Could the Virginia Tech shooting been avoided?
<a href="http://www.groundreport.com/Queenbee7519">Nafeesah Abdullah</a>
May 06, 2007
In light of recent events this just gets added to the list of school shootings that have taken place over the last 5+ years and what seems to be motive is identical the perpetrators are young white males under the age of 21 with a history of disturbing behavior either expressed through writing or other means like music, video games, and artwork. This situation took a small turn since the perpetrator was a 23 year old Asian (Korean) male. The loner mentality wasn't anything new because the two guys at Columbine also were loners too and the other perpetrators of past school shootings were also loners too with family issues.
As a former college RA I have experienced students who are not as social as others, but I made it my responsibility to check in with my residents just to let them know I am there for them if they needed anything even someone to talk to. You got some RA's who are in the job just for the perks, but are not true to the job of being a student leader and someone who is held to standards to uphold and adhere to the job and what it entails. RA's need to be retrained to understand that they are in a position to serve students and to exercise their skills as a student leader, and having a more personal approach to how they interact with students.
Most students who tend to be loners don't have a lot of friends and usually are the butt of people's jokes for being strange or weird and just plain dysfunctional. The RA who was among the victims of this horrific crime didn't deserve what he got, but this should be a wake up call to RA's who treat students like they don't matter. This should be a wake up call to students and teachers period that if you recognize someone who tends to be a loner to speak up because this can stop the violence in schools and it's not just college, but in grade and high schools everywhere. Students don't want to feel that they're ratting someone out, but would they rather tell on someone who's like this than to be the target of their anger and aggression when it builds up to the point that it hits the breaking point? This is where we have to take action, and not wait until something happens for us to do something about the problem. Columbine should have not happened, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold's parents should have taken note of what their sons' teachers and counselors said about the disturbing behavior and maybe then something could have been done and the shootings would have not happened.
It took a sad tragedy like what happened at Virginia Tech for people to recognize that the mentality of those who tend to spend time alone can be dangerous. For some of us who are attending college as undergrads and graduate students we should be able to feel safe on the campuses that we are attending classes at, and we shouldn't have to worry about some student who's disturbed who's got issues taking their anger out on innocent people.Innocent lives were senselessly lost due to a student's silent anger, and when it was made public by his English professor that his writing assignments were of pedophilia and murder should have tipped off the university that this student has issues and should have been treated as such.
Are school administrations planning to take teachers and counselors seriously when they bring to their attention reports of a student(s) erratic and disturbing behavior where it involves some kind of harm to people or things or even committing acts of violence against a certain group of people or gender? There's got to be some accountability on a school's part to address these matters whether it's a student in grade/high school or even college. Students should be inspired to take even more action since peers are key to recognizing things among their own peers. If this was a team effort between fellow students and teachers this can lessen future incidents from happening.This is where schools need to up the ante and make people aware that those who are mentally ill are unpredictable.
This runs along the line of Laurie Dann who was a mentally ill woman then 32 years old who went on a shooting spree and shot up 15 students and two teachers at Hubbard Woods elementary school in Glencoe, Illinois. The media frenzy was so bad that Laurie's parents had immediately sold their home and relocated to Florida to escape the press who would surround their house to get a response from them. They were at a loss for words because they didn't think their daughter was capable of doing such a thing until the media revealed that she was a paranoid schizophrenic and a manic depressant.
The Columbine incident should have never happened either and this was due in part that Eric Harris was noted to taking the anti-psychotic medication Luvox as part of his anger management therapy which may have contributed to his psychotic rage most likely a side effect of taking the drug and also after the Marine Corps had rejected him when he applied shortly after his 18th birthday. What makes no real sense is that teachers and counselors at Columbine had been telling the Harris' and the Klebolds for quite some time that their sons were displaying disturbing behavior in their work in school especially their writings and even artwork that was confiscated from them. Then what boils down to it is how you do you go about ignoring what teachers are saying about your child ? How did the parents of these two guys not know they were building bombs in their house something should have tipped off the parents.
What some reports were said is that Dylan and Eric's parents should have been held fully responsible for seeking appropriate help for their child to address issues that were brought up out of concern by school officials. These parents had to have some idea that something wasnt sitting right when they're not looking in on them just to check up on them and even prohibiting them from having a computer in their room so they can monitor their activity online since they had created a webpage called Trenchcoat Mafia. This is why parents don't need to allow their kids to have computers in their rooms and need to keep it in a family room so that children can be monitored at all times. How could they not know that these two were stockpiling weapons and ammunition? That's just plain ignorance most parents would be searching rooms like a corrections officer doing a random cell search in a prison.
This is what is not clear with parents when they ignore the warning signs of a potential problem when teachers and counselors bring to their attention issues of disturbing behavior. Dylan and Eric were both time bombs ready to go off if this was due in part to the so called teasing, but maybe they may have done something to provoke the things that happened to them? People feel sorry for loners, but do they really get to the bottom of the truth behind their strange behavior. be surprised that the Harris' and the Klebolds haven't relocated out of Colorado to an undisclosed location to escape the media frenzy. What would it take to stop future incidents like this from happening?
What can colleges and universities do to train their residential education staff to address issues of dorm residents acting bizzare like the guy at Virginia Tech. Resident Advisors need to be trained to spot potentially dangerous behavior in their residents and report this to the school. It shouldn't get to the point where incidents like this happen for something to be done about it. You have to nip that mess in the bud before it happens so that it not only saves the lives of innocent people who become the target of someone's anger out of control, but it will also bring increased awareness and security to campuses to protect enrollment status for the colleges and universities.
As a former Resident Advisor I will say to the future RA's that you need to make it your mission and job to show compassion and caring for your residents because you are in charge of making sure they feel safe and comfortable during their stay on campus. You are also a student leader and a confidant when students come to you with problems whether it's personal or not. I always told my residents I have an open door policy if they need anything please call or stop by my room. Some RA's are just in the job because of the perks they get which is free room and board and a stipend that's paid out through the year.
Some RA's aren't true to their jobs or to who they serve and that's what gives the good RA's who do their job a bad name and essentially just looking for an opportunity to make their resumes look good. There are times when you need an RA one isnt even around to help you and that's what frustrates a lot of students especially at big colleges and universities. I had some of the best residents around because some of them were students I had classes with and I talked to them outside of class if something's up, checked in with them just to let them know someone cares and if they have a problem we sought out the appropriate kind of help and utilized the school counselors if a problem was requiring the professional advice of a social worker or psychologist.
Most of these loners are crying for help if their behavior is turning violent and disturbing. If there's the fact that the guy behind the Virginia Tech shootings had been making references to Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris as martyrs for what they did during Columbine he's just a copy cat except he didn't attempt to hijack a plane to crash it into some major city. This explains that laws surrounding the rights of the mentally ill needs to be changed because some people have more than one type of mental illness which can in fact make them very dangerous. This in turn should make this kind of information readily available to residential education and the counseling department so they can know what students to watch for and if peers around this person begin to talk about changes in behavior or normal routines to take it as something is going on and be on high alert.
This is a hot topic across the board how many more incidents like this do we need to say something has to be done to stop this kind of violence on college and university campuses across the country. What can counselors do when confronting a parent(s) about their child having issues that needs to be addressed. Could the Harris' and Klebolds avoided the mayhem their sons caused had they listened to the people who were trying to tell them their children had some serious issues.
This is going to be a hot topic for a while after the Virginia incident because for someone who clearly had mental illness this needs to be addressed and I am sure the parents of the young man who was involved in this are going to be living with the pain of what happened. I hope the Klebold and Harris families reach out to them to let them know they are not alone and to try and make sense of what drove their sons to do what they did. This is also a pattern too since you see mostly young white males from middle class backgrounds doing this, but this time it changes ethnic background to Asian. We as a society are ones to just sweep things under the rug and when something happens we're on our soapboxes trying to make sense of the situation.
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Original Source: <a href="http://www.groundreport.com/articles.php?id=2833730">http://www.groundreport.com/articles.php?id=2833730</a>
This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/3.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 License</a>.
Nafeesah Abdullah
2007-06-05
Brent Jesiek
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 License
eng
Va. Tech Shooting: Privacy Laws Are Inhibiting Gun Control Legislation
<a href="http://www.groundreport.com/poetsdream">Ann Clemmons</a>
May 03, 2007
Cho Seung-Hui a tormented young man, already exhibiting crazed behavior, ignored the advice of a teacher, slipped through a mental health care facility, conned campus police, and bought two firearms. Teachers, students, and law enforcement personnel were not able to prevent this tragic event. It seems many people, agencies, and family members were aware of the fact that Cho Seung was "troubled" however, due to the so-called protection of privacy laws; they were unable to help him.
Privacy laws are inhibiting gun control legislation. There is now a bill before congress promoting states to report mental health records to the national database used to conduct background checks on people buying guns. Already federal law prohibits anyone involuntarily admitted as a "mental defective" from purchasing a firearm. However, only twenty-two states provide mental health records to the National Criminal Background Check System. At present, the National Criminal Background Check System, screens people before they can purchase a firearm. However, if states are not required to push mental health care facilities to provide mental health records, for all persons including voluntary commitments, what good is the law doing anyone?
This problem has been going on for years, and gun control advocates, special interest groups, and law enforcement officials have been trying to shed light on the this unpredictable reporting. However, the biggest obstacle has been the privacy law in relation to mental health care records. Evidently, if you are voluntarily committed to a mental health care facility, privacy laws prohibit the facility from reporting your time there.
If Virginia, had required mental health care facilities, to report voluntary records to the National Criminal Background Check, the people who died that day at Va. Tech., would still be alive. Cho Seung-Hui would not have been able to purchase the two firearms that killed thirty-three people, including him. Meaning, Virginia only reported involuntary commitments. Moreover, we do not know for sure when someone approaches the counter in a store, to purchase a firearm, if they have or have not threatened to harm themselves or others. We are in the dark as to whether they have or have not spent time in a mental institution.
In the case of Cho Seung-Hui he had voluntarily gone to St Alban's, after his involvement in two prior incidents with the police involving two female students. However, since Virginia did not require mental health care facilities too report voluntary commitments, Cho Seung-Hui was able to purchase two firearms. Therefore, someone who rattled off incoherent babble on a video tape, and then sent it to NBC was able to buy not one, but two guns! In fact, after the shootings police investigators were unable to get information about his mental health status, all due to the privacy act. It is no wonder that Cho Seung Hui shared the same characteristics as other school shooters. Privacy laws prevented these characteristics from becoming available to the proper authorities before the shootings took place.
What senseless acts, especially at a time of war, when we are already losing scores of human lives.
After Cho Seung gunned down two people, crossed the street into a classroom, bolted the door to keep help out, and fired two firearms into his fellow students, reaction around the world was that of sadness and outrage. Thirty-three students died that day, including Cho Seung Hui. When are we going to wake up? There are American kids across the world battling terrorism, and more are killed right here in our back yard, due to the American people's debate over gun control.
Since the first report of this shooting, we have heard urging from other nations on the need for reforming Americas gun control laws, and self -defensive attitude. By not implementing some changes in American policy and culture, we will earn more than the right to bear arms. We will also earn the right to bear unspeakable pain and sorrow, consequences that follow the lack of proper procedures in place to protect our citizens from the improper use of firearms.
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Original Source: Ground Report
<a href="http://www.groundreport.com/articles.php?id=2833707">http://www.groundreport.com/articles.php?id=2833707</a>
This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/">Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License</a>.
Ann Clemmons
2007-06-05
Brent Jesiek
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License
eng
Virginia Tech Tragedy: A Revealing Sociological Tome
about 1 month ago by Nate Brugnone
The recent shootings at Virginia Tech are not only a tragedy at face-value, they are also a revealing tragedy on many social levels. As this story broke almost every headline across the US, and no doubt throughout much of the world, it's become apparent to me how much journalism today resembles a botch theatrical moral auction.
It's a "who can draw the most hits using the most visceral, emotive attractor" competition. First come the alligators of the shallow, murky riverbanks. These are the fat lizard spawn of necessary 24-hour news corporations -- the ones with catlike reflexes and the largest paychecks. They're bug-eyes keep a most sentinel vigil over "normalcy" amongst the crowd. Even the slightest ripple caused by a ubiquitous herbivore hoof could spell a ratings spike and a big payoff. And I'm not just going to roll over here and give them the credit of, "[in a whiny, airy Bob Saget voice] well, they just want to get us the news we need to know about. They're looking out for us." If that's the case, then I'm severely deluded as to the nature of mass media in the US and Rupert Murdock (or whomever) has a proportional messiah-complex. We know, at least considering the second statement, that this is untrue.
Covering the rest of Noah's Ark here, we come to the wolves in peacocks' feathers -- the journalists who find it necessary to employ visual aids, as if the headline, "33 College Students Slaughtered in Largest Killing Spree in US History," doesn't tweak tightly enough the heart muscles and gray matter of the soon-to-be-touched-upon emotional-parasites. "Here's a picture a bloodied boy barely clinging to life as he is carried out by fellow scholars." Blah blah blah... on & on.
Then in come the dumpster-diving raccoon collage artists, riding the coattails of those before, pasting, quoting other papers, quoting bloggers (dah!), in hopes of making a few more bucks. These things smell and are super lazy. Just look at the abundance of this type of roadkill for one week. Its prominence it staggering.
And the saddest of all, just our collective attention is turned furthest from the topic, we have monkeys parachuting into football stadiums with a sanctified howl of political co-opting. It used to annoy me to no end when someone called George Bush a monkey and blamed him for something he probably had no direct hand in, but after this ringmaster bit at VT I can say the man has no moral fiber of his own and is nothing more than the flaccid remnants of a fraternity kegger ... thus making him a monkey... er, something to that extent.
Now it feels like I'm done here with this topic, but I can feel something; some animal has been overlooked. Ah, yes. The very foundation on which all the rest of these rely: <i>Heliactin bilopha</i>, the Horned Sungem. No bird flaps its wings faster and therefore no bird is more fickle. There are over 6 billion inhabiting the globe. Each determines which flowers shall bloom next year and the year after and so on. No single bird sees itself as the essential part of this zoo as it can freely and discriminately drink nectar from wherever it may choose...
I find it odd and also telling that year after year the same flowers come into bloom. We're interesting creatures...
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Original Source: <a href="http://dormitem.com/blog/95">http://dormitem.com/blog/95</a>
Licensed under <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/">Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States</a>.
Nate Brugnone
2007-06-02
Brent Jesiek
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States
eng
In Cho's defence...
Saturday, April 21, 2007
<i>"this is a lesson for all o. i think those American parents should learn a lesson or 2 from this. with the way their kids tease other people of different nationalities. i went to school abroad as well, and i can tell you that most people, even the adult students have no regard for others. if you aint speaking the language like them, or don't look like them, its hard to mix. i'm not generalizing, but its a pattern ive noticed. hence it leaves people feeling isolated from others. i think people should be taught these subtle signs and not to ignore others. no be by force, but at least make an effort to make other people feel welcome. this matter was a big issue in the school i went to. if you aint white, forget it. no-one wants to have anything to do with you, no matter how extroverted or social you are."</i> <b>- Soulpatrol (Nairaland)</b>
Being a foreigner myself set me thingking... what could have made a man shoot 31 innocent people before taking his own life?
It's easy to plant flowers at memorials, write words we don't mean on tombstones and whiteboards, talk about how good people were on facebook. . . if only we did this when we each could appreciate each other perhaps such episodes could be a thiing of the past. How could a fellow not have any friends for 4 years?? Everyone is talking about him being the weird kid who never talked, some are busy posting his plays on the internet, professors are describing a disturbed kid they think they did a huge favour by sending to see a psychiatrist. Where was everyone when a simple "how did your day go" would have averted this problem?
How many times was Cho abandoned in the back of the class with everyone sniggering at that "weird asian kid who never talked"? I find it so difficult to imagine me sharing a room with another individual and him having issues that warranted psychiatric evaluation and police questioning and yet doing absolutely nothing! Only to appear on CNN after the shootings to hug the limelights as the room mates of a weirdo!!!
His family never visited and no one cared to ask why. He never went on holidays and no one bothered to invite him home even when they lived just a stone's throw from the school. He wrote scary plays and his classmates prefered to turn them into discussion points rather than reach out to someone who was clearly troubled. How many times do we push people away because they don't look like us, talk like us or think like us? How many times have we been so ignorant and selfish forgetting to help those around us who need just one person to make them feel loved and accepted? It is easy to talk about healing, fly flags at halfmast, cancel school, while pretending to honor the memories of those that died when we are merely reaping the fruits of our selfishness, rejection of others and inability to stretch a hand of fellowship.
Of course this in no way attempts to justify Cho's act but it is a reminder to us that there are thousands of other Cho's around us. They may never pick up a gun and shoot their classmates but deep inside are living a life that is empty. Luxury can never take the place of love and acceptance, if one person cared for his neighbour perhaps much more than stricter gun laws, we may be able to save someone else from going the lonely road to perdition.
I wonder what would have happened to Cho had he not carried out his act. Many of us leave college with healthy memories that would linger forever. What would Cho have left with?
posted by david at 11:29 PM
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Original Source: <a href="http://davidylan.blogspot.com/2007/04/in-chos-defence.html">http://davidylan.blogspot.com/2007/04/in-chos-defence.html</a>
Licensed under <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5</a>.
David Adenuga
2007-06-02
Brent Jesiek
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5
eng
Now You Have Blood On Your Hands That Will Never Come Off
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Cho Seung-Hui, a 23-year-old senior majoring in English at Virginia <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/virginia+tech">Tech</a>, has completed his transformation from Clark Kent to, well, Rambo. Having killed and maimed over thirty people, in a calculated and merciless way, he has shown another facet of evil and pain to the world. Alone, bitter, unhappy and insane, his sad story reverberates on several levels.
Is it better to have stricter gun control, or have more guns in the hands of law abiding people to protect themselves? Have privacy laws and rights for the mentaly disabled gone too far, or should involuntary committment for treatment be easier to order? Has community and the support of family been destroyed by the cheapening of our culture, or has the stigma of needing help become so great that those most in need shun it?
There were heros at Virgina Tech - Professor Lucinda Roy, who tried so hard to get Mr. Cho the help he so badly needed; another Professor, Liviu Librescu, a 76 year old Holocaust survivor who gave his life offering his body as a shield for his students; during the aftermath the poet, Nikki Giovanni, leading students in a cheer to affirm that they will survive and be stronger - 'We are HOKIES!'.
<i>But there is one party who will not be a hero during all this</i>, and that is the National Broadcasting Company news organization. After Mr. <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/cho">Cho</a> shot his first two victims in his dormitory, he made a rambling videotape with his jeremiad on debauched rich students and how they had driven him to this action, shortly before he entered a classroom, chained the doors shut and killed thirty more people. This insane person took the time to film and mail his video between murders, and <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/nbc">NBC</a> chose to make it public.
Poor Dylan Klebold - he never thought of making videos before killing his classmates at Columbine High School. Now, Mr. Cho has created a new item in the iconography of mass murder, one that we will surely see again. We have come a long way from the days when shooting Ronald Reagan to impress Jodie Foster was a ticket to fifteen minutes of fame and becoming an answer on a Trivial Pursuit card. Now we present a news network with 27 videos, 43 photographs and an 1,800-word narration described as "multimedia manifesto" from a "uniquely sick mind." NBC was quick to turn the package over to the FBI, right after making copies for itself.
Mr. Cho could be speaking to NBC when he observes, "You had 100 billion chances and ways to have avoided today, but you decided to spill my blood. You forced me into a corner and gave me only one option. The decision was yours. Now, you have blood on your hands that will never wash off." By choosing to give this presentation the validation of a platform, NBC has sent our nation and our heritage just one more step down a dank and violent road.
Update: From 'Below the Beltway', an informative tribute by Doug Mataconis about <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/librescu">Prof.</a> <a href="http://belowthebeltway.com/2007/04/20/a-hero-laid-to-rest/">Liviu Librescu</a>
posted by Peter Porcupine at 9:07 PM
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Original Source: <a href="http://capecodporcupine.blogspot.com/2007/04/now-you-have-blood-on-your-hands-that.html">http://capecodporcupine.blogspot.com/2007/04/now-you-have-blood-on-your-hands-that.html</a>
Licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.5/">Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.5 License</a>.
Peter Porcupine
2007-06-02
Brent Jesiek
Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.5 License
eng
Virginia Tech shootings create media ethics debate
Jeff Vrabel / GateHouse Media
Thu Apr 19, 2007, 05:01 PM CDT
BLACKSBURG, VA - Regular readers of this column - and hello to all three of you - know that, when appropriate, partially appropriate, tangentially connected or carries the very slight possibility of being funny to someone somewhere, I have no problem resorting to remarks of questionable taste. Sometimes, if I can and my editors agree, I can slip a colorful adjective in there or two. When it comes to matters of obscenity and the maintenance of high culture, a conservative prude I am not.
But something about being unable to avoid pictures of Cho Seung-Hui pointing a gun at me Thursday was more nauseatingly loathsome than I might have even expected.
People with lengthier titles and livelier paychecks than mine will by now have spent hours and days debating the judiciousness of using the pictures of a killer doing what he did when he executed more than 30 people on Monday, pointing the gun at me, at you, at himself, at whatever purported demons he'd invented. He did so on purpose, doing it with the intent to enrage after his death. With astonishing clarity, Cho's package to NBC News proved, over all else, that this was not a random bout of insanity, a snap. This was as premeditated a rampage as one could enact; one wouldn't be surprised if investigators soon discover a map and a set of blueprints.
I'm not here to debate the news value, and were I sitting in the newsroom at NBC News when that package came in, I - nor any of you - have any idea how I would have reacted. But it feels an awful, awful lot like serving a black-hearted killer a drink at the bar and asking if he'd like to keep the bottle for free.
This is what he wanted. This is what he's getting. There wasn't much chance that anything else would happen, really.
Hopefully, at least some percentage of the country's 6 million pundits-posing-as-journalists will at least begin addressing the question of how much of the decision to run these photos was fueled by news judgment and how much was fueled by the media's increasingly desperate desire to keep up. By Tuesday, CNN had a bumper - not a segment, not a commercial, but one of those four-second clips that leads viewers into and out of ads - that flashed the phrase "CAMPUS SHOOTING" no fewer than eight times. Eight times! The font changed, got bigger, jumped around the screen, and finally settled front and center in bold type, where even if you were just flipping by or passing it at the airport, you could stop and wonder what's next. (Hilariously, the CNN outlet I was watching at the time punctuated its Cho coverage with a 90-second ad for a gun range.)
At this point, calls for judiciousness will fall on deaf ears; as the moment for pure sympathy and horror seems to have already passed - well, it is Friday - now we can get on with the ransacking of grief, the creation of logos and theme music and the mortifying - and, for the most part, unavoidable - capitulation to the wishes of a killer.
<i>Jeff Vrabel can be reached at www.jeffvrabel.com</i>
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Original Source: <a href="http://www.chicagosuburbannews.com/stcharles/opinions/x1721527709">http://www.chicagosuburbannews.com/stcharles/opinions/x1721527709</a>
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Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5
</a>.
Jeff Vrabel
2007-05-31
Brent Jesiek
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5
eng
Blame Game and The Ghosts of Waco
Adam Roberts / <a href="http://themetropolistimes.blogspirit.com/">The Metropolis Times</a> (Blog)
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
<span style="font-style: italic">"There is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre." - Kurt Vonnegut</span>
<b>I don't really want to write this blog.</b> I wanted to just take a few days off and give condolences to the victims at Virginia Tech. But before the bodies have even been identified, the media has already started playing the blame game. Apparently, if we had banned Hollywood, Nintendo and guns, this wouldn't have happened. I feel compelled to counter their bullshit.
It makes me very angry <a href="http://www.beliefnet.com/story/87/story_8770_1.html" >when moralists so brazenly exploit</a> a tragedy like this. I can't do anything about the murders, I can't stop people from trivializing deaths by turning them into moral panics, but maybe if I channel my anger into blogging, I can convince at least a few readers to pause before surrendering freedoms.
<b>Blaming guns is just stupid.</b> Guns were already banned on campus. The gun ban didn't work.
Last year, the State of Virginia dismissed a bill that would have allowed law-abiding students with a concealed-carry permit to bring their guns on campus, just as they are allowed to bring them anywhere else in the state. It was struck down. Its insensitive to say, but if just one of those hundreds of students had a single gun, more people would be alive today.
<a href="http://www.roanoke.com/news/roanoke/wb/wb/xp-50658"><span style="font-style: italic">"Virginia Tech spokesman Larry Hincker was happy to hear the bill was defeated. 'I'm sure the university community is appreciative of the General Assembly's actions because this will help parents, students, faculty and visitors feel safe on our campus.'"</span></a>
<b>CNN Headline Prime kept showing movie posters for <span style="font-style: italic">Grindhouse</span></b> while Nancy Grace's substitute was blaming media violence. Apparently, <a href="http://themetropolistimes.blogspirit.com/archive/2007/04/07/review-grindhouse.html">the Tarrantino/Rodriguez double-feature</a> is going to be turned into <a href="http://www.revisionisthistory.org/matrix.html">the next <span style="font-style: italic">Matrix</span></a> by the media. (Marilyn Manson-blaming is out of style) I've already heard the <a href="http://kotaku.com/gaming/feature/columbine-survivor-talks-about-columbine-rpg-171966.php">Super Columbine RPG</a> referenced on both Fox News and CNN Headline News, even though there is absolutely no reason to suggest that the killer even knew about the game, and the 'game' is an anti-violent interactive documentary.
I remember coming home from seeing <span style="font-style: italic">Grindhouse</span> with a bunch of friends, and talking about how awesome the car battles were. We passed a real-life wreck on the freeway - the tone immediately changed and we all expressed sadness and hoped that no one was killed. There was no desensitization.
It is true that a small number of criticized studies have found links between exposure to media violence and aggression, especially in children. However, there has never been a study that showed exposure to media violence changed people into the type that commit real-life violent crimes. In fact, <a href="http://themetropolistimes.blogspirit.com/archive/2006/05/12/vlog-video-games-and-violence.html">there is probably a cathartic effect</a> - violence in video games helps quell natural violent tendencies.
<b>Nevertheless, violence in the media can sometimes inspire real-life violence. Its called the "Copycat Effect."</b> 19th Century terrorists called it "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_of_the_deed">Propaganda of the Deed</a>," modern terrorist fighters call it "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4GW">fourth generation warfare</a>." Simply put, alienated young male sees an example of how a violent death made someone infamous and important. Alienated young male is evil, depressed and angry enough to place his own lust for importance over his own life and the lives of others. So alienated young male becomes an anarchist, neo-Nazi or Mujahideen and plots a crime that he's sure will get him attention in the newspapers.
Historical examples are well-documented. Read <a href="http://hammernews.com/copycateffect.htm">Michael Hammerschlag's essay</a>. "<i style="font-style: italic">The 1774 Goethe book</i> The Sorrows of Young Werther <span style="font-style: italic">caused so many copycat suicides of lovelorn young men who dressed alike and shot themselves at the same time at their writing desk- straight from the story- that it was banned in Germany, Italy and Denmark</span>." Others include Shakespeare's <span style="font-style: italic">Romeo & Juliet</span>, Stephen King's novel <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rage_%2528novel%2529"><span style="font-style: italic">Rage</span></a>, Scorsese's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hinckley%252C_Jr.#Obsession_with_Jodie_Foster"><span style="font-style: italic">Taxi Driver</span></a> and, more than any other, the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zapruder_film">Zapruder film</a>.
We don't know anything about the shooter yet, but it seems obvious that this was a Columbine-copycat. At this time every year, somewhere in the country, kids get caught planning a Columbine-style attack. This Virginia Tech terrorist was probably trying to outdo the Columbine murderers.
<b>The Columbine massacre occurred on April 20th - this Friday</b>. Although this is also Hitler's birthday, the murderers' videos indicate that the attack was originally scheduled for April 19th - the same day at the Oklahoma City attack, which, according to their videos, the Columbine terrorists hoped to outdo. The Oklahoma City bombing of course, was scheduled for April 19th in order to avenge Janet Reno's misdeeds in the Waco disaster.
The shooter's actions demonstrate advance planning. He didn't get spurned by his girlfriend and suddenly decide to go on a rampage - although a domestic dispute could have pushed the massacre up a few days.
This is all just speculation. If the terrorist turns out to be an exchange student from overseas, he might not have been able to appreciate the significance of Columbine in our generation's psyche, and the timing could be coincidental.
People need someone to blame - the police, Hollywood, the NRA, our "culture of violence" - anyone.</b> It is almost incomprehensible that tragedies of this magnitude can happen for no good reason at all.
--
Original Source: <a href="http://themetropolistimes.blogspirit.com/free_markets/">http://themetropolistimes.blogspirit.com/free_markets/</a>
Licensed under <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0</a>.
Adam Roberts
2007-05-29
Brent Jesiek
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0
eng
Rightwingers Go Insane Over VT Shooting
Thursday, April 26, 2007
<span style="font-weight: bold;">The latest death toll figures from Hurricane Katrina can be seen on this website <a href="http://robertlindsay.blogspot.com/2007/03/katrina-death-toll-passes-4000.html">here</a>.</span>
Have any fellow Lefties noticed that the Blogosphere seems to be a disgusting, rightwing place? Have you noticed that it seems like rightwing blogs are far overrepresented in terms of the percentage of rightwingers in society, and leftwing and centrist blogs seem to be less common?
I do not know what the answer is, but it may have something to do with how organized the rightwing is in this country and how unorganized the Left and even the Center are. The whole newspaper, newsmagazine, TV news and radio news industry in the US is tilted towards the Right. The Left is broke or lack voices in a corporatized media.
Anyway, seems the VT shooting case has been most taken up by rightwing bloggers. Why is that? Doesn't the Left have anything to say about this?
But a look at the rightwing blogs and their take on this shooting is instructive. For one thing, the entire rightwing blogosphere is in hyper-defensive screech mode regarding gun control.
That's the only significant noise I hear out of the US media, bloggers or otherwise, these days on gun control and VT: <span style="font-weight: bold;"> Well, despite this shooting, we sure as Hell don't need gun control, now do we?</span> The cries for more gun control are few and far between. What a strange way to react to a mass shooting.
One wonders how many more mass shootings it will take before Americans come to their senses about gun control, if ever. The reaction of the foreign press is instructive: Most foreign outlets, from India to Britain, are flabbergasted at how easy it is to buy a gun in the US.
They treat Americans like a bunch of insane aliens and our society as sick and depraved. On that level, they are correct. Do we Americans deserve what we get? We love our guns, we react furiously to any attempts to control them, and consequently we put up with appalling amounts of gun crime and regular mass shootings. Are we asking for it?
Just as I suspected, a <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/04/20/virginiatechshooting/main2712826.shtml?source=RSSattr=HOME_2712826">poll</a> showed no change in Americans' attitudes about gun control. The public is pretty much split down the middle on this issue, with 49% supporting no change or loosening of gun laws and 47% supporting increased restrictions.
60% of women support tightening gun laws, while only 35% of men do. 55% of minorities support tougher laws, while only 44% of Whites do. Urban dwellers support tougher laws, while suburban and rural residents (read: Whites) do not. 60% of Democrats support tougher gun laws, while only 35% of Republicans do.
What is truly insane about these statistics is that the populations that are least affected by gun violence are the most vociferous in favor of guns, usually on the basis that they are terrified of crime.
Republican White suburban and rural males are the strongest gun supporters, yet they are the least likely males to be affected. Same with Republican White suburban and rural women. The more gun violence a population experiences, the more they are in favor of restrictions. The less gun violence an area experiences, the more strongly they want their guns.
I'm sure there is a psychological explanation for this somewhere, but I wish someone would show it to me.
The political class is terrified of the issue, including both the Republican and Democratic Parties. Democratic Party operatives <a href="http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=618542007">blame</a> the party's pro-gun control stance to the party's losses in the 1994 elections and Al Gore's win, which the Supreme Court turned into a loss, in 2000.
For those who doubt that the US has an insane gun homicide rate, check out this statistic: America has a higher gun homicide rate amongst kids age 5-14 than in the top 25 other industrialized countries combined. Now tell me that statistic is caused by "too few guns" or has nothing to do with America being a gun-flooded society.
To show you just how deranged the US rightwing is, look at the coverage of the VT shooting. What was it focused on? Stupid liberals allowed the shooting to happen <span style="font-weight: bold;">by refusing to arm all your students</span>! I kid you not.
<span style="font-style: italic;">Update: As of April 30, in light of this case, Virginia has <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/04/30/gun.virginia.tech.ap/">tightened up</a> its gun laws so that no one who has ever been involuntarily hospitalized for psychiatric reasons can buy a gun in the state. Cho slipped through a loophole in a previous law because he was treated as an outpatient, and, while evaluated, he was not committed. The loophole enabled him to make his gun purchases.
Predictably, <span style="font-style: italic;">Furious Seasons</span> is <a href="http://www.furiousseasons.com/archives/2007/05/05012007_media_madness.html">opposed</a> to the new regulations. This blog strongly supports gun control and thinks hardly anyone should be able to own a handgun, much less someone with a record of being hospitalized as a danger to yourself or others.</span>
Another common theme was the lunatic Right's insane Islamophobia and outright hatred for all Muslims. Although Cho surely is about as far from being a Muslim as anyone can get, the Rightwing has been utterly obsessed, to the point of near-psychosis, with the notion that Cho must have been a Muslim terrorist! Evidence? Well, that Ismail Ax thing written on his arm. That proves he's Al Qaeda, right?
They have been digging up statistics showing that a whole 50 South Koreans are studying Islam at madrassas and that Islam is the fastest growing religion in (largely nonreligious) South Korea (a dubious statistic). All this proves that Cho is...a South Korean Muslim terrorist Al Qaeda!
What about Emily Hilscher, his first victim? Name sounds kinda...Jewish, huh? Bingo! Al Qaeda Muslim terrorist! He nailed a Jew first thing. None other than "Drudge" came up with that bit of insanity.
What about that Saudi reporter who shot the video camera footage of the shots outside Norris Hall? Investigate the Arab bastard! He was obviously in on it!
Not to mention, Arabia being evil enough, that his name is Bargouti, and he is really one of those evil Palestinian non-peoples; in fact, he is related to a prominent Palestinian family and one of his relatives is a dirty Pallie terrorist! Investigate the Arab-PLO-Saudi-South Korean Al Qaeda connection right now!
When people talk about Islamophobia or hatred of Arabs, I tend to roll my eyes. There is certainly a lot to criticize about Arab culture and Islam period, actually existing and historical versions. But the Rightwing's hatred for Arabs and Islam is simply pathological and insane, and nothing proves it more than the VT shooting.
How bout some other angles. I would have thought pulling an anti-immigrant angle out of this would be too low, but a number of rightwingers found reason to call for an end to immigration. Why? One guy, who immigrated 15 years ago, went nuts and killed some people. Let's lock down the borders!
We all know the Rightwing is racist, no matter how much they insist that they are not. What I didn't know is that they hate Asians too. But of course they do. When they weren't examining the hidden Cho-Al Qaeda link, they were plumbing the depths of something called "South Korean supremacism".
Does it even exist? Turns out a lot of South Koreans don't like Americans too much. Consequently, Cho being an anti-American South Korean Leftist radical and all that, this inscrutable Asian supremacism combined with Commie America-hatred surely spurred this mad spree.
You would think this is the lunatic Right, but no, what we are talking about is the solid 30% of population or so that continues to support George Bush and everything dumb he has ever done to the hilt. The "normal" Right and the insane Right in the US are equivalent. That's almost as scary as Mr. Cho.
Examples? Look at the comment threads on <span style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://hotair.com/">Hot Air</a></span>, the huge rightwing blog, <a href="http://hotair.com/archives/2007/04/17/new-vtech-thread-victims-roommate-debunks-the-jilted-lover-theory/">here</a>, <a href="http://hotair.com/archives/2007/04/18/new-vtech-thread-was-cho-schizophrenic-mean-or-both/">here</a> and <a href="http://hotair.com/archives/2007/04/19/new-vtech-thread-the-telegraph-fills-in-the-timeline-maybe/">here</a>. Check out the comment thread on the big rightwing blog <a href="http://www.riehlworldview.com/carnivorous_conservative/2007/04/getting_inside_.html">Riehl World View</a>. Don't even bother with the comments - check the actual <a href="http://lordofswans.blogspot.com/2007/04/virginia-tech-blog-3208229018.html">post</a> itself on the loony <span style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://lordofswans.blogspot.com/">Lord of Swans</a></span> blog. That's pretty representative, but if you look around you find that insanity reproduced all over the rightwing blogosphere.
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Note: Readers should carefully read the <a href="http://robertlindsay.blogspot.com/2005/03/rules-on-commenting.html">Commenting Rules</a> before commenting to avoid having their comments edited or deleted and to avoid being banned from the site.</span>
posted by Robert Lindsay at <a href="http://robertlindsay.blogspot.com/2007/04/rightwingers-go-insane-over-vt-shooting.html" title="permanent link">4/26/2007 06:00:00 PM</a>
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Original Source: <a href="http://robertlindsay.blogspot.com/2007/04/rightwingers-go-insane-over-vt-shooting.html">http://robertlindsay.blogspot.com/2007/04/rightwingers-go-insane-over-vt-shooting.html</a>
Licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License</a>.
Robert Lindsay
2007-05-29
Brent Jesiek
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5
eng
Virginia Tech Grieves Online
Posted by <a href="http://www.profy.com/profile/cyndy-aleo-carreira/">Cyndy Aleo-Carreira</a> on April 17th, 2007
I know that I speak for everyone here at Profy when I say that our thoughts are with the family and friends of the victims of yesterday's events at <a href="http://www.vt.edu/">Virginia Tech</a>.
The horror of yesterday will live in the hearts and minds of the Virginia Tech community, the United States, and much of the world for some time to come, but what moved me the most was the way in which what would have been a local, and somewhat national, event even a few years ago moved worldwide due to a global online community.
The first reports of what was happening on the VT campus came from students sending reports via their cell phones. Today, the grief of the VT community has moved online.
On the University's own <a href="http://www.vt.edu/tragedy/">website on the tragedy</a>, updates are presented in blog format, the Convocation held today was streamed live, and is available to students, faculty, and families as a podcast, as it contains information on resources available for counseling and information.
On <a href="http://www.livejournal.com">LiveJournal</a>, a professor shares his grief online, giving us a mere glimpse of the person (and student) that <a href="http://tekmagika.livejournal.com/672246.html">Reema Samaha</a> was.
On <a href="http://www.facebook.com">Facebook</a>, comments have been left on the pages of victims from friends as well as students at rival schools, and sorority sisters and fraternity brothers from other chapters.
<a href="http://www.myspace.com">MySpace</a> includes an "official" <a href="http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=42548491">VT page</a> called HokieNation which has been updated with a VT emblem with wings and a cartoon showing anthropomorphic characters of other universities gathered around the VT character with the caption "Today we are all Hokies." Many user icons of VT alums and students as well as people affiliated with the university, like radio stations that broadcast VT games have changed their avatars to a black ribbon with the VT emblem.
And comments have been left on articles ranging from blogs to news sites.
Twenty years ago, we'd have seen this as a tragedy, watched the footage on CNN, and that would have been the end of it. In the age of Web 2.0, anyone with enough inclination and five minutes of time can reach out to those most closely affected by events and let them know how many people are thinking of them. Over 650 comments have been left on the HokieNation MySpace page alone in the past two days.
If Web 2.0 is remembered for nothing else, it will be remembered for giving us this ability to quickly connect with people. In this instance, it gives a personal insight into the lives of the victims that makes them much more than simply a name in a newcast.
Additional information: <a href="http://www.people.com">People</a>
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Original Source: <a href="http://www.profy.com/2007/04/17/virginia-tech-grieves-online/">http://www.profy.com/2007/04/17/virginia-tech-grieves-online/</a>
Licensed under <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain/">Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication</a>.
Cyndy Aleo-Carreira
2007-05-29
Brent Jesiek
Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication
eng
Death in America, an ode to siblings
Monday, April 16, 2007
It was a crisp, clear, bright autumn day, the kind of day you drink in with every essence of your being. I was sleepy, woken early by my parents for the drive from Nashville to Blacksburg. But I was excited. Not only were we attending a Virginia Tech football game, I was going to see my brother, a student at VT and horn player in the marching band. The campus was quiet, beautiful, almost idyllic, and I was overwhelmed by my first views of college life.
My brother attended Virginia Tech in the mid-80's and graduated with a degree in nuclear engineering. His devotion to his alma mater has continued, as an alumnus and frequently attending football games. It isn't surprising, the mood of the campus that day was intoxicating, and had I showed any inclination towards engineering, science or mathematics, I might have returned there for my own college education. Blacksburg itself was a village filled with charm and friendly people, hip hangouts and the best record store I had ever been in.
I am <a href="http://news.ert.gr/en/4/24574.asp">grieving</a> the <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6560685.stm">shootings at Virginia Tech</a>, the shots that rang out across the peaceful campus, killing many, wounding others, and deafening the ears of college students that today learned one of the hardest lessons life can teach. I mourn the deaths with the families, friends, and teachers, and wish them all peace in the days and months ahead. But mostly I mourn for the siblings who, unlike me, will never again have the joy of seeing their brother or sister on campus after a sleepy drive through the fog laden mountains to that small college town that has lost so much today.
posted by melusina at 9:15 PM
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Original Source: <a href="http://litochoro.blogspot.com/2007/04/death-in-america-ode-to-siblings.html">http://litochoro.blogspot.com/2007/04/death-in-america-ode-to-siblings.html</a>
Licensed under <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.5/">Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.5</a>.
Melusina
2007-05-27
Brent Jesiek
Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.5
eng
NBC Should Never Have Aired the Virginia Tech Video
By: Jack Myers / <a href="http://blogs.mediavillage.com/jack/">Jack Myers Think Tank</a> (Blog)
May 07, 2007
The more I think and talk to people about NBC's handling of Cho Seung-Hui's videos following the tragedy at Virginia Tech, the more convinced I am the decision was mishandled and wrong. Roger Delaney of Zephyr Media Group commented "I think that, even knowing that the data would make it into the public domain though other channels, NBC erred when they decided to air Cho's 'multimedia manifesto'. There is no question that he accomplished exactly what he'd hoped to - his heinous actions gave him a forum through which he could spew his venomous message to the entire nation. Did any of us need to see that? Did airing that footage do anything other than grant Cho the postmortem glory he was clearly seeking? And was there any way for NBC to air that footage without appearing to be chasing ratings? The answer to all those questions is, in my mind, unequivocally 'no'."
Neale Martin of Ntlec, whose daughter is a sophomore at VT, added, "NBC should never have provided a platform for this lunatic; it will encourage every sociopath to strive toward even more carnage. Even posted on YouTube, it would not have the same impact as being put on broadcast news. My daughter is a sophomore at VT and three classmates from her Monday 8 am class were killed the next period. As a former journalist I am sickened by how low this profession has sunk."
There are endless arguments about free speech, about how the videos would have found their way into the public eye and, of course, NBC's responsibility not only to the audience but to shareholders as well, for whom any ratings opportunity is more important than issues of the public good.
My initial instinct was to accept that NBC aired the videos, but to criticize both NBC and other networks for the gratuitous promotions they ran and the hype leading up to the news reports. In retrospect, I believe NBC has done great harm to the NBC network news brand, to Brian Williams, and to the overall public perception of network broadcast news. What an extraordinary opportunity NBC had to stand above the obvious commercial opportunism and draw a line in the sand. This is not about military action about which there is ongoing national debate. This is not about a major ongoing news story or about a celebrity or political figure.
This was about one mass murderer broadcasting his message of hate in America's most prestigious and trusted environment. This was a classically disturbed person who saw the media as his road to immortality - murder was the affect but media exposure was the cause. And NBC, through its actions, fell prey to the most base instincts of tabloid media upon which Cho depended.
What would have been the end result if NBC has moved the videos onto the NBC news website, losing the ratings opportunity? Or what if NBC had simply refused to air the video at all and had turned it over to the FBI? Jeff Beliveau of Consumer Networks asked "Before acting, did my fellow human beings ask themselves 'Is what I'm about to do creating good? Or evil? Am I doing nothing other than causing harm by pursuing my own narrow self-interests?'" There are many arguments being used to justify NBC's decision, and it's unlikely any other network would have responded differently.
But what's missing in the aftermath of Virginia Tech is a true industry debate and dialogue on NBC's decision and the role of network broadcast news in a media environment in which news is ubiquitous and all-pervasive. Do the broadcast networks - ABC, CBS and NBC - have a responsibility to stand above the onrush of tabloid journalism? Is it their responsibility to air or not to air the rantings of crazed killers? Is it appropriate to give those people who have no further rights to be a part of our society the credibility that broadcast network television infers? Be a part of the debate. Let me know your opinion.
Share your comments at <a href="http://www.mediavillage.com/sound_off/">MediaVillage SoundOff</a>.
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Original Source: <a href="http://blogs.mediavillage.com/jack/archives/2007/05/nbc_should_neve.html">http://blogs.mediavillage.com/jack/archives/2007/05/nbc_should_neve.html</a>
Licensed under <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.5/">Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.5</a>.
Jack Myers
2007-05-27
Brent Jesiek
Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.5
eng
Defenseless Victim Zones
Harold X. O'Boyle / <a href="http://www.the-extremist.com/">The Extremist</a> (Blog)
May 03, 2007
Mass murder invariably gets the Victim Disarmament Lobby into a lather promoting safety through helplessness. The Virginia Tech shooting is no exception. A brief but honest look at how the world works, however, should convince any but the most craven cowards that there is not much safety in being as helpless as a newborn. Acts of senseless violence will never be stopped by simply declaring them illegal.
It is ironic to me that many of the same people who so adamantly oppose self-defense in the face of violence are the same who claim that boosting "self-esteem" is the highest goal of education. Once we've created people enthralled with their own individuality and inestimable worth how can it be that the lives of those people are not worth defending?
Education authorities create "defenseless victim zones" where if confronted by violence students are expected to stand and deliver, whether the delivery involves their property or their dignity. The theory is based on the idea that life is immeasurably precious, to be preserved at any price and that a sane criminal, like a thief or a rapist, will let you live if you just lie nice and still. But what if he isn't a nice sane criminal? What if he just wants to kill you?
There was a time, long before years of government schooling and media propaganda had removed the spine from so many Americans, when the failure to defend yourself was considered the equivalent of suicide. That theory was based on the idea that life was a gift from the Almighty, not to be taken lightly or abused. Educational discussion in those days more often centered on "self-respect" and "courage" than "self-esteem."
In keeping with the modern preference for self-esteem over self-respect Virginia Tech is a "gun free school zone." That means only law enforcement personnel and psychopathic killers can have weapons on campus. On the day of the recent shooting not a law enforcement officer could be found until after the psychopath had already shot more than 50 people and himself.
The cops that did show up, and the SWAT teams, hid behind their cars until the shooting stopped. Then they rushed inside the building and threatened all the survivors with sudden death till everyone was properly prone.
Despite the death toll and the utter failure of the police to protect anyone, college officials are steadfast in their enthusiasm for maintaining the campus as a "Defenseless Victim Zone." According to a spokesman, the administration wants students to "feel safe" on campus. I have to agree that "feeling safe" is an important part of a good education. But just think of how a policy that actually provided some safety would make everyone feel.
There is no way to know whether the dead and wounded at Virginia Tech "felt safe" attending class in a gun free zone. I'm sure it finally dawned on them that no matter how they felt, they were in big trouble.
The shooter ignored laws against carrying a gun without a permit, bringing a gun on campus, assault and murder. The idea that another gun law or "gun free zone" or psych test would have prevented this tragedy is as about as credible as a Senator's promise.
In an astonishing turn of events Virginia higher education authorities already had experience with a campus shooting that should have made the solution to the safety problem clear.
Five years ago at a law school not far from VT 43-year-old exchange student Peter Odighizuwa shot two professors with a 38 caliber handgun. He also killed a student in the same building and wounded three others. But unlike today, Virginia colleges in those days were not a Helpless Victim Zones.
Two students, Tracy Bridges and Mikael Gross, acting independently, ran to their cars to retrieve handguns when they heard the gunfire. Gross was an off-duty police officer in his home state of North Carolina. He got his 9mm pistol and body armor from the car. Bridges returned with his .357 Magnum.
They approached Odighizuwa from different sides and proved that guns are not just for killing. Bridges yelled for the shooter to drop his weapon. He dropped it and several unarmed students subdued him. Gross went back to his car for handcuffs to detain the shooter until police arrived.
Other school attacks have also been cut short by armed civilians. A vice principal who got a handgun from his car stopped a student shooter in Pearl, Mississippi and detained him until police arrived. A restaurant owner in Edinboro, Pennsylvania used a shotgun to convince a shooter at a school dance to surrender. He did it without firing a shot himself.
Israel had to deal with armed attacks on schools in the 1970s. These were attacks by terrorists, not students, and even then there were cries for disarmament instead of self-defense. Instead of disarmament, the Israelis decided to arm and train their teachers. Terrorists went looking for easier targets. The school attacks stopped.
The belief that guns cause murder is like believing that spoons cause obesity or that matches cause arson. The problems of school violence won't be solved by increasing the helplessness of potential victims. When confronted by bad guys with guns we always call good guys with guns. Good guys with guns are like taxi cabs and waiters, the more there are the less time you have to wait for one. Mr. Rogers doesn't become Mr. Hyde just because he has a pistol in his pocket.
Declaring insanity illegal won't eliminate insanity. We can only be prepared to minimize the damage that the worst among us can do. To do that we must abandon insane policies that make us "feel safe" while in fact increasing danger.
The only sane response to insane violence is to allow armed people to defend themselves and others. The tools and will to confront evil with self-respect, courage and dignity will improve self-esteem more than any number of useless gun laws designed to make us "feel safe."
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Original Source: <a href="http://www.the-extremist.com/2007/05/defenseless_vic.html">http://www.the-extremist.com/2007/05/defenseless_vic.html</a>
Licensed under <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5</a>.
Harold X. O'Boyle
2007-05-27
Brent Jesiek
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5
eng
What Cho learned
<p>April 20, 2007<br />
Friday</p>
<p>Natalie Solent (Essex)</p>
<p>Nikki Giovanni found one of her Creative Writing students a trial.</p>
<blockquote><i>"And every class I'm saying, 'Mr. Cho, take off your (sun)-glasses please, take your hat off please. Mr. Cho, that's not a poem. Can you work on it please,'" Giovanni recalled. "And then I finally realized that something is not wrong with me, something is wrong with him, and I said to him, 'I'm not a good teacher for you.'"</i></blockquote>
<blockquote><i>One day, she arrived and found her class of about 70 students had dwindled to fewer than 10. When she asked a student after class about it, he confessed that "everybody's scared of (Cho)." Giovanni later had him removed from her class after she threatened to resign.</i></blockquote>
<p>Why did it have to come to that? Imagine if every class <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cho_Seung-hui">Cho Seung-hui</a> had attended had taken place at the invitation of the teacher- an invitation that could be rescinded at any time.</p>
<p>In reality his memories of school were of <a href="http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2007/04/19/national/a090738D77.DTL">humiliation</a>, but imagine if, from the age of twelve onwards, or from even earlier if your imagination can stretch that far, school had been an option he could choose if he wanted it.</p>
<p>What if Cho's concepts of "school" and "college" had been formed by classes like the Karate class <a href=http://www.brianmicklethwait.com/education/2003/01/karate.php">described</a> by Brian Micklethwait?</p>
<blockquote><i>What struck me, so to speak, about these "martial arts" classes was that although the children present may have supposed that all there were learning was how to be more violent, what they were really learning was no less than civilisation itself.</i></blockquote>
<blockquote><i>The children were all told to get changed into their Karate kit in an orderly fashion, and to put their regular clothes in sensible little heaps. They all lined up the way he said. They all turned up on time. They left the place impeccably clean when they'd finished, all helping to make sure that all was ship-shape and properly closed-up when they left.</i></blockquote>
<blockquote><i>Were these children being "coerced"? Certainly not. They didn't have to be there, any more than The Man had to teach them Karate if he didn't want to. If they wanted out, then out they could go, with no blots on their copybooks or markings-down on their CVs.</i></blockquote>
<p>Having reached the age of twenty-three, Cho was no longer forced to be taught - but his teachers were still forced to teach him and his fellow students to associate with him. True, there were a few last ways out from his menacing presence; the students could jeopardise their education by skipping class and the teacher could jeopardise her career by threatening to resign. Unfortunately by the time these sanctions were employed Cho had already got away with too much.</p>
<p>I sometimes think that practically every problem, inefficiency and cruelty of our education system has at its root compulsion. People who are forced into each other's society tend not to behave well to each other. Wherever the doors are locked, be the locks visible or invisible, those inside seem to revert to the hierarchy of the baboon troop. There is still room for free will: most do no worse than learn a few habits of obsequiousness or sullenness that can be shaken off. Cho was not forced to become a mass-murderer. (In fact I see his own claim to the contrary in his video as a sort of twisted acknowledgement of this fact; the thought that "I don't have to do this" had to be actively denied.) No, he was not forced to pull the trigger - but force did play too large a part in his life. Imagine if the doors had been open for the bullied Cho Seung-hui to walk away, or if the adult Cho Seung-hui had been shown the door at the first sign of discourtesy. Imagine this was the case not just for Cho Seung-hui on certain pivotal occasions but for everyone on all occasions. Then, I think, he would have learned differently.</p>
<p>--</p>
<p>Original Source: <a href="http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2007/04/what_cho_learne_1.html">http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2007/04/what_cho_learne_1.html</a></p>
<p>Licensed under <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/1.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 1.0</a>.</p>
Natalie Solent
2007-05-27
Brent Jesiek
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 1.0
eng
What's "Korean" got to do with it?
<a href="http://www.printculture.com/index.php?memberid=101">by J Lee</a> | April 19, 2007
When I was growing up in the 80s, it often seemed that the world was holding its breath, keeping its fingers crossed to prevent some sort of nuclear disaster. The apocalypse that I imagined then had to do with the world going up in a mushroom cloud, because of polarization along national and political lines. But this next generation's experiences (as E Wesp pointed out in <a href="http://printculture.com/index.php?itemid=1363#1551">his comment</a>) have been punctuated by violence of a different type, enacted by one or a few individuals and relatively low technology.
I want to pick up a few threads of conversation, starting with the <a href="http://printculture.com/index.php?itemid=1363#1551">comment by ms</a> which addresses the idea of narrative and also points out that we have started this conversation with race. In our discussion and in many of the blog comments I have been reading on this side of the world, the use of the label "Korean" has been hotly debated, some arguing that the shooter's ethnicity may offer clues to his motivations, others charging that to invoke the term is racist. I am curious about how this label "Korean" gets deployed and what meaning it has. In other words, does it matter that he was Korean? What are the conditions under which someone's ethnicity becomes "visible" and how it gets worked into the stories we tell about why something happened, about who is responsible, and about our emotional relationships to the subject?
In a basic way, the label "Korean" subverts the popular stereotype of the angry white middle class male shooter. It provides a potentially different kind of explanatory factor, complicating questions about Cho's mental health, his upbringing, ideas about the expression of masculine anger, etc.
What I find interesting from our own discussion as well as <a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-me-minorities19apr19,0,2127441.story?coll=la-home-headlines">other articles</a> is how minorities have reacted. Personally, I heard "Korean," "parents own a dry-cleaning business," "sister at Princeton," and "Centreville, VA" and unconsciously began constructing my own narrative of Cho's life, filling in the blanks with my own experiences growing up not far from Centreville (in a similar kind of suburb) and the experiences of friends. Parents sacrifice themselves for their children's education, teaching their kids to value educational success above all other types and in doing so lower their own status in their children's eyes. Cultural divides open between the generations. The children don't quite fit into mainstream American life but have lost touch with and respect for their parents' culture. The alienation I imagine him to have felt confirms and strengthens my sense of my own alienation and my distance from what I see as the cultural center (however imaginary that notion of a cultural center may be). And on and on... In trying to understand his actions I construct for him an entirely fictitious reality which makes me feel (as he has become an extension of myself, my brothers, my sons, etc.) empathetic, invested, responsible, and guilty about the whole thing.
I think there's a certain extent to which these incidents become cautionary tales to support our individual and cultural fears: video games inducing violence, fears about repressed male emotion, xenophobia, education without moral center, etc. We all explain the world in the terms we understand, I suppose.
But, for the more difficult task... how does the label of "Korean" function on a cultural level, particularly here in Korea? This is a hard question to address, and I am a little hesitant to try to answer it, to (by virtue of having my little soapbox and being in Korea) seem like I have the answers. But, as E Hayot says (sorry to quote you here, E) "pontificating wildly about stuff you barely understand is what the internet is all about!" So here goes, my attempt to create context for you all out there. Kids, don't try this at home.
Why the ownership of this man as Korean by those here in Korea? Why not the urge to dismiss him as Americanized, or as a deranged individual, why the urge to place him within the boundaries of the label "Korean"? I'll throw out three contexts here.
Context 1: Koreans abroad (read: anyone with Korean blood), on the international stage, function in the popular imagination here in Korea in a way that Americans may find surprising. The average American probably doesn't know who Park Chan-ho, <a href="http://theyangpa.wordpress.com/2006/04/03/half-of-hines-ward-receives-prestigious-award/">Hines Ward</a>, Hwang Woo Suk, or Ban Ki-moon are, but they are important figures in the public imagination here, evidence of Korea's place in the global order, for better or for worse. I was in the bookstore a few months ago, shortly after Ban Ki-moon was named the new UN Secretary General, and there was already a biography of him written for children, using his life as an inspirational example of what kids could achieve. Where does this mentality come from? From a genre of history writing in which Korea is the passive victim of stronger foreign powers (China, Japan, the U.S.)? From some Park Chung-hee era idea of self-reliance? From some notion of the purity and homogeneity of Korean culture and language? From media which constantly rate Korea's performance in any number of arenas to other world powers? From the strength of the notion of blood? From a sense of social responsibility?
Context 2: The educational system here is under a lot of fire for various reasons which I won't go into. Many parents feel they have no option but to send their kids abroad, often alone or with only one parent. There has been a lot of discussion recently on the various pressures these families and kids have to face at a young age. Cho came to the U.S. in elementary school, with both his parents. Any speculation about the pressures on him as a foreigner, on difficulties adapting to life in the U.S., and about the potential reasons for his mental breakdown and feelings of alienation are going to flow towards the grooves already cut by the larger social worry about educational pressures and the education diaspora.
Context 3: I think the fear of reprisals against Koreans and Korean-Americans in the U.S. has to be read against the incidents of U.S. military personnel violence against Koreans in Korea. Every time a U.S. soldier is involved in an act of violence (rape, murder) there are protests and reprisals here (not widespread, from my experience, but I don't live near the army base). When an English teacher is caught using drugs or sexually assaulting a student, it is big news here, followed by calls for more regulation of foreign teachers. I think there's a kind of logic that is created by the way these cases have been treated here that would shape the expectation of what will happen to Koreans in the U.S. Thus Koreans may imagine, consciously or subconsciously, that Americans will similarly judge/ demand/protest against Koreans as Koreans do against Americans, if not in action then in belief and idea.
When it comes down to it, we have to accept that something about Cho was an aberration, an anomaly; we have to talk about his mental health. Mental health itself is, I think, inseparable from environment and personal history, but the fact is that very few people ever do something this horrendous. But an act like this, like the boogeyman in the closet, has a way of heightening and illuminating our fears and discomforts. And, to go back to the question ms asked: What kind of story will we make him a part of? And how does the label "Korean" play into that story?
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Original Source: <a href="http://www.printculture.com/index.php?itemid=1365">http://www.printculture.com/index.php?itemid=1365</a>
Licensed under <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0</a>.
J Lee
2007-05-26
Brent Jesiek
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0
eng
Gut Reactions
<a href="http://www.printculture.com/index.php?memberid=4">by S L Kim</a> | April 17, 2007
<b>1. Race Shame</b>
As soon as I saw the shooter's name--Cho Seung-Hui--in the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/17/us/17virginia.html?hp">NYT</a> this morning, I knew he was Korean. Crap. Ever since I got home last night after teaching, and my husband told me about the deadly shooting spree at Virginia Tech, I'd been wondering, like everyone else, about the gunman. Knowing he was a "young Asian man" made me maybe slightly more curious than I normally might have been, and finding out his name made my heart sink a little more. He's being described in the NYT as a "South Korean who was a resident alien in the United States," a 23-year-old senior English major.
At first I imagined one of those Korean students who are sent to the US by themselves, as high school or college students, by families eager for them to get an American education at whatever cost. These students, with varying levels of English-speaking skills, are sent all over, to far-flung corners of the US. But it turns out that this "resident alien" came to the states with his family in 1992, when he was 7 or 8 years old. Wouldn't that make him, culturally speaking, an American? It's not so much that I'm afraid of outbreaks of violence against Koreans or Asians in general, but I worry about the generalizations and pop psychology pablum that will reinforce ugly stereotypes and perpetuate tacit forms of racism in the name of "understanding what happened." You know, looking for things in his culture or his upbringing that might have contributed, all the while the implicit message is: watch out for the quiet Asian guys, because they might just go crazy.
<b>2. Media Rhetoric</b>
Already, the shooter is described as a "loner," already the profiles emerge about these killers on a rampage. The photos of him are now circulating, and he's described as expressionless. Apparently, <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-070417vtech-shootings,1,176236.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed">he left a note</a> with a list of grievances and he wrote disturbing stories in his creative writing class. It seems too easy to map the symptoms of pathology onto the stereotypical features of racial and ethnic identity. For a while last night, no one wanted to say whether the shooter was a student at VT, but it seemed pretty apparent to me that whoever did it was affiliated with the school in some significant way. But there's a strong impulse to distance ourselves from the killer among us, to imagine that it might have been random, unpredictable, even as we try to fit him into a knowable pattern. A student interviewed said he can't believe he used to say hi to such a "monster." Meanwhile, as we slowly learn more about the victims, the media can't help but paint the stark contrast between the happy, accomplished, and well-integrated students on one side and the angry loner who hated them on the other.
I don't think I can stand to watch the TV coverage of this event.
<b>3. Stupid Politics</b>
According to <a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2164337/?nav=fix">Slate</a> and other sources, the blogs on the left and right are abuzz about what could have been different in the gun laws to have prevented or at least curtailed the violence. There are people who actually believe that the answer to preventing this kind of gun violence is for more people to be able to carry concealed weapons. Fight force with equal force, they say. If law-abiding citizens were able to arm themselves, the idea goes, they'd be able to step in and play the hero. I just don't buy it. I wouldn't want to be on a campus where I know some of those around me are packing heat.
<b>4. Campus Life</b>
I worry about what this event will do to the climate and conditions of university life. I worry that this will be used as an excuse by the state, the right, the short-sighted, self-interested politicians to meddle in university life in the name of "security." We know how well that's going on the national level.
<b>5. Across the Ocean</b>
I wonder how this event is being portrayed and talked about in the Korean media. Any thoughts, J Lee?
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Original Source: <a href="http://www.printculture.com/index.php?itemid=1363">http://www.printculture.com/index.php?itemid=1363</a>
Licensed under <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0</a>.
S L Kim
2007-05-26
Brent Jesiek
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0
eng
Media Coverage of the Virginia Tech Massacre
Charles Warner / <a href="http://www.mediacurmudgeon.com/">Media Curmudgeon Blog</a>
Television has once again gone on a rampage of gluttony over the tragic murders at Virginia Tech. However, it depends on your definition of what constitutes gluttony and what kind of TV you're talking about.
First, all television is not cut from the same cloth. CNN, MSNBC, and Fox are all-news cable channels, so they have a 24-hour news hole to fill. Because TV is inelastic, the three national news channels can neither expand or contract time nor add or subtract hours to the clock. Thus they fill those 24-hours with what each thinks the majority of their viewers will find compelling. And, of course, they all choose the same stories in what has become a cycle of competitive reinforcement, confirmation, and excess.
If CNN airs a story, then Fox and MSNBC producers say, "That confirms that the story is important�CNN (Fox, MSNBC) is running it." They also say, "We've got to run the story more often and devote more resources to it or viewers will go elsewhere." Thus, the news cycle spins out of control. Furthermore, the three cable news networks have structured their programming in hour-long blocks, often with personality-hosts who do talk segments (Larry King, Lou Dobbs, Bill O'Reilly), and the assumption, generally, is that viewers watch for about an hour, so they have to repeat the news cycle and the top stories every hour. In all-news radio, the news cycles are usually shorter. For example, New York's WINS has the famous tagline, "Give us 20 minutes and we'll give you the world." TV and radio all-news outlets are like a news faucet. The notion is that you can turn on a news station or channel at any time and the latest, most important news spews out.
Therefore, if you watch a TV news channel for longer than an hour, which happens with breaking news like the Virginia Tech story, you see the top story repeated, giving the impression of saturation and excess. And if you get sick of the coverage on one cable news network and turn to another, you see the same top story repeated, which increases the perception of excess coverage.
Furthermore, TV has much greater impact than any other medium because it engages viewers' emotions through its blend of sight, sound, motion, and emotion. Thus videos of airplanes crashing into buildings or a killer's deadly ramblings leave much more dramatic and lasting impressions. And it is these impressions that magnify the perception of excess.
TV and radio are real-time linear; you can't rewind or fast forward. They are linear-accessed push media for which the audience can't control what is pushed out; their only option is turn off or switch outlets. Conversely, print media and the Internet are non-linear pull media in which the audience can select what they want, go back and forth, and have random access to content they are interested in. Therefore, when people have no control over what is pushed to them, they are more frustrated than when they can control their content, can pull what they want as often as they want.
With these parameters in mind, we can now ask several questions: 1) Should NBC have released the video, pictures, and ramblings of Cho Seung-Hui? 2) Overall, was the media coverage of the Virginia Tech massacre excessive and insensitive? 3) Is the media leading the charge to assign blame? 4) What is Cho's proper name?
1. Should NBC have released the video, pictures, and ramblings of Cho Seung-Hui? NBC News President Steve Capus made the right decision to release the images and ramblings, not only to show them on NBC but also to release them to other news organizations. First, it was in the public interest to have information about the psychopathic killer distributed for a number of reasons, not the least of which was to bring closure to the horror and reassure people that there was no larger plot. Also, as Jack Shafer of <a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2164717/nav/tap1/">Slate</a>, writes: "NBC News needn't apologize to anybody for originally airing the Cho videos and pictures. The Virginia Tech slaughter is an ugly story, but the five W's of journalism�who, what, where, when, and why�demand that journalists ask the question 'why?' even if they can't adequately answer it. If you're interested in knowing why Cho did what he did, you want to see the videos and photos and read from the transcripts. If you're not interested, you should feel free to avert your eyes."
NBC could not have kept the pictures for itself and away from other news organizations. But did it run the images too often? Yes, and it admitted as much by restricting their use after complaints from victims' families, and Virginia Tech and Virginia officials. And while we don't know if the complaints had anything to do with the decision, I think they probably did. However, the manner in which NBC promoted the video tapes on Brian William's "Nightly News" was a little too self-congratulatory, and MSNBC was clearly over the top in its greedy self-promotion. Chris Matthews, in particular, should be pistol-whipped for his callous, gloating promotion of the Cho videos. But what's so surprising about that? NBC's grade is B minus for sharing the material and eventually restricting the use of the images to no more than 10 percent of any news program. MSNBC's grade is F. CNN's grade is D, mostly for contributing to the feeding-frenzy coverage. Fox News' grade is F, for using the videos, as MSNBC did, as video wallpaper. NPR's grade is A. Without pictures, radio doesn't have the impact of TV, so NPR could be more thoughtful and do more meaningful, sensitive sidebars, which it did.
2. Overall, how was the media coverage of the Virginia Tech massacre; was it excessive and insensitive? Yes and yes. The amount of coverage was excessive because of the nature of cable and radio all-news outlets, particularly in the use of the killer's video on TV. Worse, in my view, was the invasion and occupation of the Virginia Tech campus by hordes of insensitive reporters who bombarded the privacy of the university, the campus, students, victims, and their families in a frenzy to get scoops. NPR recounted the story of a female student who lived in the dorm where the first killings took place. Her dorm was locked down, but, somehow, a female magazine reporter gained access, entered her room and asked her for an interview. The weeping student asked the reporter to leave and quit badgering her, and the reporter responded by handing the distraught student her business card and asked, "Call me." The student apparently replied, "What makes you think I'd call you after what you just did?"
CNN sent four anchors to the campus and broadcast from there on Thursday. Was that necessary? Absolutely not. It was excessive, intrusive, and insensitive. Freedom of speech, yes. Invasion of privacy, yes. Come on, CNN, can't you see the ironic insensitivity in overkill on an overkill?
If the major media news organizations don't find a way to control this expensive, invasive, counter-productive feeding frenzy on major stories, they leave themselves vulnerable to the Federal government stepping in and regulating news coverage, which would be terrible. However, people are sick of this insensitive type of coverage, which gives them yet another reason for hating the media. So, slapping regulatory controls on the media by the government would more than likely be a popular move. The VT shootings might result in pool coverage of major stories, or guidelines or standards under the auspices of the Radio Television News Directors Association (RTNDA), but, whatever, the big news organizations had better do something.
3. Is the media leading the charge to assign blame? Yes. According to <a href="http://mediamatters.org/items/200704190009">Media Matters for America</a>, on the April 19 edition of "MSNBC Live" Boston radio host Michael Graham told MSNBC's David Gregory that the whole story of the mass shooting "is a story of people just freezing, of just letting him have their way [sic], except that one brave professor put himself in between the gunman and his students." So Graham blames the victims and MSNBC let him get away with it. <a href="http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1612492,00.html">TIME magazine</a> ran a commentary by John Cloud titled "Viewpoint: Va. Tech's President Should Resign," which blames Virginia Tech president, Dr. Charles W. Steger, for the massacre, which is ridiculous. Others in the media have blamed "passive students," Virginia's mental health providers, the campus police, the state's gun control laws, Cho's family, and South Koreans. All are hysterical over-reactions, except perhaps the reaction to gun-control laws.
Perhaps the media gets in a frenzy trying to find scapegoats to blame because it is trying deflect blame from itself to avoid the usual kill-the-messenger attitude of the public.
4. What's Cho's proper name? The New York Times, NBC, and MSNBC, among others, used the name Cho Seung-Hui, according to the Korean tradition of putting a family name first (thus, I would be Curmudgeon Media). CNN, NPR, and ABC, among others, used the American version of the name, Seung-Hui Cho, which I believe is proper because Cho's parents came to America when he was very young and he is a product of American culture, having gone to grade school, high school, and college in this country (his sister graduated from Princeton). Therefore, he should not have been referred to as "South Korean," which caused a rash of hate directed unfairly at Americans of South Korean decent and at South Koreans. Furthermore, the media confused the American public by using two different versions of his name. So, even though The New York Times used the Korean version, all the other media should have gone along, standardized the usage, and explained the American usage, as NPR did, in order to avoid confusion.
And what is the overall grade for the media? A failing grade of D. When will the media get its act together? It probably won't as long as it tries to appeal to people's baser instincts in its competition for ratings and in its attempt to find the lowest level of taste and decency. I think NBC, ABC, and, at times, CBS are trying, but they are not succeeding, just barely getting a passing grade. The cable channels aren't even trying to be decent; they're just trying to beat each other.
Posted by Charles Warner at April 21, 2007 10:36 AM
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Original Source: <a href="http://www.mediacurmudgeon.com/archives/2007/04/media_coverage.html">http://www.mediacurmudgeon.com/archives/2007/04/media_coverage.html</a>
Licensed under <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/1.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 1.0</a>.
Charles Warner
2007-05-26
Brent Jesiek
Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 1.0
eng
University Homicide: Trauma Revisited
Submitted by <a href="http://www.culturekitchen.com/user/shreya_mandal">Shreya Mandal</a> on 17 April 2007 - 2:34pm.
Yesterday, as I sat in the lobby of the Elizabeth Detention Center waiting to testify at a hearing, I learned about the violent incident that took place in Virginia. A small flat-screen television hangs on a wall in the detention center's lobby. I sat there for almost six hours, each hour getting more and more agitated at the cell phone and video coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings. Normally in these situations, I get up and turn the television off. But I was in a situation where I could not get away from the images bombarded at me. CNN shot the ongoing campus scenes throughout the whole day, reiterating over and over again that this was the biggest shooting ever to take place in American history. At first while I listened to the news reporters, I masked my fears, needing to act like I was in control, that everything was okay, and that I was strong enough to stomach the events they televised.
I distracted myself from the flat-screen television and tried to focus on preparing for my testimony. But as the hours went by, officers at the detention center passed by me, shouting out the latest death toll. First 21, then 22, then 29, then 31, then 32, and finally 33. It was impossible to tune out. I felt my mind and my heart drift back to when I was 16 years-old, when I was also on campus during a college shooting rampage. That was almost 15 years ago.
At various times yesterday, CNN provided history and statistical information of previous school shootings like Columbine and The University of Texas massacres. I waited for them to list my alma mater. But one school they didn't list was a small early undergraduate program called Simon's Rock College, tucked away in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. This is where a college campus shooting occurred on December 14, 1992, the first shooting to occur in the United States in the 1990s.
Each moment I looked up at the television screen, heard the ringing of gunshots, or saw limp bodies being taken away by police officers, I went further and further back to that cold evening in 1992. A tightness settled into my chest and fear steadily grew in the pit of my stomach.
It was the end of my very first semester of college and winter break was on the horizon. While most others were studying for final exams, I was involved in my usual course of procrastination and found ways not to study. It turned out that procrastinating saved my life that night. Rather than studying for exams, I attended a dance performance that took place on the other side of campus, away from my college dormitory on the main Simon's Rock campus. A friend and I went to the performance together for a little while before we began studying for the next exam. Little did we know about the murder and mayhem that occurred a few yards away from the building.
A couple of hours passed and the friend decided to head back to the dorm so she could go back to studying. Enamored by the performance, I decided that pre-calculus could wait a little more and stayed behind. We said our goodbyes and told each other that we would see each other later. I went back to enjoying the performance. Ten minutes later, the friend returned very agitated and said, "There's something going on out there, I heard gunshots." Within minutes, the performance stopped.
Fifteen years later, the exact sequence of that night's events seem blurry to me. But I remember someone announced that a shooter was going around campus shooting at people, and that the best way to ensure our safety was to stay calm and stay in the building. We did not know who it was. We did not know that it was a student. And most of all, we did not know if we were safe for sure. I remember staying in the building for a few hours with other classmates, wondering if someone was going to come in and shoot at us. Would I ever see my family again? Waiting quietly for answers and relief was a challenge. Listening to everyone's speculation and witnessing panic around me was even more difficult. We had no way of knowing what would happen next.
That night, four people were wounded. Two people were shot dead. One of them was my professor, Nacunan Saez, and the other was a beloved student, Galen Gibson. They were both very bright, creative, and vibrant people that were loved by the entire Simon's Rock College community. But we were all victims that day�all 350 students, faculty members, staff, and college administrators. And because Simon's Rock is such a small tight-knit liberal arts school, the pain of what happened hit us hard. We all went through a terrible and traumatic event that I will never forget. I know that the entire Simon's Rock community is holding a vigil to honor the tragedies that occurred at Virginia Tech and on their own campus so many years ago.
Ironically similar to yesterday's incident, the shooter at Simons' Rock was also a young Asian student. He was born in Taiwan. His name is Wayne Lo. During trial, Lo's psychiatrist testified that he had Schizophrenia, while the prosecution argued that he had Narcissistic Personality Disorder. The prosecution "won" at trial and Wayne was found guilty of all 17 counts he was charged with. He was sentenced to two consecutive terms to Life without the possibility of parole. I did not know Wayne directly, but had friends who knew him. Even though I had been traumatized by the events back then, I felt that I was not in the position to judge what really happened to him or understand why he committed such a heinous crime. I was only 16. At the time, I also did not feel I was entitled to expressing the deep fear I felt since I had not been shot during the rampage at Simon's Rock. I rarely spoke about the incident that took place, until now.
It seems not much has changed between then and now, except that more and more senseless acts of violence are occurring in our schools across America. The scared young faces of dismayed students, the attempts to make sense of the situation, the desperate need for answers, make the rampant violence and victimization even more palpable. Here we go again. And as time goes on, the violence is getting more and more intense, each ordeal is of greater magnitude.
Another bit of irony rests in my career choice as a mitigation specialist. Often times my job is to assess mitigating factors that explain away crimes like murder. But yesterday's crisis demonstrates that we also need to look and understand the complete cycle of violence, the significant trauma that victims experience, and the insurmountable pain and torment that victims' families feel. To me the nature of violence is never a black and white issue. In my experience, the answers we look for are usually in the gray area. But today my heart is with the victims I knew fifteen years ago, and the 33 killed yesterday at Virginia Tech.
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Original Source: <a href="http://www.culturekitchen.com/shreya_mandal/story/university_homicide_trauma_revisited_0">http://www.culturekitchen.com/shreya_mandal/story/university_homicide_trauma_revisited_0</a>
Licensed under <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0</a>.
Shreya Mandal
2007-05-26
Brent Jesiek
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0
eng
What could have been done to prevent to massacre at Virginia Tech?
By Arlen Parsa
Filed: Thursday April 19th 2007, 9:05 AM
In the wake of the tragedy at Virginia Tech on Monday, April 16, many asked how such a thing could have happened. It was the deadliest shooting spree in American history, and already there seems to have been several moments where the incident could have been avoided. The killer, Cho Seung-Hui, himself said in a manifesto mailed to NBC News "You had a hundred billion chances and ways to have avoided today."
While there probably weren't "a hundred billion chances and ways" to have avoided the massacre that claimed the lives of 33 people including Cho, but there were several common sense things that could have been done.
It's important to recognize that this horrific incident didn't happen just anywhere: the shootings happened in Virginia; a state known for having some of the most relaxed firearm regulations in the entire country. In fact, critics and safety advocates had complained for years that VA firearm regulations were wholly inadequate and substandard when compared with the rest of the country.
Here are a few ideas that the Virginia state legislature ought to consider implementing. I'm not holding my breath since it's made up of staunch NRA types and has been controlled by Republicans for years. But tragedies like these force everyone to reconsider their ideologies.
First, how about a law that says if you've been classified as mentally unstable and an imminent threat to yourself or others by doctors and a court- then you're not allowed to walk into a store and walk out with a gun and enough ammo to kill dozens of students?
This might sound like a no-brainer, but there is currently no mechanism in place in Virginia to stop mentally unstable people from buying as many deadly weapons and ammunition as they like. In this case, the shooter Cho Seung-Hui was diagnosed with mental disorders, had been taken antidepressants and been checked into a mental hospital in 2005.
But that didn't stop him from buying deadly weapons. He had also been referred to Virginia Tech's counseling service after he wrote disturbing violent plays about killing people. Through a loophole in the law, Cho wasn't added to a list of mentally-unstable people not allowed to purchase firearms even after the mental hospital episode because although all the doctors who examined him agreed that he was mentally unstable, he didn't formally get committed and left a short time afterwards.
Next, how about a law that says that if you've been accused of stalking people, you don't get to walk into a store, point to a small, easily hidden powerful handgun behind the counter and get it along with 50 bullets to use for "self-defense" in a matter of minutes.
Also, what about a law that requires background checks to be done for every firearm purchase in Virginia? Oh, you thought that sort of thing was already required? Nope. Turns out there's two other loopholes in the Virginia state law: one allows people who buy firearms at gun-shows to forgo the background check process entirely.
The other loophole allowed Cho to forego a Virginia state background check on one of the weapons he purchased because he bought it from an out of state gun dealer over the internet and picked it up at a local pawn shop for a 30 buck fee. The out of state internet gun dealer was supposed to handle the background check, although it's hard to tell whether they did it or not.
Here's another idea. How about a law that says if a gun dealer sells five weapons to murders who use those guns to kill people, then they're not allowed to sell any more guns? Call it the "five-strikes-and-you're-out rule." A gun dealer that Cho bought a glock and 50 bullets from had been responsible for selling similar weapons to at least five other murderers in the past. Did Cho hear about the dealer's reputation for being easy to get guns at?
Another thing that's gotten criticism recently is Virginia Tech's reaction to the shootings, including their lack of prompt action to warn students. I won't join the group of rabid idiots blaming Administrators for deaths because I feel sorry for everybody involved at Virginia Tech. At the same time, I think in the future there could have been more done to warn students, especially since the whole incident happened over a span of several hours.
Call this the "better safe than sorry" law. Require all educational institutions (from elementary up to college) to revamp their procedures on what to do if there's a school shooting or something like that. The government can pay for consultants to help poorer schools figure out a better plan, cost doesn't matter. But the plans have to include detailed procedures about how to warn students that an incident could be ongoing. At Virginia Tech, students and staff were sent a series of short, sometimes confusing emails updating them on the situation. That's okay, but what about people in classrooms who weren't their computers while the massacre was ongoing?
If the school had used their indoor and outdoor PA system throughout the morning to provide updates, it is almost certain that more students and teachers would have been warned. True, they did turn it on after a couple of hours as the incident was ending, but it should have been used immediately and continuously.
If educational institutions do not use every tool they have to warn students that a violent incident is occurring, a law should be put in place that would punish them. And although a punishment shouldn't really be needed, if heavy enough it would act as a motivation for schools to develop new warning abilities and actually use the ones that they already have. Better safe than sorry.
Some people have suggested that SMS messages over cell phones could be used to warn students. That's an interesting high-tech possibility, but there are a few problems with it. For one, school safety experts say that ring-tones and all other types of audio phone sounds should be stifled when schools are in lock-down- for obvious reasons. If a student is hiding in a janitor's closet (purely hypothetical) and there's a gunman on the loose, the last thing that's needed is for them to get a text message and their phone to start playing some obnoxious ring-tone betraying their location.
And I'm no expert. To me, this isn't a question of banning guns, and I think the conservatives who say the debate is between having guns and not having guns are rather disingenuous. This is a matter of common-sense pro-active safety regulations that make the country safer. And these types of changes (and all the ones we haven't thought of yet) can't just be implemented in Virginia- they have to be put in place nationwide. There's no excuse to have some places in the country safer because the laws in those places were designed better. We should have learned that in Columbine in '99, and I'll be damned if we don't learn it now. Once and for all.
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Original Source: <a href="http://www.thedailybackground.com/2007/04/19/what-could-have-been-done-to-prevent-to-massacre-at-virginia-tech">http://www.thedailybackground.com/2007/04/19/what-could-have-been-done-to-prevent-to-massacre-at-virginia-tech</a>
Licensed under <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/1.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 1.0</a>
Arlen Parsa
2007-05-26
Brent Jesiek
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 1.0
eng
How to Stop a Killer
April 18th, 2007 by Ben
The tragic massacre this week at Virginia Tech will be one of those events that you will remember how you first heard the news, where you were when you heard it, and what you were doing at the time. Like September 11, 2001, it will stick to the national memory for the rest of our lives. The shooting was the most violent act perpetrated on American soil since September 11.
Coming almost eight years to the day after the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbine_High_School_massacre">Columbine shootings</a>, the VT murders are the latest and most violent example of the psychotic, suicidal student rampage. Like Columbine, the VT shooter, now identified as senior English major Cho Seung-hui, <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=3048467&page=1">was calculated and cunning.</a> He chained potential exits shut to prevent possible escape routes. He was carrying multiple clips of ammo. He lined up students and shot them execution-style.
On the Monday night newscasts, the networks went all-out, providing coverage with limited commercial interruption, and many reported directly from the campus. If you listened carefully you probably heard the most repeated phrase of the night: "This is the worst incident of gun violence in American history."
This is true. But the story really has very little to do with guns. Did the anchors get hung up on "the worst incident of airplane hijacking" angle when covering September 11? The story has everything to do with a psychotic <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/04/17/vtech.shooting/index.html">"loner"</a> who decided it would be better to take as many innocent people with him when he ended his own worthless life.
Acts of mass murder always follow a predictable pattern. First, there is the period of shock. Depending on the magnitude of the incident, this phase can last for days, even weeks. Then there is the healing process: the dead are mourned and remembered, moments of silence are observed around the country. Finally, there is the "let's-not-let this-happen-again" phase.
With September 11, this phase was complex and expensive. More airport security. "No-fly" lists. Federal air marshals. All of these steps have doubtless made our skies safer and have helped prevent a repeat attack.
With shooting sprees, like Columbine and Virginia Tech, the final phase <a href="http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0402f.asp">revives the gun-control advocates</a> from their slumber. "See," they say, "look what guns do. They kill people. Guns are bad." Do guns kill people? Or, maybe, is it actually <em>people</em> that kill people?
We could prevent another September 11 by banning all airplanes. That would solve the problem, right? We would all just have to drive cars or ride riverboats everywhere. Maybe bring back the horse and buggy. No biggie.
Already the gun control lobby is licking their lips. Senator Diane Feinstein (D-Cal.) <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/17/AR2007041700826.html">said in a statement</a> that she believed the killings at Virginia Tech would “re-ignite the dormant effort to pass commonsense gun regulations in this nation.” Of course they will. It's the preventative instinct.
We could try to prevent another Virginia Tech by banning all handguns, but it's a lot easier to keep an airplane out of the air than it is to keep a gun out of someone's hand. Let's start with those evil airplanes first.
Just as we learned on September 11, the issue is the attacker (in that case, radical Muslims, who we now know want to kill us all), not the weapon. If Cho Seung-hui didn't have access to a handgun, would that have stopped his homicidal plans? Doubtful. He would have just found another way to kill people�a homemade bomb, perhaps.
Tragic as they are, school shootings will never disappear. We can't wage war on psychotic students like we can on radical Islam. The best way to stop future campus rampages is to allow students to carry handguns. If just one student or professor had had a gun in one of those classrooms, there might be a lot more Virginia Tech students alive today.
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Original Source: <a href="http://joneckert.eckertservices.com/wordpress/?p=61">http://joneckert.eckertservices.com/wordpress/?p=61</a>
Licensed under <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.5/">Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.5</a>
Ben Blanton
2007-05-26
Brent Jesiek
Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.5
eng
Beyond Words
Dave Vogt / <a href="http://davedot.com/">davedot.com</a>
I am honestly at a loss for what to say about the events that unfolded on the Virginia Tech campus this morning. I was walking across the Drillfield towards GBJ when firing broke out in Norris hall. I had heard nothing about the previous shootings in West AJ. While I recognize that the decision to go on with classes was an informed one, I still feel that it was the University's responsibility to inform the students of potential danger.
I consider myself extremely fortunate that neither I nor anyone I know was involved. I spent the morning trying to touch base with as many people as possible until the phone network here became absolutely saturated. I hope that I was at least able to set up a cascade so that people wouldn't have to be worried about my safety. That being said, it's extremely difficult to place my reaction. Obviously I am not as heavily affected as those whose loved ones have been injured or killed. At the same time though, this is very jarring for everyone involved. I don't think I'll really know how I feel for a while yet. They don't tell you how to react to this sort of thing.
<b>UPDATE 17 Apr 2007 11:21p:</b> I have been mostly disgusted by the media coverage of this event. I think that larger and more distant news outlets get things the most wrong, and locals do the best job. CNN's article is as sensationalizing as the rest, but if you scroll down towards the bottom, Gov. Tim Kaine's remarks perfectly echo my sentiment. "People who want to take this within 24 hours of the event and make it their political hobby horse to ride, I've got nothing but loathing for them." I don't deny that there are questions that need to be asked, but there are more important things to deal with right now.
On the other side of the coin, I am deeply touched by the outpouring of support from universities and individual students across the country and abroad. There has been a huge "We are all Hokies" movement, with students wearing maroon and orange to show support. That is probably the best response that I've heard about. I'm glad that the younger generation have a grip on what's important. We're going to need it going forward.
This entry was posted on 16.Apr.2007 7:41pm
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Original Source: <a href="http://log.davedot.com/backlog/2007/04/beyond-words/">http://log.davedot.com/backlog/2007/04/beyond-words/</a>
Licensed under <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5</a>.
Dave Vogt
2007-05-26
Brent Jesiek
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5
eng