's not unreasonable to fear violent reprisal. and so while i certainly hope that people can view the event as isolated, i know that it's very difficult for our culture to separate media representations of people groups from 'reality.'</blockquote>
<p><strong>5 </strong> Why are Koreans/Asians afraid of backlash? My hope is that in the midst of this tragedy, a small glimpse will be captured of the Asian-American [immigrant] experience. Asians and particularly, Korean-Americans are xenophobic. Historically, Koreans have been invaded, pillaged, and exploited...one of the foremost Korean historians <a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ki-baek_Lee">Ki-Baek Lee</a> refers to Korea as "the prostitute of Asia." From an immigrant experience, two very formative events in modern Asian American history impact our responses as Asian-Americans - particularly those who are older. In my opinion, the most significant event in modern Asian-American history is the story of <a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_Chin">Vincent Chin</a> - a Chinese American man beaten to death by a baseball bat by two white auto industry workers - outside of a club during his bachelor party. Even worse, the white men were acquitted. For <a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_American">Korean Americans</a>, the most significant event in their modern history is the <a target="_blank" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_riots">LA riots </a>and specifically, Sai-I-Gu (4/29).</p>
<p>The United States is an incredible country and I am a proud citizen of this country; but it's not a perfect country and while I believe there won't be an overt backlash, I do worry how it will impact the individual and larger [White] collective view of Asian-Americans, Korean-Americans, "foreigners," "immigrants" and such. We should agree: if one Asian or Korean is bullied as a result of this, it's one too many. If one woman is bullied because of her gender, it's one too many. If one gay person is bullied because of their orientation, it's one too many.</p>
<p><strong>6</strong> As we mourn for those impacted, we must ask the question, "Why am I mourning?" Are Korean-Americans and Asian-Americans mourning because the perpetrator was Korean [because of shame and/or fear] or because of the larger tragedy? Are we mourning because of the <strong>1 </strong>or are we mourning because of the <strong>32</strong>? <strong>For Koreans, the answer is likely both.</strong> We are mourning because of the <strong>33.</strong> This is important to understand. To be Korean - culturally - is to be communal. Koreans are interconnected in a communal culture. We rejoice and mourn with the successes and failures of our fellow Koreans or Korean-Americans. We cling and rejoice with individuals like James Sun [The Apprentice], Paul Kim [American Idol], Michelle Wie [LPGA golfer], Yul Kwon [Survivor: Cook's Island], Hines Ward [NFL Football], and Yunjin Kim [ABC's Lost]. And because we are a communal culture - interconnected - not only as Koreans but also within our KA immigrant experience, we mourn and feel deep pain and shame over Seung Hui Cho.</p>
<p>For the larger Anglo worldview, the question must also be asked: Is Seung Hui Cho an "Asian Killer" or "the Korean Killer" or is he a Korean-<strong>American</strong> [emphasis added] or an American that committed an evil crime? What is the demarcation of what it means to be an American? He immigrated at the age of 8; grew up in Detroit; moved to the suburbs of Washington DC; educated in the States; and was an English major in Virginia Tech.<p>
<p>A great definition of community <strong>(Romans 12:15)</strong> is when [or if] we choose to "<strong>mourn with those who mourn and rejoice with those who rejoice."</strong> As Asian-Americans, we must mourn with those who mourn not simply because an Asian was involved in the crime, but because our larger community - our country - is in mourning. This is also our country, our people, our college community...this can't be <strong>their</strong> tragedy. <strong>this is [must be] our shared tragedy.</strong></p>
<p><strong>7 </strong> Why are we so violent as Americans? Should we discuss gun control here? Where do we start? What is our Christian response? Why are so many Christians so adamant about the right to bear arms? Where is that found in the Scriptures? I can cite tons of places about mercy, humility, justice, the oppressed, the poor, the widows...but why such obsession with arms and yet, such silence on the items listed above? How are we as Christians and as consumers feeding the violence acceptance of our culture? Insert pop culture here.</p>
<p><strong>8 </strong> The lives of those who have perished must be remembered, cherished and celebrated. Period.</p>
<p>But today alone, nearly <a target="_blank" href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article1674607.ece">200 people were killed in Bahgdad</a>. It is estimated that approximately 30,000 children will die today because of poverty [according to UNICEF]. That's 210,000 children this week; a little under 11 million children [five and under] each year.</p>
<p>While this is a horrible tragedy, <strong>[one life lost - is one too many] we must commit ourselves to the elevation of the sanctity of life. each person - with a name, a story, a family, a dream, a beauty...</strong></p>
<p>Let's remain in prayer for those impacted in this shared tragedy; let's mourn with those who mourn; hope together; and work - whatever faith, ethnicity, country, political affiliation - for the shared responsibility of being a good neighbor.</p>
<p>_________</p>
<p><strong>One last note.</strong> As a Korean-American Male Cho Immigrant Christian Pastor, I do have another response:</p>
<p>God is love. Because He is Love, He created order out of chaos. His purpose was love and shalom. We were created for beauty - created in the image of God. Shalom was violated and marred. Our image tainted and cracked. Jesus came to redeem and restore. Invitation is extended to all - including the lonely, the outcast, the marginalized, the rich, the debaucherized, and such. And lest we forget or bathe in our righteousness, we have all fallen short of the glory of God. We are confronted by our depravity. We all need God and thanks be to God, the Lord is not far. He is near.</p>
<p>This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 18th, 2007</p>
<p>--</p>
<p>Archived with permission of the author.</p>
<p>Original Source: Beauty and Depravity | eugene cho's blog [eugenecho.com]<br />
<a href="http://eugenecho.wordpress.com/2007/04/18/making-sense-of-virginia-tech/">http://eugenecho.wordpress.com/2007/04/18/making-sense-of-virginia-tech/</a></p>
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Karen Harper
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Karen Harper
22 Apr 2007
There will be a lot of blame dished out in the aftermath of the Virginia Tech massacre. But one element will be missing and that is the system itself. Capitalism and the society it nurtures will remain unscathed in the big business press.
In the aftermath of another school shooting in the US, many will be asking why and some will be trying to lay blame. The shooter's parents will be blamed for how they raised him; the school will be blamed for how it dealt with his mental illness; and his schoolmates past and present will be blamed for how they teased and ostracized him. However, the blame will mostly not be laid where it appropriately belongs; on the head of capitalism and the social values that it has nourished.
No individual can be looked at out of context of the larger society, and this young man and what he became cannot be understood without first looking at the society he came from. Unfortunately, the "angry loner" type that has done these sorts of shootings in the past is not the product of an isolated genetic mutation that happens unpredictably and that cannot be prevented. Such people are a real product of their environment and the direct result of capitalism's impact on personal development and mental health.
This society promotes individuality, self-absorption, and competition over solidarity and collective struggle. Is it any surprise that some young people are so incapable of not only identifying with the group and its larger good, but also of even, in severe cases, forming any kind of meaningful relationship with another individual? These people after years of painful experiences can come to the conclusion that they are completely unloved and unlovable. Because we are social beings, this conclusion makes life difficult to continue.
Capitalism is daily bombarding our self-esteem; we are never good enough under capitalism. There is always some drug to make us happier, some surgery to make us thinner, some car or house or job that will make us more respected. The inevitable consequence of this pressure is that some people will consider themselves failures when they judge themselves up against the values of this society. In some cases this will only further increase some individual's isolation and anger.
This terrible brutal crime is an ugly, warped but nonetheless, direct product of big business'‚ value system. Capitalism will continuously attempt to encourage an obsession with money, fame and the worship of individualism. This in turn will inevitably be accompanied by what we saw at Virginia Tech this week. This will not be the last individual so void of solidarity as to massacre his classmates. The outpouring of empathy towards the victims of this crime is a sign of the enormous human and working class solidarity that exists in this society. The crime itself is a consequence of the corrupt and rotten values of those who are in control at the top.
<b>Related</b>
<a href="http://www.laborsmilitantvoice.org/">http://www.laborsmilitantvoice.org</a>
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Virginia Tech: Laying The Blame
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Aspazia / Mad Melancholic Feminista Blog
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Thursday, April 19, 2007
I had nightmares about the VT massacre last night. It was on a two day delay. I knew that eventually the horror of what had happened would start to eat away at me. In part, I think my dreams haunted me precisely because I didn't talk, or rather <span style="font-style: italic;">listen</span>, to what students thought about this. I didn't check in to see if they were suffering, in shock, afraid . . . I had to think a lot about why I didn't, especially after the Provost sent us a thoughtful email encouraging us to do so. What it comes down to is that I didn't want to think about it. I didn't want to actually confront the horror of this event. I wasn't prepared for hearing any vitriol, anger or racist statements either (not that students would've made such statements, but I worried). I am scared and frightened by what happened, and in my selfishness, I didn't want to hear anything about it, or how it affected my students.
I started to realize how frightened I was by the events yesterday while talking to my colleagues in the Philosophy lounge. I had been studying the faces of the dead at the <span style="font-style: italic;">NYTimes</span> website. But, more importantly, I had been studying the faces of the dead professors. One of them, Jamie Bishop, looked like the sort of colleague I have here. He was young, married, and well-loved by his students. Don't get me wrong, I paused on pictures of young women and men, who could've been my own students, and found myself speechless over the loss. But, seeing the pictures of dead professors haunted me the most. And, it is precisely that which I dreamt: being hunted by a former student, being called to protect my class from an armed assailant. These are not tasks that one signs on for when he/she becomes a college professor.
<a href="http://subversivechristianity.blogspot.com/">Kerry</a> reminded me of a student we both had a few years ago, who I am convinced was schizophrenic. He was the right age and gender for the onset of schizophrenia. His papers were long, stream of consciousness writings full of references to disturbing sexuality. The more I was around him, the more frightened I became of him. I would shudder if he came to my office and I never had <span style="font-style: italic;">any</span> idea of what to do with his papers. During his senior thesis presentation, I think we all just sat, aghast at what nonsense had been uttered and scrambled to figure out what to do.
I think that one of the hard realities that we, as college professors, have to face in the wake of the VT massacre is our responsibility to get troubled students serious help (even if they frighten us). Many of us like to just avoid this responsibility (me included). After all, we're not therapists! And, I am not claiming we should start acting like therapists either. But, I do think we have a serious obligation to pay attention to our students who seem deeply troubled, and figure out ways to get them help. If we just try to get them out of our class, or ignore them, or rationalize to ourselves that they are just lazy, mean or insubordinate, then we may find ourselves deeply regretting that we didn't do something to stop them from hurting others or themselves.
The story of Cho Seung-Hui is not an anomaly. We know that there are lots of disaffected, troubled young people in our schools. And while the news reports are starting to show that his professors, at least, tried to take action, what stands out to me is how most people just ignored his behavior. Everyone knows the loners on their campus. And, most of the time these loners are the butt of jokes. Allowing such a disconnected community to exist is no longer safe, forget the moral concerns.
So, the lesson I draw from the VT massacre is that I can no longer afford to ignore the students who are manifesting very troubling behavior; I am responsible to them as well as my community.
Posted by Aspazia at <a href="http://melancholicfeminista.blogspot.com/2007/04/on-being-college-professor-after-vt.html">Thursday, April 19, 2007</a>
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On Being A College Professor after the VT Massacre
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[Philosophical Musing on Media Culture]
By Carl Davidson
20 Apr 2007
The universe throws curve balls at us, now and then.
It seems to want to wake us up, and teach us lessons in impermanence and interconnectedness.
Take the killings at Virginia Tech.
A strange, quiet young Korean man, Cho Seung-Hui, writer of tortured and violent plays and screeds, makes his own solipsistic martial arts-gangsta video of himself, and sends it to the media, in the course of slaughtering 32 people, then killing himself.
The media sensationalizes it. MSNBC ratings go through the roof as its images are repeated, to millions and millions, then all the networks join in the frenzy. As expected, other troubled youth respond, in copy-cat fashion, often only with words, and scares shut down numerous classes across the country. At the same time, discussions of 'healing' get underway.
Talk show commentators are having a time of it. I hear both liberal and conservatives alike carry on about 'looking in the face of evil' and trashing the notions of illness and therapy. Rush Limbaugh and one caller on his show go on about how the Korean youth is an 'America hater,' 'suicide bomber,' and simply evil. Retired FBI guys talk about 'training' students to be able to respond better, and hiring tougher 'security.' People debate police tactics, censorship and guns.
Then a British paper goes to a tiny hut in Korea, and a reporter talks to the boy's grandparents, who say he was a bad kid and 'deserved to die' for his sins.
But the grandparents also reveal the poverty of his parents as they immigrated to the U.S. Most important, they reveal their grandson was diagnosed early with autism, but the poverty all around prevented them from doing much about it, either in Korea or here.
Autism is recently growing with unusual speed in the US. Parents, rich and poor, are desperate for help, since dealing with an autistic child is often beyond any couple, however well off.
One radio personality, Don Imus, takes up their cause. He helps grow their organization for families of Autistic children, and raises millions. His wife, an environmentalist, believes toxins, perhaps in vaccines, are partly to blame, and demands independent research. Wealthy pharmaceutical companies and the Wall Street Journal counter-attack, smearing the couple. But Imus is relentless, and blasts away at their money-grubbing and lies. Largely through his efforts, a compromise measure, offering some relief, gets through Congress, but he pushes on for more substantive solutions, and raises millions more.
Now the effort has stopped, or is at least severely reduced. Imus, as we well know, also indulged in racist, sexist and chauvinist commentary and locker-room 'jokes,' repeatedly, and finally went too far. He realized it, blamed himself and tried to make amends. He promised changes in his show, but accepted whatever he got, saying he had dished it out long enough, now it was his turn to take it.
But a groundswell wanted more. They wanted his show shut down, period, and it was. Many people declared victory over racism and sexism, and to a degree, it was. The media moguls preened about their new-found responsibility and the need for change.
At least until 32 people died at Virginia Tech.
Now we have a new wave of violence featured in the media, and Imus is old news, history.
And we have a new wave of blame, and a new staking out of moral ground against evil.
But you can make a good case that untreated autism, rooted in poverty, was the root cause of what happened at Virginia Tech, however terrible the consequences and the suffering visited on those who didn't deserve it in the least, just as the Rutgers women didn't deserve it in the least.
The whole thing reminds me of Thich Nhat Hanh's long poem, 'Call Me by My True Name.' It's about looking deeply, in the poem, about a Thai sailor, and his raping and killing Vietnamese boat people. It's too long a story to retell here, but do yourself a favor and read it, or better yet, listen to it sometime.
But given this latest curve ball, I think I'll wait a bit before declaring either Don Imus or Cho Seung-Hui, connected in this curious way, to be evil, or at least, in the case of Imus, who's still with us, beyond public redemption.
<b>Related</b>
<a href="http://carldavidson.blogspot.com/">http://carldavidson.blogspot.com</a>
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Virginia Tech, Imus and Curve Balls
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I'd been thinking about starting this blog up again for a few weeks now. I didn't think I'd have something so tragic to write about.
Probably it goes without saying that my thoughts and best wishes go out to the students, faculty, and staff at my alma mater, Virginia Tech, and especially to the families and friends of the victims.
I was working from home today, heads down with all my external inputs (radio, TV, email, IRC, RSS feeds, etc.) turned off, so it wasn't until mid-afternoon that I became aware of what had happened. It has shaken me up, more than I would have expected it would.
It's disconcerting to see a community that you've been part of suffer an event like this, especially when you see so many images on the news of places you're quite familiar with. When I was a student at Virginia Tech, I had friends who lived on the 4th floor Ambler-Johnston Hall, where the first shooting took place. I had classes in Norris Hall, where the second shooting occurred. I know these places. They were my places. It was my community. Even though I've been gone from Tech for a long time, it still hits close to home.
Back in '88-'89 I was one of the editors of the <a href="http://www.collegiatetimes.com"><em>Collegiate Times</em></a>, Virginia Tech's student newspaper. I've thought a lot about the students working at the <em>Collegiate Times</em> today. What was the biggest story we dealt with back in '88-'89? I think a steroids scandal on one of the sports teams. Nothing to compare to what happened today. What a time it must be for those young, aspiring journalists. How difficult it must be to cover what will probably be the biggest story of your life when you are just twenty or twenty-one. Doubly difficult since it is the slaughter of your classmates that you have to cover. As young journalists they must feel a great deal of excitement at The Big Story . . . and, at the same time, a great deal of guilt and dread for being excited while their friends lay dead. I hope they sense the importance of their role of as the student voice of the Virginia Tech campus more than ever. (<a href="http://www.collegiatetimes.com">CollegiateTimes.com</a> is down, and the server is re-directing to <a href="http://CollegeMedia.com">CollegeMedia.com</a>, the parent site for the student media outlets at Tech. And I just noticed that the <em>Collegiate Times</em> Online Editor, who has been posting to <a href="http://www.collegemedia.com">http://www.collegemedia.com</a> all afternoon is named Christopher Ritter. No relation, if you were wondering.)
Besides my former professors, I only know a couple of people still at Virginia Tech. None of them were likely to have been in either of the buildings where the shootings took place, but I've dropped them emails anyway. And I've been contacted today by former classmates who I haven't heard from in years. When something like this happens, you start thinking about the people who shared your life then and you want to reach out to them, even if you've been silent for years, because their the only ones who are going to understand your loss in the same way.
The news reports are saying that this is the worst shooting on a college campus in American history. Oddly, one of the other campus massacres that has been mentioned repeatedly was a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gang_Lu_Massacre">1991 shooting</a> rampage by a physics grad student (who also killed himself) at the University of Iowa, where I went to graduate school. My other alma mater. That took place just three months after I left Iowa City, and, unlike today's tragedy at VT, I knew many people who were on campus at that time.
Then a few years back, in the fall of 2000, <a href="http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101010625-130940,00.html">a student murdered one of his classmates</a> at Gallaudet University, and went un-apprehended for months until he killed again in February. I had worked at Gallaudet for three years and left just a bit more than a year before the murders there. Again, I was gone, but, again, I knew many people affected by this. It wasn't the kind of rampage like at Iowa or Virginia Tech, but it held the campus hostage to fear nonetheless.
So this is the third time I've watched a campus where I have lived, studied, or worked be victimized by a murderer.
It sucks. It sucks for me, it makes me cry to see a community -- <i>my community</i> -- ravaged, even after I've been absent from it for years
And as miserable and helpless as I feel, I can't imagine how horrible it is for those living through it.
Posted by Greg on April 16, 2007 10:48 PM
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Brent Jesiek
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Aspazia / Mad Melancholic Feminista Blog
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2007-05-21
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Monday, April 16, 2007
As I wrapped up my afternoon course today, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/16/us/16cnd-shooting.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin">my students informed me of the 31 deaths at Virginia Tech today</a>. It was the first I heard of it and so I immediately looked to the news and am now glued to the press conference airing on NBC.
It is uncanny that this shooting tragedy has occurred in the same week as Colombine, 8 years ago (the very day I was interviewing for my job here). I am not sure what to make of this event yet, other than to be utterly horrified by this event and sorrowful for the community at Virginia Tech. We don't yet know how many of the deceased are students and how many are faculty. These details are sure to emerge over time.
I am dismayed by the tone of the press, who launched into an attack of VT's President for not locking down the campus after the first shooting incident in the morning. The idea of lockdown and the idea that in the future we might have to post guards on our college campuses is frightening. This is a tragedy. This was an event that no one could've forseen (unless I am persuaded by evidence to the contray), and to respond to this event with greater militarism on college campuses horrifies me (perhaps more than the event itself).
I will no doubt have something more to say about this event after I learn more facts and digest the coverage. In the meantime, I would appreciate any links to blogs from VT students or other bloggers covering this story.
UPDATE: From the Huffington Post
<blockquote>A White House spokesman said President Bush was horrified by the rampage and offered his prayers to the victims and the people of Virginia.</blockquote>
<blockquote>"The president believes that there is a right for people to bear arms, but that all laws must be followed," spokeswoman Dana Perino said</blockquote>
<p>BARF!</p><p>Posted by Aspazia at <a href="http://melancholicfeminista.blogspot.com/2007/04/tragedy-at-virginia-tech.html">Monday, April 16, 2007</a></p><p>--</p><p>Original source: <a href="http://melancholicfeminista.blogspot.com/2007/04/tragedy-at-virginia-tech.html">http://melancholicfeminista.blogspot.com/2007/04/tragedy-at-virginia-tech.html</a> </p><p>Licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/">Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License</a>.</p>
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Tragedy at Virginia Tech
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2007-06-08
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April 21st, 2007
Cho seung-hui, the Rutgers University women's basketball team, the students and Virginia Tech all form a tangled thicket nourished by the American media, overgrown with too many words, too many pictures and too many answers to too many bad questions. We, the American people struggle to navigate this thicket, for during the last few weeks we have only become more confused as if we have lost our sense of direction.
You can enter any of these words in a search engine and lose all hope of finding any rationality, any thread that will lead you out. Technorati lists 152,000 blog selections for Virginia Tech, 23,000 for Cho and 4,788 for the Rutgers' team. With new posts on all of these each day, there are enough words that it would take a person probably a year to read them all. And yet we all seek a way out of this thicket of information, a clear path, a why that puts the last few weeks all in perspective.
That the media have become such a tangled thicket rather than a clear voice represents perhaps the only generalization we can draw from these events and an indication of what has happened to America's sources and ideas about information. During past tragedies-the Kennedy assassination, Jonestown, the space shuttle explosion-somehow the media brought us together and enabled us to not only have a common source of information but also a shared sense of perspective.
Just the opposite has occurred over the last few weeks. Instead of coming together we have thousands of information sources; instead of a shared sense of perspective we have something resembling a cubist painting crafted by a random group each with their own paints, brushes and sense of reality. Trying to come together has become an exercise in frustration, disappointment and even anger.
The equilibrium many have found may even be misleading, for it comes from linking with a group of like-minded people who share their own prejudices and views of the world. So instead of finding a way out of the thicket they only wander in circles, going round and round in the same place, but thinking they have found the true path. The gun control people, the gun nuts, the racists, each have their own sources, each of which views the events through a different set of glasses. It is as if one saw green where another saw red.
It is ironic that as the mainstream media have become more concentrated, the rest of our information sources have fragmented becoming the equivalent of those drug store magazine racks with titles and content that remain a mystery to those who are not part of whatever group to which that publication caters. We have an information system that in a metaphorical way reminds me of our increasing income gap, with a small amount at one end who have a lot and a lot at the other end who have only a small amount.
The concentration of the American media has had what systems people would call an unintended consequence, for with that concentration has come increasing distrust produced by that very concentration. When you are so concentrated and so big it is very hard to hear disparate opinions, harder to evaluate them, and all but impossible to find a insightful analysis.
That distrust in turn fuels the alternative media, for when people feel they are not listened to they turn to other sources. Those sources are most likely to be those whose web pages reflect their own minds. And because of our natural diversity, those alternative sources continue to multiply.
Other factors also are at work. One I term the American Idol myth. That show exists in part because of the first premise-that the media are so concentrated they can no longer truly connect with people and so they neglect natural talents that in another time would have been stars. But it also exists because more and more people hunger for their thirty minutes of fame in a society that gives people little personal reinforcement. Then there is the most troubling part of it all: egos that drive many to think they ARE good. You can find all these themes in Cho's video and writings.
Now transfer the previous paragraph to the world of information rather than entertainment. Our information sources no longer connect with people. People in turn think their information or research is as good as the experts. Pretty soon information and misinformation, truth and rumor become quickly entangled. You can find these themes in coverage of the shootings.
In a society without any common definitions of what is good and what is trash, what is valid and what is fantasy, it is not surprising that people should often wander over the line between them. And it should also not be a surprise that when they wander over that line they should also wander over the line between what is moral and what is hellish, what are values and what are prejudices. Don Imus, Cho, certain blogs and YouTube videos all have that in common, for their minds were in themselves tangles of their own egos, a false reality, and ultimately a lack of values.
Another factor is that the line between public and private no longer exists any more than the line between talent and trash, information and garbage. One of the most fascinating parts of both the Rutgers and Virginia Tech stories is that for the victims the media became almost as serious a problem as the perpetrators. In a story in this week's <em>Sports Illustrated</em>, the Rutgers women speak of being harassed by so many microphones and cameras that they were unable to lead normal lives. They talk about having to find ways to sneak to class so the media would not catch them or trying to escape the media in various way only to find the microphones have again invaded their privacy. One picture that sticks in my mind from Virginia Tech is of a banner hanging from a dorm saying "Media Stay Away," for those students, especially anyone with even the remotest connection to the shootings or the killer was hounded unmercifully.
Think of each of these as maps that could help lead us out of the tangle. The lines between expertise and trash, information and misinformation, public and private have blurred as if someone spilled water on the map so everything ran together. That is what we have to guide us out of that thicket.
The good news is that history tells us this information chaos is characteristic of changing times, especially times of large changes in how we understand and organize information. Marshall McLuhan saw this as driven by changes in media, so as we move from print to Internet just as we moved from oral sources to print, there is a period of unrest. Such periods, though, by their vary nature produce a flowering of creativity, some of which is not recognized until long after.
So in that thicket lie geniuses. The message, then, of chaotic times is paradoxical for it asks that instead of closing our minds and walling off alternative realities we need to remain open to them. As anyone who has been in the woods can tell you, the way out of a confusing thicket is not to keep walking circles, but to carefully mark where you are and then explore various alternatives. It would be tragic if after the last two weeks America was to become more suspicious, more rigid, more judgmental.
Posted by liberalamerican
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Original Source: <a href="http://thestrangedeathofliberalamerica.com/2007/04/21/the-tangled-thicket-of-cho-seung-hui-don-imus-youtube-and-american-idol/">http://thestrangedeathofliberalamerica.com/2007/04/21/the-tangled-thicket-of-cho-seung-hui-don-imus-youtube-and-american-idol/</a>
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The Tangled Thicket of Cho seung-hui, Don Imus, YouTube and American Idol
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April 16th, 2007
As one who worked with school districts across the country, I know the issue of school shootings is every school official's nightmare. The apparent random nature of all the shootings only makes the nightmare more fearful, for after dozens of workshops at countless conventions, the only thing anyone can say for sure is that they do not know where the awful sounds of gunfire will next echo down the hallways and in the classrooms.
But no one I knew or any of the workshops ever talked about the possibility of the equivalent of a Columbine occurring at a college. Every school district in the country has detailed policies in place if it ever happened to them. Their teachers, administrators and staff are trained in what to do and local law enforcement officials participate in the planning and the drills.
Now that it has happened at a college they, too, will have to undergo similar training and create similar plans. Campuses will seem less safe, new rules and drills will need to be implemented and college officials and teachers will now understand the nightmares of their secondary colleagues.
At the center of that nightmare lies a dark, bottomless pool. As with the Columbines of this country, people will stare into the pool seeking answers. Some will see reflections and try to generalize from them about the nature of the shooter and the victims, but the reflections they see will only be their own. Interest groups will look into the pool and see their causes, filling the talk shows with spokespersons who will say that if we had only done "x" the event would have never happened. Others will take a longer view trying to peer into the depths of the pool seeking confirmation of trends historical, social and psychological. They too will see only their own reflections.
For those at the center of it all, the parents, relatives and friends of the victims and the shooter, those who witnessed it and lived, and those who somehow made a decision to not go to those places at that time the pool will seem more like a maelstrom in which they are caught and cannot get out. Spinning helplessly they will try to maintain some sort of equilibrium, some rationality to keep from drowning in it all. For some this may mean just focusing on the immediate, the details of that which has to be done and it is only days, weeks, even months after that a delayed reaction will overcome them.
To help them survive the maelstrom the college will bring in the teams of counselors whose jobs are to somehow get everyone through this. Going in they know theirs represents a task akin to diving into that bottomless pool and seeking to build something solid. They will work miracles with some and experience heartache with others. Each case will be different, but will they will also hear the echoes of past times like this and try to somehow connect them with what now faces them.
Our country will experience yet another crack in its marble-like structure. And it too will become part of that pool if we let it. But staring into the pool accomplishes nothing, breeding only frustration, despair and even anger. The dark pool will beckon us with its siren songs to stare into its depths or even dive in.
Instead we need to turn away from the pool and remember that at least for a brief tick in time all of us will be as one, united with those Hokies at Virginia Tech into a collective version of Hokie Nation. For now is not a time for politics or debates or even business as usual. Instead families and communities need to realize how fleeting order and life can be and hug one another because that is all they can do. This time as with all those other times we will pledge to love one another a little more and show it. We will swear not to hate and to watch out for those stray souls who slip between the cracks only to emerge from those dark places with guns in their hands. Perhaps this time we can make that oneness last longer.
Perhaps we can remember that kind words can conquer hate and vitriol. Perhaps we can remember to succor the meek, the powerless, the people who have been dealt a bum hand through no fault of their own. Perhaps we can remember that in situations like the Virginia Tech shootings that we are in fact all equal, that it could have been any one of us who died or knew someone who died and yes who knew the shooter, for death recognizes no classes, no races, no languages or cultures as superior. Most of all we can try to nurture that feeling that all of us struggle to feel right now, that feeling of empathy with other human beings we did not know before and whose friends and family we somehow each wish we could help.
Posted by liberalamerican
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Original Source: <a href="http://thestrangedeathofliberalamerica.com/2007/04/16/in-memoriam-virginia-tech-april-16-2007/">http://thestrangedeathofliberalamerica.com/2007/04/16/in-memoriam-virginia-tech-april-16-2007/</a>
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In Memoriam: Virginia Tech, April 16, 2007
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<p>April 18th, 2007</p>
<p>As the words continue to flow along with the tears after the deaths at Virginia Tech, one important observation rises above the ruins: the incident represented a triumph for what the pundits term the New Media over the Old. The keys to this triumph lie in the strengths of the New Media: its immediacy, diversity, and ability to speak personally.</p>
<p>The immediacy of the New Media put them far ahead of the Old Media even as the crisis unfolded. The on-campus emails that first informed many students that something terrible had happened became like pebbles dropped in a pond, rippling out into the ether. New Media such as Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and search engines became the preferred sources for people desperate to find out what happened. Probably the most dramatic illustration of this was the group of students who fled to the library and then frantically searched the Internet to find out what was happening. A decade ago they might have turned on the radio or television.</p>
<p>Even the Old Media had to acknowledge the role the New Media played for the students at Virginia Tech. CBS ran a <a target="_blank" href="http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/04/17/the_skinny/main2693331.shtml">story</a> "Students Turn To Web In Time Of Tragedy" whose sub head read, "How the Internet Helped Va. Tech Students Cope with Shooting Massacre." The <em>Los Angeles Times</em> <a target="_blank" href="http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-fi-web17apr17,1,3926754,full.story?coll=la-headlines-frontpage">reported </a>about University of Southern California sophomore Charlotte Korchak who instead of using a cellphone to check on friends at Virginia Tech, immediately went to Facebook.</p>
<blockquote>"I was able to immediately find out who was OK," she said. "Without Facebook, I have no idea how I would have found that out."</blockquote>
<p>As for the news on campus, the Old Media struggled to catch up. National Public Radio even published a desperate-sounding plea on their web site for witnesses of the tragedy to please contact them so they could line up interviews. In short, in the first few hours after the shootings the Old Media became just like the rest of us, searching the web for information and answers.</p>
<p>Later National Public Radio would <a target="_blank" href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/talk/index.html">gloat</a>, its words a bit of an unnecessary distortion (i.e. many bloggers), on the misinformation posted on some blogs. Referring to a Wired post the NPR blog stated:</p>
<blockquote>Wired reports that many bloggers originally <a href="http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/04/internet_names_.html">misidentified the shooter</a> in yesterday's rampage at Virginia Tech, linking to "to the LiveJournal blog of a particular 23-year-old gun nut in Virginia." It turned out that this person was not connected to the shootings.</blockquote>
<p>However, the zealotry of some blogging wingnuts pales beside the old media's inability to even get the name of the institution correct. Most of them resorted to the shorthand Virginia Tech. It wasn't until a day after the shootings that the New York Times published the official name of the school-Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. As for misidentifying the killer, there were also many false reports in the Old Media, which at one time speculated the shootings at the two different buildings might not be related.</p>
<p>Others in the Old Media recognized the role the New Media played in getting the story out. The Los Angeles Times <a target="_blank" href="http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-fi-web17apr17,1,3926754,full.story?coll=la-headlines-frontpage&ctrack=1&cset=true">admitted</a>:</p>
<blockquote>Members of the most wired generation in history dealt with Monday's bloody rampage by connecting on blogs, Facebook and other websites. Their eyewitness descriptions, photos and video made the trauma unfolding in the rural Virginia town immediate and visceral to millions.</blockquote>
<p>The Hartford Courant also <a target="_blank" href="http://www.courant.com/chi-0704160582apr17,0,7614531,print.story">acknowledged</a>:</p>
<blockquote>the most arresting coverage from Virginia Tech came from citizen journalists who went to work well before the media could grasp the massacre's full scope.</blockquote>
<p>The reliance of the Old Media on the New gave rise to a host of stories with the following disclaimer, "[this network, newspaper, radio station] is not responsible for the content of external Internet sites." Those in the Old Media who won out in the rush to tap into local sources were those like CNN who have consciously solicited the work of citizen journalists. The Hartford Courant <a target="_blank" href="http://www.courant.com/chi-0704160582apr17,0,7614531,print.story">pointed out</a> student Jamal Albarghouti, whose cell phone camera pictures were among the first of the massacre:</p>
<blockquote>Was one of more than 100 so-called I-Reporters to submit Virginia Tech content to CNN. Once CNN realized what it had, it paid him an undisclosed amount of money for exclusivity, limiting other networks to no more than 10 seconds of the clip.</blockquote>
<p>Some students became weary of all the attention as the Old Media desperately searched for someone, anyone who could give them an interview. One Virginia Tech blogger (in keeping with his request to limit intrusions I will not link to his site here but a secondary source) <a target="_blank" href="http://blogher.org/node/18346">wrote</a>:</p>
<blockquote>As of the time I am writing this I have done a radio interview with BBC and talked with a reporter from the LA Times. CBC Newsworld, the Boston Herald, Current TV, and MTV have asked for interviews and further information. As I said I intend to share my experiences with everyone, but I want to reinstate that I am just an average student and I don't want to be made into something I am not.</blockquote>
<p>The Old Media have no one but themselves to blame for not having reporters near the scene. For more than two decades they have been furiously pursuing a policy that has concentrated radio and television stations and newspapers into fewer and fewer hands. The changes in media concentration first proposed by the FCC in 2003 essentially would have allowed a single company to control almost half of all broadcasting stations and, more important, two companies could control 90%. It also raised the caps on how many local stations could be controlled by a single company and widened the ability of companies to engage in cross-media ownership within a single market.</p>
<p>What this has meant is the steady decline of local media and the Old Media. An online check of Blacksburg showed that essentially Virginia Tech itself was probably the main local media. <a target="_blank" href="http://www.city-data.com/city/Blacksburg-Virginia.html">City-data.com</a> lists five radio stations actually in Blacksburg. One of them is owned by a national chain, Capstar TX Limited Partnerships and three are owned by what seem to be regional corporations. Only one appears to be locally owned - the FM station owned by Virginia Tech.</p>
<p>This leaves the networks and newspapers without any local media they can instantly tap into. They have to rely on the Internet just like the rest of us. In essence the networks have no one to call. This phenomenon is happening all over the country as local media voices disappear forever. In <em>The Strange Death of Liberal America</em> I wrote:</p>
<blockquote>Control of local markets by national conglomerates gives local citizens little information about their own community. In a way, many towns become . . . [media] ghost towns with only tumbleweeds howling through them and their vibrant down towns boarded up. Along with the loss of local voices comes the loss of venerable institutions like the broadcasts of the local sports teams, local personalities dishing out tips on canning this year�s tomato crop, and that lifeblood of many rural communities, the recitation of the current commodity prices. In a sense, conglomerates such as Clear Channel not only make people anonymous, they also make their communities anonymous.</blockquote>
<p>The New Media have helped to fill this gap, rushing into the vacuum created by the loss of local voices. As the <em>Washington Post</em> <a target="_blank" href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/16/AR2007041601834.html?hpid=topnews">noted,</a></p>
<blockquote>Blacksburg, lead by Virginia Tech, is home to the Blacksburg Electronic Village, a pioneering project launched in the mid-'90s that sought to link everyone in an online community. A Reader's Digest headline in 1996 called Blacksburg "The Most Wired Town in America."</blockquote>
<p>For Blacksburg, replacing the Old Media with the New was a move that, as we have seen, paid off during the massacre. It is difficult to speculate what the consequences of the shootings would have been without the New Media, but clearly on the Virginia Tech campus alone, the New Media performed a variety of crucial functions in linking fellow Hokies. If we then move to the level of the friends and family of those at Virginia Tech, without the New Media they might have suffered a great deal more agony. An online <em>Post link </em><a target="_blank" href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/16/AR2007041601834.html?hpid=topnews">observed</a>,</p>
<blockquote>Friends and family embrace the New Media to get the message out.</blockquote>
<p>It was in the second and third areas - the personal and the diverse - that the New Media really excelled. The Internet allowed those at Virginia Tech and those with close ties to it to quickly link to one another and form an online community of grief. For the rest of us the Internet performed a similar function as blogs, chatrooms, online audio and video allowed us to link with each other and to those at Virginia Tech.</p>
<p>Now that the Old Media finally have their satellite trucks in place and have flown down their big name reporters to Blacksburg, they again appear in control. Once again their pious pronouncements and portentous analysis fill the airwaves. They desperately want to tell us how to think and feel about this tragedy. They seem almost eager to fill in the missing whys.</p>
<p>The Old Media still have not learned an old lesson, one as old as the Kennedy Assassination, that event that was their first national moment, the first time they had us all glued to the glowing screens. Then they kept their voices soft and restrained and let the pictures tell the story.</p>
<p>Now the Old Media broadcast events like the Virginia Tech shootings as if they were sports contests complete with the play-by-play person talking too much by telling us what we are seeing along with the resident experts pontificating about what it all means. And of course they manage to sign up a few "witnesses" who soon become THE voices of the tragedy-and, of course, each network tries to get exclusive contracts with them, trampling over the poor students in their zeal to find the most articulate, photogenic and dramatic. Then they ask the inevitable question, whether for the NCAA Final Four winner or a student at Virginia Tech is: "How do you feel?"</p>
<p>In contrast in the New Media, as the cliche goes, everyone can be themselves. Instead of pat answers and telegenic witnesses you find reality. We all know reality can be chaotic, it can be messy and it can be downright obnoxious. It has no pat answers, no resident experts and no one cares what you look like or sound like or even if you are articulate. In the New Media there is the feeling that anyone close to such a tragedy who sounds articulate is suspect.</p>
<p>The power of the New Media lies in its diversity. But what makes it powerful also has its dark side. You will find no shortage of rantings in various blogs that put even Fox News to shame. In fact right now unseemly discussions are raging all across the blogsphere like a tsunami of BS over who is to blame for this, whether we should or should not have gun control and the cryptic note the killer left behind.</p>
<p>But to have diversity we must be willing to accept the garbage along with the wisdom, even if sometimes it seems the smell of the garbage is enough to make you puke. if you are willing to hold your nose and look hard enough you will also find analysis that both moves you and provides you with more information and more unusual slants than you will ever find in the Old Media.</p>
<p>Clearly part of the attention and volume of comments the shootings have precipitated lies not merely with their horrific nature, but with the sense that many have that the massacre signaled something major had shifted in America. The seismic shock, the huge spike in online activity registered by blogs such as this one, signifies that a new world is being born, one in which the New Media have become the preferred means of communication and information. That the New Media are less reliable and more chaotic than the old has some people worried, especially in the Old Media.</p>
<p>In many ways the situation with media mirrors the murders at Virginia Tech, for just as the shootings now have made all of us a bit less certain about our safety, so have the New Media made us a bit less certain about our information. We have entered one of those uncertain and exciting times where an old world is dying and a new one is being born.</p>
<p>It may take a generation or two before the situation sorts itself out just as it did with previous media changes. As we weather these changes we need to remember that above all, the New Media is about connections and diversity, two things the Old Media lost sight of a long time ago.</p>
<p>So, in the days ahead I hope those of you who found this post will wander on to others. Above all, I hope you will make new connections, find interesting voices, and perhaps even bump into some uncomfortable ideas. For unlike the Old Media, the New Media is organic, almost a living thing, because it changes and evolves even as I write this.</p>
<p>Posted by liberalamerican</p>
<p>--</p>
<p>Original Source: <a href="http://thestrangedeathofliberalamerica.com/2007/04/18/virginia-tech-redux-did-the-old-media-lose-it-in-blacksburg/">http://thestrangedeathofliberalamerica.com/2007/04/18/virginia-tech-redux-did-the-old-media-lose-it-in-blacksburg/</a></p>
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Virginia Tech Redux: Did the Old Media Lose it in Blacksburg?
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Published by <a href="http://davesmidlife.com/author/admin/">Dave </a> April 25th, 2007
I have been on the sidelines of quite a number of handgun deaths in my life. Thank God, I haven't really been in the crossfire, nor has any member of my family. But gun violence has come close enough to me to be very unsettling.
In the late 1980s, when I was a graduate student in German at Vanderbilt, a German exchange student, <a href="http://www.vanderbilt.edu/isss/weser_award.html">Thomas Weser</a>, was gunned down in a parking lot on campus in the very early morning hours. The murder seemed to be a robbery gone wrong. It became a murder because the mugger had a handgun.
On Christmas Eve 1991, I was living in the Belmont Heights section of Nashville, a cozy suburban neighborhood near several university campuses. My kids were very young. We got along well with our neighbors. There were families all around us.
Diagonally across the street from us lived two brothers. They got into an argument in the middle of the night after much alcohol had been drunk. One brother fetched a loaded handgun and killed the other. Without the loaded handgun in the house, this argument would probably have remained a drunken fistfight, maybe a stabbing.
In February of 1997, our family accompanied my wife on a weekend trip to New York City. My wife had to attend an arts conference, and I was left to explore the city with the kids. On Sunday afternoon we wanted to go to the observation deck of the Empire State Building, but we weren't sure whether we should wait until Mom got finished with her afternoon meeting. We decided that I would go ahead and take the kids up to the top while Barbara was in her session.
After we returned home to Northern Virginia, we learned that <a href="http://www.cnn.com/US/9702/24/empire.shooting/index.html">a man had opened fire</a> with a handgun on the Empire State Building's observation deck later that afternoon. Seven people were shot; one was killed, in addition to the gunman, who committed suicide. If we had waited for Barbara, we might well have been there to experience the shooting firsthand. <a href="http://www.cnn.com/US/9702/24/empire.shoot/">Republican Mayor Rudolph Giuliani blamed weak gun laws</a> for the rampage.
America's latest adventure in easily available firearms is, of course, the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Tech_massacre">massacre at Virginia Tech</a>. As I have <a href="http://davesmidlife.com/2007/04/18/blacksburg/">mentioned</a>, my wife and daughter, who had visited Blacksburg the day before, missed this one by about 18 hours.
The world press paid close attention to this shooting for a long time. It was front-page news in just about all the newspapers of the world for four or five days. As I write this, nine days after the attack, major papers in <a href="http://www.sueddeutsche.de">Germany</a>, <a href="http://derstandard.at/?id=2854321">Austria</a>, <a href="http://www.lemonde.fr/web/recherche_breve/1,13-0,37-986031,0.html">France</a>, and other countries are still reporting the aftermath.
The one thing the world press has emphasized, without exception, is their absolute bafflement at the U.S. gun laws-or lack thereof. We are the laughingstock of the world in this department. People from civilized countries around the world look at the apparent American fascination with guns and cluck in disapproving astonishment. The unifying theme is something like this: how can a great country such as the U.S., the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, continue to allow this to happen?
After all these years and decades, I cannot come up with an answer. The National Rifle Association seems to have our congressional legislators in a deathgrip. One mass murder happens after another, all carried out with handguns or assault rifles, and yet nothing changes.
The morning after the Virginia Tech shootings, I heard Washington Post sports reporter <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Feinstein">John Feinstein</a> on <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/wtwpradio/index.html">WTWP</a>. I wish I could find a transcript of his remarks. Essentially what he said was this: when gun owners and gun fans complain about the inconvenience or unfairness of having to register these deadly weapons, he is sick of hearing about it. Since 9/11 we have been subject to a series of ever more humiliating and inconvenient searches of our persons and property at airports. Nobody really complains, because that's just the way the world is.
Well, the world is also selling deadly handguns on the Internet to psychotic young men, who then commit mass murder. Couldn't we endure just a little inconvenience to combat such madness?
I am very angry now at our American stupidity. I am angry at the weak will of the majority of Americans who want stronger gun controls, yet who will not raise hell with their congressmen or senators about it. I am embarrassed to have to try to explain to my European friends and colleagues why Americans are still allowed to buy and carry handguns.
The <a href="http://www.gocomics.com/patoliphant/2007/04/19/">cartoonist Pat Oliphant</a> has captured my sense of befuddlement and rage.
--
Original Source: <a href="http://davesmidlife.com/2007/04/25/blacksburg-violence-and-america/">http://davesmidlife.com/2007/04/25/blacksburg-violence-and-america/</a>
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Published by <a href="http://davesmidlife.com/author/admin/">Dave</a> April 18th, 2007
This past weekend was the middle weekend of April. That's the time universities put on dog-and-pony shows for students who have been admitted, to help them make up their minds.
My daughter has been admitted to several universities, and she managed to narrow it down to James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia, and <a href="http://www.vt.edu/">Virginia Tech</a>. Somewhat at the last minute, she decided she needed to see both campuses to make her final decision.
So on Saturday she and my wife drove down to Blacksburg from our suburban DC home, about a four-hour trip. They stayed near Blacksburg and then spent Sunday in Tech's pre-orientation sessions.
Monday they had moved up Interstate 81 to JMU, but my daughter had pretty much decided that Tech was the place she wanted to attend. Standing on the campus Sunday, looking around, she began to see herself as a student there.
As I was walking back from the cafeteria in my high school on Monday, one of the Spanish teachers had his classroom TV on. There was a map of Virginia with the town of Blacksburg highlighted. I saw a graphic indicating "21 dead, 21 injured." It didn't take long for the news of the massacre to filter through, as well as the instruction from our administration that we were to keep TV sets off and not talk about the news in class.
Many students from our area attend Virginia Tech. It is one of the more competitive universities in the Virginia system. Hokie loyalty is more intense than that of alumni of other places. <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/17/AR2007041701132.html?hpid=topnews">Hokie pain is now intense</a>. To see Virginia Tech on the front page of all the world's newspapers because of a rampage that wiped out 33 young lives is deeply disturbing.
My daughter will probably still attend Tech next year. She realizes that Tech is the place she saw on Sunday, not the crazy-man-land it became on Monday. But it will always be unsettling to walk the campus where the worst shooting massacre in American history took place.
--
Original Source: <a href="http://davesmidlife.com/2007/04/18/blacksburg/">http://davesmidlife.com/2007/04/18/blacksburg/</a>
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by <a href="http://members.nowpublic.com/brock">brock</a> | April 23, 2007 at 08:21 pm
As the terrible story of the shootings on the Virginia Tech campus began to unfold last week, the tens of thousands of moving pieces that make up the main stream media were kicked into high gear. The effort to get reporters "on the ground" and "in the face" of those on campus is startling in its breadth and depth.
As you see below, <b>the Washington Post threw no less than 75 reporters</b> at the story!! That is stunning. And when further reading the piece, <i>there was concern among the editors on the Post</i> because it was <i>too windy to charter a private plane to fly their reporters</i> to the Va Tech campus.
And then there was you, citizen journalist, crowd sourcing the story from any angle. NowPublic was fielding eye-witness accounts and sifting through rumors in real-time mode; ethical discussions about what information was appropriate to release and when (NowPublic had the name of the shooter's first victim very early on, perhaps before the main stream media knew) it was appropriate to do so.
The crew at NowPublic handled the chaos with grace and style and sensitivity and with more coolness and level heads than I've seen in major newsrooms during breaking stories. And they did with a fraction of the resources at the command of media outlets like the Washington Post or NBC News. And they did a more than commendable job.
What's the point? Simply this: that effort couldn't have happened without <i><b>YOU</b></i>, the citizen journalist. I've talked to many about citizen driven journalism or "crowd sourcing," whatever you want to call it, and many people I talk to ask "what's the use?" especially when there are places like the Washington Post throwing 75 people at the story. But that's exactly the point: with all the resources available to all of you, all of your friends and their friends... citizen journalism can be (should be) a force to be reckoned with. But it starts with you; <b>you gotta believe in this</b>... and then just jump in.
<b>Point, click...National News Story</b>
In a follow-on segment to this piece that I'll have in a couple of days, I'm going to lay out to you a case-study in "How to Hack the Media," and by that I mean how you, sitting at home, in your office, in the park, at Starbucks or <i>on a beach in Nicaragua</i> can break a story and have the likes of CNN, the Los Angeles Times and FOX News all chasing after your story.
Yes, it's true and it's almost too easy. I'll lay it out for you step-by-step, complete with a fresh example, using the story I broke a couple of weeks ago while knocking back some local brews in the sleepy little fishing village of San Juan Del Sur, Nicaragua.
<i>Stay Tuned...</i>
--
Original Source: Brock N. Meeks / NowPublic.com
<a href="http://www.nowpublic.com/you_vs_msm_in_va_tech_shooting_coverage">http://www.nowpublic.com/you_vs_msm_in_va_tech_shooting_coverage</a>
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You vs. MSM in Va Tech Shooting Coverage
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<b>April 19, 2007</b>
The amount of coverage has been staggering--dozens of stories per day in the top national newspapers, nightly broadcast news programs that are lengthened by half an hour, 24-hour repetitions of the same information on cable news, even a blow-by-blow account in the "Kid's Post" section of the <i>Washington Post</i>, which my 7-year-old reads. I first found out about the Blacksburg tragedy because a student TV news crew stopped me on the street to ask my opinion. This is a global phenomenon: <i>Le Monde</i> and the BBC also led with Cho Seung-hui's picture when I looked.
It's a choice to devote so much space and time to those 33 deaths. Bombers killed 158 in US-occupied Baghdad on Wednesday. Nigeria, the biggest country in Africa, saw violence connected to its presidential vote. Comparisons are odious; they imply that one doesn't care about <i>particular </i>victims and that human lives can be counted and weighed. I do sympathize with the Blacksburg victims and their families. I sympathize because I have been told their stories in detail; but there are many other stories that I could have been told--other tragedies, or (for that matter) other narratives that are important but not tragic.
Perhaps the Virginia Tech victims deserve sympathy from all of us, but I suspect they would prefer <i>less</i> attention. I find it hard to see how the deserve something they don't want.
One reason to tell the Virginia Tech story in detail is to provide us with the information we might need to act as voters and members of various communities. For instance, I work at a university much like Virginia Tech and could agitate for new policies in my institution. But it is generally a bad idea to act on the basis of extremely rare events. There have been about 40 mass shootings in the USA. During the period when those crimes have occurred, something like half a billion total people have been alive in America. That means that 0.000008 percent of the population commits mass shootings. There cannot be a general circumstance that explains why someone does something so rare. The availability of weapons, mental illness, video games--none of these prevalent factors can "explain" something that in 99.999992 percent of cases does <im>not</i> happen. (Bayes' theorem seems relevant here, but I cannot precisely say why.)
It is foolish to use such rare events to make policy at any level--from federal laws to school rules. For instance, if lots of people carried concealed weapons, there is some chance that the next mass killer would be stopped after he had shot some of his victims. But millions of people would have to carry guns, and that would cause all kinds of other consequences. The day after the Blacksburg killings, two highly trained Secret Service officers <a href="http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,21577408-954,00.html">were injured</a> on the White House grounds because one of them accidentally discharged his gun. Imagine how many times such accidents would happen per year if most ordinary college students packed weapons in order to prevent the next Blacksburg.
The last paragraph was a rebuttal to those who want to use Cho Seung-hui as an argument for carrying concealed weapons. But it would be equally mistaken to favor gun <i>control </i>because it might prevent mass shootings. Maybe gun control is a good idea, but not because it would somewhat lower the probability of staggeringly rare events. Its other consequences (both positive and negative) are much more significant.
If obsessive coverage of a particular tragedy does not help us to govern ourselves or make wise policies, it does reduce our sense of security and trust. It reinforces our belief that "current events" and "public affairs" are mostly about senseless acts of violence. It plants the idea that one can become spectacularly famous by killing other people. These are not positive consequences.
It is moving that some students have started a "<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/19/arts/19scre.html">reach out to a loner</a>" campaign on the Internet. They are trying to respond constructively to something that they have been told is highly important. Imagine what they might accomplish if they turned their attention to the prison population, the high-school dropout problem, or even ordinary mental illness.
Posted by peterlevine at April 19, 2007 8:40 PM
--
Original Source: <a href="http://www.peterlevine.ws/mt/archives/2007/04/too-much-covera.html">http://www.peterlevine.ws/mt/archives/2007/04/too-much-covera.html</a>
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too much coverage of the Virginia Tech tragedy
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Gene Koo - Thursday, April 19th, 2007 @ 5:52 pm
Soon after an initial outpouring of shock and grief at the senseless murder of 32 members of the Virginia Tech community, we began seeking explanations for the tragedy. By all accounts Seung-Hui Cho, perpetrator and 33rd victim of this rampage, was a severely disturbed young man; the snippets of video released so far by NBC reveal profound paranoia. Inevitably our questions turn to what would lead him to commit such a heinous crime. We yearn for insight into his motives. Why did he do it? What was he thinking?
These questions are familiar to me. I have asked them myself about my own mother, who probably developed paranoid schizophrenia some 15 years ago. I write "probably" because, like water filling a tub, the disease crept over her, imperceptibly, until suddenly it spilled forth in a flood. And somewhere in that tub, the loving woman who had been my mother drowned.
I cannot know, but looking at the face in the video aired by NBC, I would guess that the real Seung-Hui Cho, someone capable of the kind of laughter and anger you and I would understand, perished long before he pulled the trigger on himself.
People of sound mind often assume that individuals with mental illness think like we do: therefore, they must be misinformed, wrong-headed, or just pretending. We are, essentially, in denial. We delude ourselves into believing that we can figure these people out, and in so doing, learn how to "fix" them. In the first few years of my mother's illness, I challenged her claims that the "Chinese mafia" were spying on and stealing from her. Using lawyer's logic, I repeatedly demonstrated why it made no sense for criminals to go to such great lengths to inflict such petty wounds upon her.
She would always win these fights, because madness is not susceptible to reason. What I lacked in communicating with her was not logic, but rather imagination.
--
"Did you want to inject as much misery in our lives as you can," asks Mr. Cho in one video segment, "just because you can?" My mother asks these sorts of questions, too. She believes that clerks at the local store overcharge her and divert the money to her oppressors. Pedestrians stare at and spy on her. (The first part, at least, is now true due to her disheveled clothing and behavior). Vandals break into her home and move her papers around to prevent her from working. The invisible device in my ear tells her I am aiding and abetting "them."
These ludicrous accusations infuriated me, but my logical counterattacks could not breach the walls around her mind. Exhausted, I learned to stop fighting her reality and to accept that she truly believes what she says. Only through imagination - a willing suspension of disbelief - could I see her world.
A few years ago my mother was driving her brother around town when she unexpectedly pulled over so that the three black town cars following them would drive past. There was no one behind them, my uncle reports. But I no longer doubt that she indeed saw, in her mind, enemy agents in hostile pursuit.
--
In responding to the tragic massacre Mr. Cho wrought, the public seeks criminal intent, a "motive." The media presume they can understand and explain him; the FBI believes the hateful package sent to NBC will shed insight into his motivations. I have given up that quest. The search is vanity, a misplaced faith in reason.
Our criminal justice system assumes we can peer into mens rea, the criminal mind, and presumably extract thoughts and motives. Mental illness and the "insanity plea" have never fit well into this system because crimes committed by the mentally ill defy reason - and reason, it turns out, underlies our concept of justice. Like Job's entourage, our pundits and lawyers see tragedy and deduce the presence of sin. For if there is justice on Earth, then evil must have a logical human cause.
But we cannot seek solace in reason when dealing with mental illness. My mother is as logical as you or I, maybe more so. Her stratagems for thwarting the spies and thieves and vandals who plague her life are subtle, cunning, and carefully executed. The only piece out of place is that you and I cannot see these tormenters. They are entirely in her own mind.
--
Insanity is not stupidity, incompetence, or folly. Neither should we confuse it with evil. An important factor distinguishes my mother from Mr. Cho: while she manifests her paranoia through fear, he chose mass murder.
Or is "choice" a concept that we cannot ascribe to Mr. Cho? Perhaps one day science will answer that question, reveal the origins of madness, and demonstrate which faulty wires put voices in my mother's head, or what lethal mix of hormones induced Mr. Cho to massacre. Science may yet strip the fa���§ade of free will from every one of us, revealing nothing but seething masses of neurons. And we would be farther than ever from finding the source of evil.
Lawyers have a formula for calculating guilt that accounts for mitigations like provocation or insanity. That formula may be readjusted now and then, but its ultimate function is to balance the equation of justice and ensure that criminal debts are paid. But we cannot so easily cancel the pain we all feel when a man guns down innocents, or when a mother neglects her family. It is more than the pain of our immediate loss. We suffer because we are separated from mortal understanding; we have peered over the edge of reason and seen the whirlwind beyond.
--
Original Source: <a href="http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/anderkoo/2007/04/19/the-vanity-of-reason-making-sense-of-the-virginia-tech-tragedy/">Anderkoo - The vanity of reason</a>
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The vanity of reason: making sense of the Virginia Tech tragedy
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Tuesday, April 17th, 2007
By now, I’m sure everybody has heard of the tragedy that took place yesterday, Monday April 16, at Virginia Tech University. Words cannot adequately convey the profound shock and sadness that I feel about this unthinkable human catastrophe. As an educator, a parent -- as a human being -- I am struggling to come to grips with the enormity of what happened but at the least, I want to convey my deepest, most sincere condolences to everyone affected by these killings.
You may have also heard that gunman has been <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070417/ap_on_re_us/virginia_tech_shooting" target="_blank">officially identified</a> as an Asian American -- <strong>Seung-Hui Cho</strong>, a 23 year old senior English major at Virginia Tech who originally immigrated from South Korea in 1992.
The Associated Press article cited above notes that he was referred to school counselors after his instructors found his creative writing rather disturbing. The <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-070417vtech-shootings,1,176236.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed" target="_blank">Chicago Tribune</a> also reports that he apparently left a rambling suicide note that railed against “‘rich kids,’ ‘debauchery’ and ‘deceitful charlatans’ on campus” and that he had committed several strange and violent acts in recent weeks.
As a sociologist and Asian American Studies scholar, I will try to to put some sociological context into this horrific tragedy and several initial reactions come to mind:
If the gunman were White, his racial identity would go virtually unnoticed and unmentioned. However, because he was a person of color, much will probably be made of his racial identity. Specifically, because he was Asian American, much of the nation’s attention will be turned to examining what kinds of cultural characteristics may have influenced his behavior.
Also, inevitably, there will be some extreme reactions from xenophobes and people with anti-immigrant positions, perhaps along the lines of “This is what happens when we let in all kinds of immigrants, so we need to shut down our borders” or “We let in these damn foreigners and give them a chance at a better life and this is how they return the favor?” In addition, those who have anti-Asian sentiments are likely to say something like “Well, this just proves that Asians are so weird, foreign, and inscrutable --we just can’t trust them.”
Unfortunately these sorts of opinions are a classic example of confounding individual traits with group traits. In other words, yes, this one particular immigrant was responsible for this tragedy, but that does not mean that all immigrants or all Asian Americans are ticking psychopathic timebombs just waiting to go on a murderous rampage.
More likely, I think typical reactions will be along the lines of “Wow, I always thought Asian Americans were so quiet and passive” or “As an Asian, he must have been under a tremendous amount of pressure to do well in school.” Admittedly, these types of responses are a little harder to respond to because there are some kernels of truth to these particular sentiments.
For example, some Asian Americans do tend to be quiet and unassuming, although that is changing and also, much of these perceptions are based on biased media portrayals and cultural stereotypes. Nonetheless, the perception -- whether it’s true or not -- of Asians being quiet does exist. Similarly, it is also true that many Asian Americans, particular students, do experience a lot of pressure to succeed. In fact, I’ve written about <a href="http://www.asian-nation.org/headlines/2006/10/asian-americans-and-college-admissions/">such examples</a> before and <a href="http://www.asian-nation.org/headlines/2006/09/asian-american-students-still-deal-with-violence/">other barriers</a> many Asian American students regularly face.
To this mix, we can also add other examples in which various <a href="http://www.asian-nation.org/headlines/2006/05/rash-of-family-violence-among-asians/">social pressures</a> or <a href="http://www.asian-nation.org/headlines/2005/09/hmong-hunter-trial-to-start/">contentious incidents</a> have pushed Asian Americans over the edge, causing them to snap and commit murder. <strong>But does that mean that Asians are more prone to psychotic episodes</strong> that result in them killing those around them?
My answer is, absolutely not. If anything, I believe the opposite is true -- that despite having to frequently deal with various incidents of prejudice, hostility, and <a href="http://www.asian-nation.org/racism.shtml">outright racism</a>, the vast majority of Asian Americans react with dignity, courage, and perseverance. Perhaps too many still keep their emotions buried inside them and need to share their frustrations more openly in order to move beyond them, but as a group, I think that in the face of persistent examples of inequality and injustice, we do not react more violently than any other group.
Did the Virginia Tech gunman’s reasons include having to deal with racism as an Asian American? At this point, I don’t know. But if that turns out to be the case, my reaction would be the same as it was in the case of Chai Soua Vang, the Hmong American convicted of killing six White hunters in Wisconsin after a hostile encounter that allegedly contained anti-Asian profanities.
That is, many of us Asian Americans face racism as well, but we don’t go on murderous shooting rampages. In other words, my point is that ultimately, what Seung-Hui Cho did at Virginia Tech was an example of someone who was clearly <strong>emotionally unstable</strong> and that he just snapped for whatever reasons known only to him.
I would not be a sociologist if I did not also point to the culture of violent masculinity that frames mass shootings like this. My UMass Amherst colleague Sut Jhully has produced several acclaimed documentaries that detail this phenomenon, most notably the video <a href="http://www.mediaed.org/videos/MediaGenderAndDiversity/ToughGuise" target="_blank"><em>Tough Guise</em></a>. For now, I will leave it up to him and others who have greater expertise in this particular sociological context to contribute their analysis.
In the end, this entire episode is an opportunity to remind Asian Americans and anyone else out there who are facing emotional issues or challenging situations that there are resources out there for them to access in order to more constructively deal with those pressures before they get out of hand. Suffering in silence doesn’t help anyone.
--
Original Source: C.N. Le / CNLe.net
<a href="http://www.cnle.net/2007/04/asian-identity-of-virginia-tech-gunman/">http://www.cnle.net/2007/04/asian-identity-of-virginia-tech-gunman/</a>
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Brent Jesiek
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C.N. Le
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2007-06-06
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Thursday, April 19th, 2007
Following up on my <a href="http://www.asian-nation.org/headlines/2007/04/asian-identity-of-virginia-tech-gunman/">last post</a> about Seung Hui Cho, the Virginia Tech gunman, the evidence that’s coming out seems to suggest that among other things, he felt ridiculed for his social class background (at least in comparison to the ‘rich’ kids that he railed against in his suicide note and video) and for being quiet -- but apparently not specifically for being Asian.
In other words, it does not seem that he was lashing out in reaction to incidents of racial prejudice or discrimination. I personally feel somewhat relieved to know that prejudice can now be removed from the equation. Why is that comforting to know? Because to me, it means that Asians and Koreans on the one hand, will not have to engage in the “<strong>blame game</strong>” with non-Asians on the other (specifically those who would have been the perpetrators of prejudice against him).
Nonetheless, a different aspect to the media’s coverage of his situation has gotten my attention and that of many others. Specifically, a lot of analysts, commentators, and observers have brought up the fact that he originally immigrated to the U.S. from Korea. One example of this is to refer to him in the traditional Asian way of using the surname first -- Cho Seung-Hui, instead of the American version-- Seung-Hui Cho.
Does his immigrant status make a difference in trying to understand what he did?
For many Asian Americans, the answer is no. First of all, even though he was originally from South Korea, he immigrated at a relatively early age -- 8. According to sociologists and demographers, that makes him part of the “1.5 generation” -- in between the first generation (that would be his parents) and the second generation (those born in the U.S.).
The distinction of being 1.5 generation also includes being raised and socialized primarily as an American. In other words, most of his formative schooling took place in the U.S. and by all accounts, he was perfectly fluent in English. In fact, he was so Americanized that he majored in English, rather than majors normally associated with Asian immigrants such as engineering, math, the ‘hard’ sciences, etc.
So why is it that so many people commented and even focused so intently on the fact that he originally immigrated from South Korea?
I think the answer is that they were consciously or unconsciously trying to <strong>culturally distance themselves</strong> from him. In other words, by emphasizing that he was an immigrant, they were basically saying “He was a foreigner, an outsider -- he wasn’t one of us, he wasn’t a ‘real’ American. ‘Real’ Americans would never have done something like this.”
That is, even though he was basically socialized as an American, much of America refuses to accept that he was in fact an American. And with underlying sentiments like that, they only function to reinforce notions of Korean Americans and Asian Americans as <strong>perpetual foreigners</strong>. In other words and unfortunately, many Asian Americans still need to overcome the perception that they are not “real” Americans.
This particular stereotype exists even though many Asian American families have been in the U.S. several generations, even though we tend to be the most educated racial group in the U.S., even though we are the group most likely to have high-skilled jobs, and even though on the family level, we have the highest income of all racial groups.
Of course, there are specific ethnic differences in this generalization, but the point is that in virtually all other respects of what it means to be an “American,” we meet or exceed those standards. But for various reasons, most of which have to do with our skin color and distinct physical appearance to be perfectly blunt, we’re more likely to be seen as foreigners.
That is exactly what is going on in this instance, with the American media’s focus on Cho’s immigrant status. In trying to distance ‘real’ Americans from him, American society is only reinforcing the notion that Asian Americans are not ‘real’ Americans. In the end, even though we may grieve and cry just like the rest of American society, we still have to pay a price for what he did.
--
Original Source: C.N. Le / CNLe.net
<a href="http://www.cnle.net/2007/04/immigrant-status-of-va-tech-gunman-does-it-matter">http://www.cnle.net/2007/04/immigrant-status-of-va-tech-gunman-does-it-matter</a>
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eng
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C.N. Le (le@soc.umass.edu)
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Immigrant Status of VA Tech Gunman: Does it Matter?
blog
cho
immigrant
korean
korean american
reaction
-
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The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Contributor
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Brent Jesiek
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C.N. Le
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2007-06-06
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Sunday, April 22nd, 2007
At the risk of overanalyzing the events surrounding the shootings at Virginia Tech last week, I would like to offer one last set of observations. In my previous posts, I've acknowledged that certainly, there are many complicated emotions and reactions to these tragic events. This also applies to Koreans and Korean Americans, for whom this event stirs up additional feelings that include <b>guilt, shame, and embarrassment</b> based on the fact that the gunman was Korean American.
As one article from <a href="http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=2d3b885a913020630dd2537a0eeaf9ed">New American Media</a> describes, many Koreans felt that Cho's murderous rampage tarnished the image of Koreans and Korean Americans and that it would lead to a backlash against them. Korean government officials have also issued repeated apologies, perhaps fearing that an association with Cho would interfere with their diplomatic and/or economic relations with Americans.
In talking about this particular issue with my Korean American colleagues, many of them observe that for whatever reasons, many Asian Americans in general, but Koreans in particular, are very quick to personalize and internalize the high-profile public failures of anyone identified as Korean or Korean American, and to therefore feel a deep and profound sense of humiliation and guilt about such events. The implication is that somehow, the entire Korean/Korean American community is "responsible" or "at fault" in some way for Cho's actions.
In contrast, many Koreans/Korean Americans, particularly younger or more "Americanized" members, feel that while they obviously share in the shock, grief, and sorrow regarding the tragic events at Virginia Tech, their community should not have to feel that they are somehow responsible for what Cho did just because he was Korean American, in the same way that Whites as a collective group were not responsible for the shooting massacre at Columbine High School eight years ago, nor any of the other high-profile school shootings in recent American history.
I happen to agree with that sentiment, but I think it's a more complicated issue than that.
The question that comes to mind for me is, where do we as Asian Americans draw the line between <b>shared guilt versus group solidarity</b>? In other words, in most other respects, many Asian Americans including myself have consistently tried to encourage a sense of pan-Asian American unity and solidarity. This effort is based on the notion that in emphasizing our commonalities and uniting as a collective group, Asian Americans can speak with a louder and more powerful collective voice in American society, rather than as isolated individuals or ethnicities.
But with that in mind, is it then a contradiction to disassociate ourselves from Seung-Hui Cho in this case, and basically say that he wasn't "one of us" and to reject any insinuation that his ethnicity had anything to do with his actions (which would also imply that some Asian American may share some of his feelings of alienation, etc.)?
Ultimately, I don't think that it has to be an either-or proposition. That is, we can still say that ultimately Cho's actions should be understood as the <b>aberrant behavior of an extremely troubled individual</b>, while at the same time saying that his mental illness could have been made worse by <u><b>feeling like an outsider and ridiculed for being different</b></u> -- sentiments that inevitably do exist among many Asian Americans.
Thankfully, even though many Asian Americans may have similar feelings of alienation, they do not react by going on a murderous rampage. Nonetheless, we as Asian Americans should recognize and advocate that (1) we be treated with respect and tolerance -- especially those who might be otherwise seen as outcasts, (2) members of our community who are emotionally troubled be actively encouraged to seek help, and (3) mental health services should be readily available and culturally-competent.
These efforts would go a long way in preventing not just tragic incidents like this, but also in reducing the difficulties many Asian American face in the complicated process of finding our identity within the complicated American racial landscape.
--
Original Source: C.N. Le / CNLe.net
<a href="http://www.cnle.net/2007/04/korean-reaction-to-va-tech-shootings-guilt-vs-solidarity/">http://www.cnle.net/2007/04/korean-reaction-to-va-tech-shootings-guilt-vs-solidarity/</a>
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eng
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C.N. Le (le@soc.umass.edu)
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Korean Reaction to VA Tech Shootings: Guilt vs. Solidarity
blog
cho
korean
korean american
reaction