Virginia Tech

<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&#39;s chapter of the Future Farmers of America, I was attending the FFA&#39;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&#39;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&#39;s arrived at Tech and Blacksburg sometime in the 70&#39;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&#39;s administrators - many holdover&#39;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 &#39;80s for a Master&#39;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&#39;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&#39;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&#39;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&#39;t understand why ___", they really don&#39;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&#39;t you? I did. I didn&#39;t expect the media to go there and they didn&#39;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 &#39;05." Well he was not a killer in &#39;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 &#39;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&#39;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&#39;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&#39;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&#39;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>

Bibb Edwards

2007-06-17

Brent Jesiek

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0

eng

reflections on virginia tech - 2 months later

<p>Beauty and Depravity | eugene cho&#39;s blog [eugenecho.com]

weeks have now passed. perhaps, it&#39;s become an afterthought for many. personally, a day hasn&#39;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&#39; 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&#39;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&#39;s impossible. asians don&#39;t do stuff like that. but just in case, i hope it&#39;s not a korean person."

s#@t. it is a korean person. why do the news keep insisting he&#39;s a foreigner?!? there&#39;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&#39;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&#39;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&#39;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, &#39;Why does God allow these things to happen?&#39;" 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&#39;re insulated. It&#39;s a dying and degenerate world. We&#39;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&#39;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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Archived with permission of the author.

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>

Eugene Cho

2007-06-16

Brent Jesiek

Eugene Cho (eugene@seattlequest.org)

eng

seattle PI guest column on the tragedy of virginia tech

<p>Beauty and Depravity | eugene cho&#39;s blog [eugenecho.com]

Here&#39;s the guest column I had the privilege of writing for the Seattle Post Intelligencer [published for Tuesday, April 24, 2007]. I&#39;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">&#39;guest column&#39;</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 &#39;shame&#39; 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/">&#39;Making Sense of the Senseless.&#39;</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&#39;s Mother</a> [Diana Bass].

If you have a lot of time and are bored, here&#39;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>&#39;Love Wins.&#39;</strong> Yes, it is very long but I also have to stay true to my preaching nickname: &#39;Fiddy.&#39;

Here&#39;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&#39;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&#39;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&#39;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&#39;s Island), Hines Ward (NFL player) and Yunjin Kim (ABC&#39;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 &#39;other&#39; 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&#39;re Christ&#39;s representatives. God uses us to persuade men and women to drop their differences and enter into God&#39;s work of making things right between them. We&#39;re speaking for Christ himself now: Become friends with God; he&#39;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&#39;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>

Eugene Cho

2007-06-16

Brent Jesiek

Eugene Cho (eugene@seattlequest.org)

eng

making sense of virginia tech

<p>Beauty and Depravity | eugene cho&#39;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> - &#39;<strong>C-H-O&#39; </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&#39;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&#39;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&#39;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 &#39;guilty&#39; because of my selfishness. Like others, I felt "pathetic" in wishing the person wasn&#39;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&#39;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&#39;s clear that Seung Cho was unhealthy, unstable, disturbed, ill [schizophrenia?], angry, lost, and [place your words here]. But that&#39;s the only clear thing. I needed the turn the TV off because the &#39;stretching&#39; 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 &#39;why,&#39; we&#39;re simply not going to know the full picture. While Seung&#39;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&#39;t touch is the simple and painful matter: Evil exists in our world. There is a spiritual dimension that the media won&#39;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 &#39;cho&#39;? he has a first name... maybe it&#39;s me, but i&#39;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&#39;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&#39;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 &#39;Beltway Sniper attacks&#39; 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&#39;s a worthwhile question for me. In the early reporting, I was perturbed that Seung was being referred to as <strong>&#39;the Asian killer&#39;</strong> and <strong>&#39;the Korean killer.&#39;</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&#39;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&#39;s very difficult for our culture to separate media representations of people groups from &#39;reality.&#39;</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&#39;s not a perfect country and while I believe there won&#39;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&#39;s one too many. If one woman is bullied because of her gender, it&#39;s one too many. If one gay person is bullied because of their orientation, it&#39;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&#39;s Island], Hines Ward [NFL Football], and Yunjin Kim [ABC&#39;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&#39;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&#39;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&#39;s remain in prayer for those impacted in this shared tragedy; let&#39;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&#39;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>

Eugene Cho

2007-06-16

Brent Jesiek

Eugene Cho (eugene@seattlequest.org)

eng

Virginia Tech: Laying The Blame

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&#39;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&#39;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&#39;s isolation and anger.

This terrible brutal crime is an ugly, warped but nonetheless, direct product of big business&#39;‚ 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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Original Source: <a href="http://chicago.indymedia.org/newswire/display/77317/index.php">http://chicago.indymedia.org/newswire/display/77317/index.php</a>

Licensed under <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain">Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication</a>.

Karen Harper

2007-06-10

Brent Jesiek

Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication

eng

Virginia Tech, Imus and Curve Balls

[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 &#39;healing&#39; get underway.

Talk show commentators are having a time of it. I hear both liberal and conservatives alike carry on about &#39;looking in the face of evil&#39; 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 &#39;America hater,&#39; &#39;suicide bomber,&#39; and simply evil. Retired FBI guys talk about &#39;training&#39; students to be able to respond better, and hiring tougher &#39;security.&#39; 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&#39;s grandparents, who say he was a bad kid and &#39;deserved to die&#39; 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 &#39;jokes,&#39; 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&#39;t deserve it in the least, just as the Rutgers women didn&#39;t deserve it in the least.

The whole thing reminds me of Thich Nhat Hanh&#39;s long poem, &#39;Call Me by My True Name.&#39; It&#39;s about looking deeply, in the poem, about a Thai sailor, and his raping and killing Vietnamese boat people. It&#39;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&#39;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&#39;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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Original Source: <a href="http://chicago.indymedia.org/newswire/display/77298/index.php">http://chicago.indymedia.org/newswire/display/77298/index.php</a>

Licensed under <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain">Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication</a>.

Carl Davidson

2007-06-10

Brent Jesiek

Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication

eng

Thinking about Virginia Tech

I&#39;d been thinking about starting this blog up again for a few weeks now. I didn&#39;t think I&#39;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&#39;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&#39;s disconcerting to see a community that you&#39;ve been part of suffer an event like this, especially when you see so many images on the news of places you&#39;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&#39;ve been gone from Tech for a long time, it still hits close to home.

Back in &#39;88-&#39;89 I was one of the editors of the <a href="http://www.collegiatetimes.com"><em>Collegiate Times</em></a>, Virginia Tech&#39;s student newspaper. I&#39;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 &#39;88-&#39;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&#39;ve dropped them emails anyway. And I&#39;ve been contacted today by former classmates who I haven&#39;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&#39;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&#39;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&#39;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&#39;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&#39;ve been absent from it for years

And as miserable and helpless as I feel, I can&#39;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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Original Source: <a href="http://www.tenreasonswhy.com/weblog/archives/2007/04/thinking_about_1.html">http://www.tenreasonswhy.com/weblog/archives/2007/04/thinking_about_1.html</a>

Licensed under <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd-nc/1.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs-NonCommercial 1.0</a>.

Greg Ritter

2007-06-09

Brent Jesiek

Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs-NonCommercial 1.0

eng

On Being A College Professor after the VT Massacre

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&#39;t talk, or rather <span style="font-style: italic;">listen</span>, to what students thought about this. I didn&#39;t check in to see if they were suffering, in shock, afraid . . . I had to think a lot about why I didn&#39;t, especially after the Provost sent us a thoughtful email encouraging us to do so. What it comes down to is that I didn&#39;t want to think about it. I didn&#39;t want to actually confront the horror of this event. I wasn&#39;t prepared for hearing any vitriol, anger or racist statements either (not that students would&#39;ve made such statements, but I worried). I am scared and frightened by what happened, and in my selfishness, I didn&#39;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&#39;t get me wrong, I paused on pictures of young women and men, who could&#39;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&#39;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&#39;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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Original Source: <a href="http://melancholicfeminista.blogspot.com/2007/04/on-being-college-professor-after-vt.html">http://melancholicfeminista.blogspot.com/2007/04/on-being-college-professor-after-vt.html</a>

Licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/">Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License</a>.

Aspazia / Mad Melancholic Feminista Blog

2007-06-09

Brent Jesiek

Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License

eng

The Tangled Thicket of Cho seung-hui, Don Imus, YouTube and American Idol

April 21st, 2007

Cho seung-hui, the Rutgers University women&#39;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&#39; 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&#39;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&#39;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&#39;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>

Licensed under <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/3.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported</a>.

Ralph Brauer

2007-06-08

Brent Jesiek

Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported

eng

In Memoriam: Virginia Tech, April 16, 2007

April 16th, 2007

As one who worked with school districts across the country, I know the issue of school shootings is every school official&#39;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>

Licensed under <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/3.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported</a>.

Ralph Brauer

2007-06-08

Brent Jesiek

Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported

eng