A Tribute to Professor G. V. Loganathan (Editorial)
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<b>EDITORIAL
A Tribute to Professor G. V. Loganathan</b>
Arun K. Deb, Ph.D., P.E., F.ASCE
Vice President (Ret.), Weston Solutions, Inc. E-mail: arundeb@msn.com
April 16, 2007 started like any other day on the Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg, Virginia. Dr. G. V. Loganathan, a professor in the Civil and Environmental Engineering department at Virginia Tech left his home near the campus to teach a graduate class on Advanced Hydrology in room number 206 of Norris Hall. He never returned home. Loganathan, along with nine of his students, was killed by a gunman. It was the worst massacre on a university campus in the history of the United States. Very soon, the news started to flash on TV screens. I became concerned as I know quite a few faculty members at Virginia Tech, but never expected one of my dearest friends to be among the victims. I was stunned when I saw Prof. Loganathan's name on TV as one of the victims. I barely got over the shock when I received a call from one of my friends confirming the news. I opened my e-mail to see several messages in this regard. That is one dreadful day I will never forget in my life.
Dr. G. V. Loganathan was born in 1954, in the state of Tamil Nadu, India. He completed his Bachelor of Engineering at Madras University, India in 1976. He earned his Master of Technology at Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur and received his PhD from Purdue University. In 1981, Dr. Loganathan joined Virginia Tech to conduct research and teach in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department. He focused his research in the areas of hydrology and hydraulic networks. It was about 20 years ago while attending an ASCE Conference of the Water Resources Planning and Management Division, that I first met Loganathan in the Water Resources Systems Committee meeting. After the meeting, he came up to me and expressed his interest in water distribution system analysis. At the time, he was a young faculty member at Virginia Tech, full of energy and enthusiasm. He discussed with me his current projects on water distribution system research and his plans for the future. I impressed upon him the need to do some practical research for water utility personnel to help solve real water distribution system problems. He expressed his sincere interest to work with me on some future projects. We soon became friends and communicated frequently. He always informed me when he had new ideas or started to work on a challenging project. Quite often, we shared brainstorming sessions. Soon, I became involved in conducting water distribution system research under the American Water Works Association Research Foundation AwwaRF grants.
In 1997, I had an opportunity to get Loganathan involved in one of my proposals on "<i>Prioritizing Water Main Replacement and Rehabilitation</i>" for AwwaRF. The success of that proposal was the beginning of a long working relationship with GV as he preferred to be called . He quickly became a part of our team. It was a complex project that involved Newland Agbenowski, a PhD student from Ghana working under the guidance of Loganathan. I, along with our project team, spent many weekend hours with him brainstorming and formulating the concept of development of a computer model. With the help of Loganathan and Newland, we developed guidance and methodologies for the collection of on-site real-time water main break field data and a modeling system incorporating these data to predict and prioritize candidate mains for rehabilitation/replacement. This model helps water utility managers assess the condition of water mains and develop strategies for long-term rehabilitation plans for their distribution systems.
In 1999, while working on the previous AwwaRF project, Loganathan and I prepared another successful proposal on "<i>Decision Support System for Distribution System Pipe Renewal</i>." In this project Loganathan, with help from one of his graduate students, developed decision support system software to evaluate and identify suitable water main renewal technologies available to water utilities for renewal of a specific water main. Technologies considered include both open-cut and trenchless. A cost module was also developed for comparative cost analysis. By this time, I had developed an excellent personal and working relationship with Loganathan. Also, I was fortunate to have his and Virginia Tech's help in developing a prioritized water main replacement program for the Saint Louis County Water Company now Missouri American Water Company . The Saint Louis County Water Company was experiencing a large number of cast-iron water main breaks. In this project Loganathan and his graduate student formulated a computer program to analyze a large amount of water main break data on a pipe-by-pipe basis. An economic model was developed that predicted water main breaks, estimated costs of main break repair, and compared that with the cost of a replacement pipe to identify the optimum time to replace a pipe. Using this software, we developed an optimum water main replacement program for the Saint Louis County Water Company.
In 2002, Loganathan and I had the opportunity to successfully submit another proposal on "<i>Criteria for Valve Location and System Reliability</i>" for the AwwaRF Loganathan and his PhD student Hwandon Jun, developed a software for the analysis of water distribution networks and a strategic valve management model to assist water utilities in developing a rationale for the proper location of valves and optimum valve and system reliability. This tool is suitable for water utilities to minimize impacts due to valve and pipe failures. A report on this project was published by AwwaRF in 2006. Loganathan prepared a paper entitled "Valve Distribution and Impact Analysis in Water Distribution Systems" which is included in this issue of the Journal. I am glad and proud to be associated with Loganathan's paper as a coauthor.
Loganathan's work was recognized by ASCE with the Wesley W. Horner Award in 1996 for his paper, "<i>Sizing Stormwater Detention Basins for Pollutant Removal</i>." He was an excellent teacher and earned the outstanding teaching award four times. He also received the Faculty Achievement Award for Excellence in Civil Engineering Education. He was a very active member of ASCE and served as Associate Editor of the <i>Journal of Hydrologic Engineering</i> specializing in the area of stochastic hydrology. He also served in the Water Resources Systems Committee, Trenchless Installation of Pipeline Committee, and acted as Vice Chair of the Operations Management Committee of ASCE. He supervised more than 45 graduate students during his tenure at Virginia Tech. Students adored him. One student wrote in his memorial, "I regret not telling you that you are the best teacher I ever had." Another student wrote in his memorial posting, "Dr. Loganathan was an excellent teacher and mentor. I will always remember him for his kind heart and patience he displayed towards me and his other students." Jerry Snyder, a colleague of mine and a member of ASCE posted, "He was a dedicated professor and researcher and the most gentleman that I have ever known. I can only hope to live my life with purpose and humanity in the same manner as GV. It was a privilege to know him." Loganathan is survived by his wife, Usha and two daughters, Uma and Abhirami.
The President of the ruling Congress Party of India, Mrs. Sonia Gandhi sent her heartfelt condolences to his wife Usha.
During my long association with Loganathan, I found him a very polite, respectful, and humble man. In technical discussion, he respected opinions of all project team members, including his students. He always met deadlines, even if that meant working evenings and weekends. He was a complete gentleman. The last e-mail message I received from him was on April 9, 2007, exactly a week before his death. I will never forget him as long as I live. I express my sincere condolences to his family. Virginia Tech University has established an annual graduate fellowship in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department in memory of Loganathan. The best way to help continue his legacy is to contribute to this G. V. Loganathan Fellowship Fund by sending checks in favor of Virginia Tech Foundation with a memo to: G.V. Loganathan Fellowship at 902 Prices Fork Road, Suite 4000, Blacksburg, VA 24061.
I would like to thank Dr. Ray Ferrara for giving me the opportunity to write this editorial.
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Archived with permission of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE).
Original Source: <i>Journal of Environmental Engineering</i> © ASCE / August 2007
Brent Jesiek
2007-08-13
Brent Jesiek
Xi Van Fleet
Senior Manager, Information Services
Publication Division
American Society of Civil Engineers
1801 Alexander Bell Drive
Reston, VA 20191
(703) 295-6278-FAX
PERMISSIONS@asce.org
eng
Collegiate Solidarity
<b>Outside the Box with the Managing Editor</b>
By: Jeremy Stern
Posted: 5/7/07
I have been looking forward all year to writing this, my final column. A last hurrah before I graduate. An opportunity to thank all those who have helped me get to where I am today: my professors, parents, wife, God, yadda yadda yadda... But then 27 college students and five of their professors were gunned down in Virginia, and Yeshiva students barely stirred.
It took a day and a half before any sort of response took place on either of our undergraduate campuses; two days before a respectable, public commemoration. On Monday morning the blood of 32 victims smeared the walls of dormitories and classrooms at V-Tech. Not until Tuesday night did fewer than two dozen Yeshiva students find it important enough to take twenty minutes out of Night Seder for a prayer rally.
I know that people are murdered every day. 104 American soldiers died in Iraq during the month of April alone, and who knows how many tens of thousands are suffering today in Darfur. But the Middle East and Northern Africa are distant, with unfamiliar victims with whom we have difficulty relating. That leaves us with no excuse when the deadliest shooting in U.S. history is perpetrated on an American college campus.
How can we explain our silence, when thousands of our peers at NYU, Columbia, Brandeis, and Penn responded within 24 hours with arrangements for candlelight vigils, memorial services, solidarity rallies, and condolence books? If there is one thing that we do well, it's Tehillim (Psalms) rallies. Why was one not organized for the Main Beit Midrash at 12 p.m. on Tuesday?
I was appalled at the lackadaisical response from some student leaders to requests for immediate action. Lest you think urgent coordination was impossible, by 6 p.m. on Monday afternoon - only a few hours after the last bullet was fired - the Yeshiva Security Department sent out a blast email notifying the campus community that, in conjunction with the New York Police Department, precautions were being taken to heighten overall campus security. On the other hand, President Joel's sincere and eloquent email to the president of Virginia Tech took more than two days before arriving in our Inboxes. (For comparison, 29 ystuds were sent out in the interim.)
We are talking about college students and professors. These were not foreign people with aspirations wholly different from our own. At the very least, this tragedy should arouse our concern for our own campus safety. Massacres like this are notorious for copycats who yearn to have their names on the front page of newspapers nationwide, and Yeshiva, as a yeshiva, could be a primary target.
But, I expect more from us than self-centered concern. We must empathize because these victims were part of the greater collegiate community. As sensitive human beings, and as sensitized religious Jews, we must feel their pain because of our shared experience. Just as we expect more from Israel than any other country to serve as a safe-haven for Sudan's refugees who have fled for their lives, we must expect more from ourselves because this tragedy occurred to people who are much like us. If we are not empathetic, then how does that speak of the enhanced morality which our Torah learning is meant to instill within us?
Sure, some of us eventually prayed, and a meaningful moment of silence was held at the Town Hall Meeting, but what was our initial instinct? Were we shocked and gripped by pain? Did we stop what we were doing and, perhaps, cry? What explains our anesthetized state?
The problem is with our identification, or lack thereof. Because some of us do not view ourselves as members of a "real" university or a "real" college, we fail to identify with the broader community of college students. Yeshiva certainly provides a distinctive undergraduate experience compared with that of other universities, but that dissimilarity makes it no less real. Were we only to appreciate our differences as attributes, would we begin to realize that a world exists, of which we are an integral part, outside of the bubble at 185th and Amsterdam or 34th and Lex.
We have a lot to be proud of. When I transferred here from Brandeis five semesters ago, I could not imagine the opportunities which Yeshiva would provide for me. The relationships which I have established with peers and professors, the academic excellence to which I have been exposed, and the enriching environment which has encouraged me to thrive have truly exceeded my expectations.
Every Wednesday of the school year for the past four semesters I have led campus tours for prospective students and their parents. I conclude every tour as follows. Since arriving on campus almost four years ago, President Joel has inspired all aspects of the university to no longer subsist on mediocrity but rather to strive for greatness. I consider myself fortunate to attend Yeshiva now and not four years ago, because I have benefited tremendously from President Joel's initiatives and leadership. However, I am truly jealous of the students who will be here in another four years, because the school will certainly be that much better.
I am confident that President Joel's vision of the big tent will soon materialize, with the student body's recognition that it cannot stand idly by while blood is spilled on other college campuses.
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Original Source: <a href=http://media.www.yucommentator.com/media/storage/paper652/news/2007/05/07/Editorials/Collegiate.Solidarity-2892422.shtml> The Commentator - May 7, 2007</a>
Jeremy Stern
2007-08-08
Sara Hood
Zev Eleff <eleff@yu.edu>
eng
Editorial: The necessary right of self-defense
From the <a href="http://www.californiapatriot.org/magazine/issue/8/8">May 2007 Print Edition</a>
Respectfully observing tragedy is never easy. Tempering a respect for the deceased and their families with a desire to draw upon lessons from the tragedy to prevent future occurrences is touchy. Indeed, allegations have already been levied that some have exploited the Virginia Tech shootings for political gain. Within hours of the attack, gun-control advocates began a full-fledged campaign against gun-rights politicians, as many in the media were quick to call for increased regulation of guns, ostensibly to prevent future tragedies.
We at the <em>Patriot</em> give our condolences to the families of the deceased, and pray for a quick recovery of those affected by the attack. At the same time, we take a firm stand against gun-control advocates who attempt to offensively use the recent tragedy to silence other voices.
The aftermath of Columbine was no different. Second Amendment advocates were branded "insensitive" and politicians seized the opportunity to put gun-control measures on the table. However, Virginia Tech bears little resemblance to Columbine.
Though the first two student deaths in the dormitory were unexpected, the subsequent slayings in Norris Hall could have been prevented with adequate campus security and warnings. The issue at question should be the shoddy campus security and an administration's apparent complacency in the face of red flags; campus officials issued only an e-mail warning to students after the first two victims were found murdered.
Virginia Tech's administration is not unique.
UC Berkeley's own stance on security is laughable, in the face of a locus of crime around People's Park. Vagrancy exists as a catalyst for crime, yet is permitted to continue. Admittedly, muggings and university shootings are on separate planes, but the complacency about student safety is the same. Unfortunately, it takes a tragedy before bureaucratic and disconnected administrations get serious about student safety.
Despite the fact that the Virginia Tech administration could have done more to secure the campus, gun-control advocates nonetheless spuriously seized the opportunity to make the Second Amendment the primary culprit. However, existing gun-control laws outlawed the killer from having guns. Even <em>The New York Times</em> pointed out that existing laws "made the killer ineligible to purchase guns" since law "prohibits anyone who has been 'adjudicated as a mental defective ...' from buying a gun." The killer slipped through existing statues because enforcement of such laws is spotty. Local mental-health records are often not synchronized with national records, which let killer Seung-Hui Cho slip through.
Gun-control advocates shouldn't be championing more legislation, but instead should be focusing their efforts on enforcing existing laws. Even if one philosophically supports additional gun-control laws, they would only serve to stretch existing enforcement budgets thinner, and result in a net decrease in enforcement.
Yet reasons to oppose gun control aren't just pragmatic. Freedom is often confused as the philosophical justification for the Second Amendment. However, the philosophical base for the right to bear arms is much more profound. Such a right empowers individuals to defend themselves, so they don't have to leap out of windows when threatened by mentally defective maniacs. It gives individuals the ability to defend themselves when a government or administration does not take the adequate steps to protect them. During the rampage, students were at the mercy of the killer and the Virginia Tech administration. Were even one mentally stable student, instructor, or janitor armed, the outcome would have likely been much different.
Far from demonstrating a need for extensive gun control, the Virginia Tech tragedy demonstrated the dangers of relying heavily on a bureaucratic entity for protection. It's true that enforcement of existing laws could have helped prevent the tragedy, and a more vigilant administration could have prevented two deaths from turning into 32. The underlying lesson to take from the tragedy, however, is markedly different. At the end of the day, neither a university administration nor government can ever be trusted to safeguard an individual's safety, because such amorphous bodies lack the direct accountability to do so.
The university president and security force may lose their jobs over the tragedy, and that may compel future officers to be vigilant. Yet the students who barricaded themselves into classrooms won't forget that they owe their lives to their own abilities to save themselves, not to a university administration, police force, or government.
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Original Source: California Patriot Online
<a href="http://californiapatriot.org/magazine/issue/8/8/editorial">http://californiapatriot.org/magazine/issue/8/8/editorial</a>
Licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.5/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License</a>.
California Patriot
2007-08-05
Brent Jesiek
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License
eng
A Dark Day in April
Apr 17 2007
Editorial
Yesterday marked one of the darkest days in United States history, as the campus of Virginia Tech collapsed to the tune of gunshots, cries and panic. The morning's horrific aftermath was broadcast on every major news network: students sprinting across campus; SWAT teams taking cover next to their vehicles; an exasperated and exhausted police chief and university president, trying to explain how a bastion for safety and growth — a college campus — could suddenly become the setting for a nightmare of unimaginable proportions.
The event bares a shocking resemblance to the 1999 Columbine massacre and comes eight years to the week of what was once our country's worst school shooting.
Facts came in bursts; the banners of CNN.com changed right before our eyes; and the death toll seemed to double without any explanation. No one was able to affirmatively answer basic questions such as, "Who was involved?"
"What were the motives behind the shootings?" And if there was one killer, "Why was he able to roam free a second time and inflict even more harm?"
The tragedy hits home not only for Cornell students trying to reach their friends at Virginia Tech but also because of its chilling reminder that no university is immune to violence of this magnitude. At Cornell, we picture ourselves as existing in solitude and safety, removed from the harsh realities of aggression and evil that blot the world. Nearly every person that sets foot on the University has grown up in environments where such inhumane acts have never been commonplace.
But what if a lone gunman had opened fire at Kennedy Hall at 9:45 a.m. instead of Virginia Tech's Norris Hall? What if two students were dead by breakfast time at a North Campus dorm instead of at West Ambler Johnston Hall? Can the Cornell administration rationally and smoothly handle this seemingly unfathomable situation?
Evidence pouring in from Virginia Tech points to some degree of miscommunication and flawed procedure. Why were students huddled in dorm rooms and classrooms forced to scour the Internet for information about their own precarious situations? Why didn't the Virginia Tech administration lock the entire campus down until the violence was under control? What led the administration to believe beyond a reasonable doubt that the killer had not only left campus, but also the state?
In the past, Cornell has had to grapple with acts of violence that seemed to spawn out of nowhere. In 1983, a 26-year old New York City man shot and killed two students and tried to take his own life in Low Rise 7. And last year's stabbing of Union student Charles Holiday is still fresh in the minds of many at C.U.
As the case of Virginia Tech has shown, a more appropriate administrative response may have prevented a cataclysmic loss of life. Cornell has proven incapable of preparing for a simple snow day — even with ample warning and preparation. We hope that Virginia Tech can self-examine its reaction to yesterday's crisis and determine if it could have improved its response. Hopefully, other universities will, in return, re-evaluate their own emergency response systems.
Our deepest thoughts, condolences and prayers go out to those affected by yesterday's events.
<b>Comments</b>
There But For The Grace...
This editorial asks the right questions. Most, however, are not aware of how close we came in 1983 to a tragedy nearly of yesterday's proportions. Before killing his two victims, the 1983 murderer held nearly a dozen students captive in that Low Rise 7 suite (I lived on the floor below). It was only because the man's primary target, a quiet, shy freshman girl, persuaded him to let most of the others go. Her bravery saved the lives of all but herself and her room-mate. What if she hadn't found the courage to do so? How would the University have responded? And as you've asked, what would be the response today? Beyond the prayers and the tears, we have an obligation to those who died yesterday to make sure that this kind of horror doesn't happen again.
<i>By Joel Melby ('84 at April 17, 2007 - 9:36am </i>
1983 killings
Thank you, Joel, for remembering the bravery on Yong Hee Suh '87. She and her roommate, Erin Neiswand '87, were the only victims that night. Many more could have died. It has been rough to watch the news today and think back to that Saturday night in 1983.
Fred Barber '87
Historian and Webmaster, Class of 1987
<i>By Fred Barber '87 at April 17, 2007 - 9:07pm </i>
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Original Source: <a href=http://cornellsun.com/node/22937> Cornell Daily Sun - April 17, 2007</a>
Editorial Staff
2007-07-10
Sara Hood
Jonny Lieberman <jdl46@cornell.edu>, <lieberman.jonny@gmail.com>
eng
Duke's response to VaTech tragedy lacking
Editorial
Posted: 4/19/07
When news of the Virginia Tech massacre broke Monday, to say that students across the country were on edge is an understatement. The horror and randomness of the event forced students to take a step back and examine their own campuses and ask, "Are we safe?"
And members of the Duke community began to question what the safety and notification protocol would be if something of this magnitude occurred here. Many wondered what, if any, steps Duke was taking to tighten security Monday. Those with friends and family at Virginia Tech asked what resources were available for them here on campus. But answers to these queries were virtually impossible to discern.
President Richard Brodhead released a statement to The Chronicle late Monday night, which was also published on the Duke News website. In the statement, Brodhead expressed his condolences to the Virginia Tech community and announced an interfaith vigil that would be held Tuesday at the Duke Chapel.
But nowhere in the statement was there mention of Duke's own security status. Moreover, while Brodhead said Student Affairs was trying to contact "every student with Virginia Tech connections," there is no way they could identify every student with a "connection." As such, those students with friends or acquaintances at Virginia Tech who the administration did not know about-as well as those simply overwhelmed by the tragedy-were told only that Religious Life staff and the Chapel were available for support. There was no mention of other, non-religious resources, such as augmented, emergency Counseling and Psychological Services, that could benefit all concerned students regardless of religious orientation.
Most troubling, however, was the fact that Brodhead's statement was not sent to the Duke community. It was published in The Chronicle, but no one could read it until Tuesday morning, nearly 24 hours after the massacre occurred. And while technically online, the statement was buried on the Duke News site, which is not a major source of information for most students.
Many schools posted statements on their main websites. Still others, like The George Washington University, sent mass e-mails to students and their families discussing safety protocol.
The Duke administration erred in its response. On a day when colleges and universities across the country stood still, shocked by how suddenly and violently an academic haven much like their own had been violated, Duke was silent. On a day when students and parents, faculty and staff wanted reassurance of their own safety and an assertion that the University stood in support of its ACC counterpart, Duke was largely absent.
This is not to say there was no campus response. Religious organizations did an excellent job coordinating Tuesday's interfaith vigil and several religious groups sent out e-mails to their members offering support. Such organizations, however, only touch a certain percentage of students; the Duke community as a whole was still left mostly in the dark about the University's security and support responses.
As Duke students, we wanted a prompter, more informative, more widely disseminated statement from the administration. In such situations, when our community is questioning its own well-being and mourning the damage done to another school's sense of security and self, we want to hear Duke's leadership loud and clear.
We urge the administration to consider new and better ways to inform the community if it is threatened. And we appreciate Tuesday's interfaith vigil and its visible community power. But we still missed and were puzzled by the lack of a simple, widely available statement of assurance and support.
While we hope that such a statement will not be needed in the future, if it is needed, we look to the administration to stand as a stronger pillar of information, of comfort, and of guidance.
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Original Source: <a href=http://media.www.dukechronicle.com/media/storage/paper884/news/2007/04/19/Editorial/Dukes.Response.To.Vatech.Tragedy.Lacking-2853092.shtml> Duke Chronicle - April 19, 2007</a>
Editorial Staff
2007-06-24
Sara Hood
David Graham <david.graham@duke.edu>
eng
Virginia Tech, our thoughts are with you
Editorial
Posted: 4/17/07
Horrified silence saturated campuses across the country yesterday, as the death toll at Virginia Tech climbed to at least 32 fellow students. The deadliest mass shooting in United States history can be described only as a true tragedy.
To begin, as members of the Duke community we express our sincerest condolences to families and friends of the deceased and wounded and to the entire Virginia Tech campus. Our hearts go out to all of those in the Virginia Tech community and all of the students here at Duke who have been touched by this shocking disaster in one way or another.
A tragedy like this makes us pause to reflect upon our own mortality. Days like yesterday-filled with images of bloodied young bodies, terrified faces and drawn guns-bring violence and death close to home. As young men and women now in college, we can only hope (although likely and sadly in vain) to never see a day like this past Monday again.
And during such times, there is a very human urge to point fingers-to place blame on administrators for not responding effectively or efficiently. But scenarios like those that played out yesterday are extremely hard to prepare for. Hindsight is 20/20, and we cannot judge the Virginia Tech administrators with the knowledge we now have. We trust they had students' best interests in mind and do so still as they seek to recover from the shock and horror of a day nobody can ever really anticipate.
Monday's tragedy does, however, provide an opportunity for Duke's administrators to examine their own emergency response procedures. We depend on Duke administrators to keep us informed when urgent situations arise. Although mass e-mail lists serve great informative purposes, a faster mass communication system must be devised to alert students in times of emergency. Because many students come from differing parts of the country, Duke must also devise a plan to inform families quickly or to make themselves available for inquiries in situations of mass chaos.
As members of a media publication, in the face of this tragedy we were dismayed to find that some media outlets displayed an almost-salacious interest in this story. The Washington Post ran an article titled "Virginia Tech's Reputation Had Recently Been Soaring," which inappropriately dehumanized the catastrophe as something that could have an effect on image and ranking rather than something that did have a profound effect on human lives. Similarly, a reporter at a press conference asked what sort of effect this event will have on the school's admissions. Such questions were both inappropriate and unanswerable. Subjects like Virginia Tech's reputation can be addressed during another, more appropriate period.
Although yesterday's tragedy is in no way comparable to the Duke lacrosse case, the response of some reporters to the Virginia Tech shooting is yet another example of a fact we as Duke students know all too well-how shallow the media can be. The media must remember there is a human element to every event, particularly this tragic event, and they should not rush superficial sensationalism nor dehumanize questions of status.
Even though the media has immense power in portraying events and situations, we must remember that a period of coverage does not characterize or define a school in its entirety. No matter how the media portrays a singular event, our schools are not defined by one moment. They are defined by their people, their resolve and their ability to overcome.
Virginia Tech, Duke's thoughts are with you.
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Original Source: <a href=http://media.www.dukechronicle.com/media/storage/paper884/news/2007/04/17/Editorial/Virginia.Tech.Our.Thoughts.Are.With.You-2846256.shtml> Duke Chronicle - April 17, 2007</a>
Editorial Staff
2007-06-24
Sara Hood
David Graham <david.graham@duke.edu>
eng
Virginia Tech: How Media Are Evolving
April 17th, 2007 by Dan Gillmor
<i>(Note: This will appear tomorrow as an op-ed piece in the <a href="http://www.examiner.com/">Washington Examiner</a> newspaper.)</i>
Once again, horror has given us a glimpse of our media future: simultaneously conversational and distributed, mass and personal.
The killings Monday at Virginia Tech brought to the forefront the remarkable evolution in media over the past few years. And as we move into a time in which we will be saturated with data, we need to be clear on some of the implications of democratized media.
We've had any number of glimpses already in this new century. On Sept. 11, 2001, we read blog postings and watched citizen videos of planes smashing into the World Trade Center towers. During the Asian tsunami, tourist videos showed waves smashing onto shores. A man in the London underground, wielding a mobile phone camera, took the image we all remember best from that day.
The scope of the media shift was clearer again on Monday. Some of the most widely viewed images came from a mobile phone camera aimed at the police response by a student, Jamal Albaughouti. His video made its way to CNN and other media, and was seen by millions.
But others on and off the Blacksburg, Va., campus were also using conversational media in highly visible ways. Social network communications, blog postings, email and a host of other technologies were brought to bear by people who were directly and indirectly part of this huge event.
The students' words were achingly poignant. They were straight from the source, not pushed through a traditional-media funnel as they'd have been in the not-so-distant past.
They brought to mind a blog post I spotted after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks by a young man in Brooklyn, N.Y., across the river from the World Trade Center. He wrote, "Now I know what a burning city smells like."
The democratization of media is not just about creation, though that has been the most notable aspect so far. Putting the tools into everyone's hands has produced an explosion of media creation, as blogs and sharing sites such as YouTube and Flickr show us.
Traditional media think of distribution: making journalism or movies or programs and sending them out to consumers. This is inverted in a democratized media world, where we all have access to what we want, as well as when and where.
I didn't turn on my TV yesterday except in the evening, to watch a national network's news report. I wanted to see a summary of what a serious journalism organization had to say about what it knew so far.
Instead, during the day, I used the online media — including the major news sites — to get the latest information, sifting it, making judgments about credibility and reliability as I read and watched and listened. That, too, is the future in many cases.
It's also worth noting that the citizen media component of this terrible event is not a new to the digital era. When President John F. Kennedy was gunned down in Dallas back in 1963, Abraham Zapruder caught the gruesome killing on a home movie camera — footage that became an essential part of the historical record. But the difference between then and tomorrow is this:
In 1963, one man with a camera captured the event on film. In a very few years, a similar situation would be captured by thousands of people — all holding high-resolution video cameras — and all of those cameras would be connected to high-speed digital networks.
That is different.
Remember, too, that the passengers aboard the airplanes on Sept. 11, 2001, were making voice calls to loved ones and colleagues with mobile phones. What if they'd been sending videos to the world of what was happening inside those doomed aircraft?
We will still need journalists to help sort things out. But the "burning city" words from 2001 revealed something.
We used to say that journalists write the first draft of history. Not so, not any longer. The people on the ground at these events write the first draft. This is not a worrisome change, not if we are appropriately skeptical and to find sources we trust. We will need to retool media literacy for the new age, too.
This entry was posted on April 17th, 2007 at 1:12 pm and is filed under <a href="http://citmedia.org/blog/category/citizen-journalism-general/">Citizen Journalism -- General</a>, <a href="http://citmedia.org/blog/category/news/">News</a>.
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Original Source: Center for Citizen Media Blog
<a href="http://citmedia.org/blog/2007/04/17/virginia-tech-how-media-are-evolving/">http://citmedia.org/blog/2007/04/17/virginia-tech-how-media-are-evolving/</a>
Licensed under <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0</a>.
Dan Gillmor
2007-06-12
Brent Jesiek
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0
eng
Gun violence and public health
<b>Editorial</b>
<a href="http://www.lancet.com/">The Lancet</a>
Available online 26 April 2007.
The blood had not yet dried in the lecture rooms of Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia, before polarised camps claimed that the slaughter of 32 students and teachers vindicated their particular stance on gun control. So shrill was the debate about whether the tragedy would have been better prevented by reducing firearms through stronger gun laws or by increasing availability through liberalising right-to-carry legislation, that the more important issue of gun violence as a public-health menace has been neglected. Until the debate widens to address violence as a preventable social problem, rather than solely a legal concern, mass shootings will continue. To pretend that the Blacksburg tragedy is unique ignores the legacy of school shootings in Dunblane, Columbine, and elsewhere, and deprives people of an opportunity to reduce future risks.
Violence is a broad problem that involves communities, not just criminals, and populations around the world, not just the USA. In 2003, 1·6 million people were killed by violence worldwide, more than by road traffic crashes or malaria. One-third died as a result of homicide. The incidence is rising, fuelled by inequalities, victimisation, and lack of social trust, so that gunshot wounds are a major cause of death for young men.
Because the USA has the highest homicide and gun-homicide rates of any industrialised democracy, the country is a natural focus for attempts to learn more about violence. But despite many Federally funded programmes, objective research on interventions to reduce violence is lacking. Nor has the Campbell Collaboration, established to synthesise evidence for the social sciences, provided guidance. In 2004, the <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=RedirectURL&_method=externObjLink&_locator=url&_plusSign=%2B&_targetURL=http%253A%252F%252Fwww.nap.edu%252Fcatalog%252F10881.html">US National Research Council</a> critically reviewed gun violence and concluded that there was little quality science to inform decision making. The reason is that most studies are based on associations or on before-and-after series.
A 2004 survey from Harvard estimated that 38% of households and 26% of individuals had at least one of the 283 million private firearms in the USA. Even teenagers report ready access to guns. Several studies in the USA and elsewhere cite protection as the main reason for having a gun, despite the fact that guns are far more likely to be used offensively, including suicide, than for self-defence. The association of firearms and their use in homicide between populations (four shooting deaths per 100 000 in the USA vs 0·15 per 100 000 in Cameroon where private guns are banned) is complex and obviously involves cultural factors as well.
Yet, interventions within populations that remove guns do seem to reduce gun crime in a reproducible manner. In 2003, more than half the guns retrieved from crimes were traced to 1% of dealers. When such a dealer in Milwaukee stopped selling inexpensive handguns, local gun crime was reduced by 96% and the transfer of new weapons to criminals decreased by 44%. In Indianapolis, Pittsburgh, and Kansas City, policing to remove illegal firearms from the street reduced gun crime as well. Multiple interventions combining social networks with stronger enforcement can also be successful, such as the 63% drop in homicides after Operation Ceasefire in Boston. Tougher gun laws in Brazil in 2003, allied with a buy-back programme of 450 000 guns, reduced the gun-homicide rate by 8% and hospitalisation for gunshots by 4·6%.
How can such findings inform sensible policy decisions? The National Research Council concludes that individual-level data are needed. Characteristics of victims can be enhanced with WHO's <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=RedirectURL&_method=externObjLink&_locator=url&_plusSign=%2B&_targetURL=http%253A%252F%252Fwww.who.int%252Fclassifications%252Ficd%252Fadaptations%252Ficeci%252Fen%252Findex.html">International Classification of External Causes of Injuries</a>, which by introducing standard reporting criteria, enables comparisons between studies. But there are few details about perpetrators, since criminal background checks for sales by gun dealers are destroyed within 24 h and private second-hand sales, which constitute 40% of gun transfers in the USA, are not recorded. To understand assailants' risk factors requires records of gun ownership or ballistic fingerprinting, to which the powerful US National Rifle Association is opposed.
The events in Blacksburg on April 16 demand a more mature evaluation of gun violence, based on the right to health instead of the right to bear arms, and which places public welfare above self-interest. The National Research Council's call for accurate, individual-level data from rigorous studies is essential, in order to provide robust information on which sound interventions can be based. But until such data are available, the best current evidence clearly supports an immediate reduction in the availability of firearms as a public-health priority.
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Reprinted with permission from Elsevier (The Lancet, 2007, Vol 369, Issue 9571, p 1403)
The Lancet
2007-06-11
Brent Jesiek
Clare Truter, Rights Manager, S&T, Elsevier (permissions@elsevier.com)
eng
Editor's Journal: Virginia Tech Shooting Hits Close To Home; The True Character Of A Generation Is Revealed
BY RICHARD McCORMACK
richard@manufacturingnews.com
On Thursday afternoon April 19, three days after the shootings at Virginia Tech, my wife and I put our dog in the car and headed south to visit our son, a senior engineering major at the university. As we drove four hours from Washington, D.C., through the Shenandoah Valley, I imagined what it must have been like for the parents of the slain children taking that same drive just a few days earlier, calling repeatedly to their children's cell phones, silently ringing: leaving messages you'd never want to hear. So thankful was I to the Lord that it wasn't me having to take that drive in a state of panic and delirium.
As we approached Blacksburg, I missed the exit for Main Street, a quicker road to my son's apartment. It bothered me. I was tired and anxious to get there and I had added another five minutes to the trip. I sighed and continued for another couple of miles to the main entrance to Tech.
I had not expected to be on campus -- anticipating a route that bypassed the school to my son's townhouse. We took a right turn onto campus, drove a quarter mile past the visitor's center and approached the big "VT" letters on the left of the road. And I shuddered. Here we were, suddenly at the site of calamitous pain and bloodshed, the uninterrupted focal point of the global media for the past three days. It knocked the air out of my lungs. I struggled to take a breath. My chest constricted; speechless, dizzied.
These events -- Columbine, Waco, Jonesboro, Oklahoma City, 9/11, the Washington sniper, the Amish elementary school, the Iraq war and now Virginia Tech -- are no longer an aberration but are defining the new American culture: one of unfathomable loss of innocents at the hands of suicidal maniacs. What nightmare awaits us next?
We drove slowly through the quiet campus, feeling beat up from the week's events. We arrived and hugged our son and his roommates. They are all incredible people; struggling with the incomprehensible, but maintaining a sense of humor, one of them hilariously mocking the killer's idiotic video performance.
Thank God for the youth of today. Our politicians, business leaders and academicians should stop castigating them for being indolent or ill equipped for the future, because they are neither.
In the days following the tragedy, the students at Virginia Tech defended themselves with the utmost rectitude from a second wave of snipers -- this time the press corps -- and they gallantly rallied around their beloved university, around each other and around their embattled leaders. In the face of despair and in a state of shock, they showed us the future of our nation: one of hope, inspiration and tolerance.
I have three children, ages 23, 22 and 18. For 23 years, I have resented criticism about the deplorable state of our youth and our educational system. There are an incalculable number of extremely bright, energetic and infinitely talented, motivated children and young adults, none of whom have ever been "left behind." Need evidence? Only 12 percent of the applicants to MIT were accepted for the 2007 school year, or 1,533 out of 12,433. "It was very, very hard to select such a small number of students in such a large and stellar applicant pool," said former MIT dean of admissions Marilee Jones. Or how about Stanford, which sent letters of acceptance to 1,715 of the 23,956 applicants, 7 percent. Even a huge school like Virginia Tech received 19,000 applications for a freshman class of 5,000.
Read the obituaries of the fallen Virginia Tech students and you know how much worse off the world will be without them, and that is only 32 students in a school of 26,000.
Our children have been flailed by politicians and armchair critics and pundits, self-fashioned smarter-than-anybody-else people, none of whom were in my house as my children stayed up until 1:30 a.m. on weeknights completing their AP history papers, studying for tests in calculus, physics and chemistry, writing stories on deadline for the high-school newspaper or -- this very night -- reading "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley. And it wasn't me pushing them, either. They did it on their own.
It is time for the critics to shush up. We have put a lot on our children: the real-life specter of a calamitous death at the hands of madmen; a seemingly terrorized future with regards to a "generational" global war on terror; the specter of an ecological catastrophe; and enormous budget and trade deficits that they will have to pay off someday, somehow. And dare not mention the cost and sacrifice involved in providing and getting an education today. Our society has pulled the rug out from under them. They're on their own, yet they exude a collective and refreshing sense of optimism and confidence.
The burden of the war in Iraq is also falling squarely on their shoulders. Our young soldiers are courageous and heroic. Their entire generation will be carrying the scars from this conflict for the remainder of their lives together. No other generation is currently carrying such a heavy load. Yet do you hear them complain? Ever?
If you need to experience the future of this country, to gauge the character of our youth and the inspiration and hope that they provide for mankind, then log onto the Virginia Tech Web site and watch the convocation that was held the day after more than 170 bullets were shot in four classrooms. President Bush's benediction was among his finest showings in six years.
Watch the event through to the end, for the final minutes capture for eternity one of the great moments in American history. When the Earth is waste and void, when the darkness is upon the face of the deep, the human spirit does prevail.
At the end of the convocation, after the grieving students have listened to the adults, they get to have their collective say -- in a cathartic, unplanned and exhilarating 30-second burst of energy; a release of unfathomable tension and grief; a redemptive moment that burns itself to memory. As my wife observed, it is as if they were opening the gates of heaven to their fallen peers.
Thank you young Hokies for showing us the true character of your generation. We needed that. You will prevail.
<a href="http://www.hokiesports.com/convocation.html">http://www.hokiesports.com/convocation.html</a>
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Archived with permission of the author.
Original Source: Manufacturing and Technology News, April 27, 2007, Volume 14, No. 8
<a href="http://www.manufacturingnews.com/news/07/0427/art1.html">http://www.manufacturingnews.com/news/07/0427/art1.html</a>
Richard McCormack
2007-06-11
Brent Jesiek
Richard McCormack (editor@manufacturingnews.com)
eng
Why Virginia Tech killings happened
EDITORIAL
Published Apr 17, 2007 11:36 PM
Yet another rampage has occurred at a school, this time leaving 33 people dead at Virginia Tech—the worst such incident ever at a U.S. college campus.
The news media seem stunned and surprised, yet their coverage sounds so similar to the stories about Columbine eight years ago. They dwell on the personality of the young man the police say did the shooting, before killing himself. They talk about him being a "loner," depressed, perhaps angry at women.
But aren't there lonely and depressed people all over the world? Many countries have high suicide rates. Why is it that here some become mass murderers?
The U.S. is the world leader in seemingly random acts of violence by individuals. Why?
President George W. Bush rushed to Virginia to speak at a large convocation the day after the killings and tried to set the tone for what could be said about them. "It's impossible to make sense of such violence and suffering," he said.
Don't ask why, don't try to understand. It makes no sense. "Have faith" instead, was Bush's message.
But there ARE reasons these things happen here, and they are pretty clear to the rest of the world. It's just in the United States that no one is supposed to talk about the reasons.
What distinguishes this country from the rest of the world? It is neither the most affluent nor the poorest. It is neither the most secular nor the most religious. It is not the most culturally homogeneous nor is it the most diverse.
But in one area, it stands virtually alone. It has the biggest arsenal of high-tech weaponry in the world, way surpassing every other country. It has military bases spread all over; most countries have no troops outside their borders.
It is conducting two hot wars at the moment, in Iraq and Afghanistan, and has sent hundreds of thousands of troops abroad over the last few years. Every day, the public here is supposed to identify with soldiers who burst into homes in Baghdad, round up the people and take them away for "interrogation"—which everyone knows now can mean torture and indefinite detainment.
It also sends heavily armed "special ops" on secret missions to countless other countries, like the ones who just facilitated the invasion and bombing of Somalia, or the ones who have been trying to stir up opposition in Iran. This is documented in the news media.
The immense brutality of these colonial wars, as well as earlier ones, is praised from the White House on down as the best, the ONLY way to achieve what the political leaders and their influential, rich backers decide is necessary to protect their world empire. Do lots of people get killed? "Stuff happens," said former war secretary Donald Rumsfeld. "Collateral damage," says the Pentagon.
At home, the U.S. has the highest rate of incarceration in the world. Over 2 million people are locked up in the prison system each year, most of them people of color. When commercial armed security guards are also taken into consideration, the U.S. has millions of employees who use guns and other coercive paraphernalia in their jobs.
In the final analysis, the military and the police—the "armed bodies of men," as Marxists used to define them before women were added to their ranks—exist to perpetuate and protect this present unjust system of capitalist inequality, where a few can claim personal ownership over a vast economy built by the sweat and blood of hundreds of millions of workers.
And the more divided, the more polarized the society becomes, the higher the level of coercion and violence. Assault weapons are now everywhere in this society, as are Tasers, handcuffs, clubs and tear gas. They most often start out in the hands of the police, the military and other agents of the state, and can then turn up anywhere.
Violence is a big money maker in the mass culture. Television, films, pulp novels, Internet sites, video games—all dwell on "sociopaths" while glorifying the state's use of violence, often supplemented by a lone vigilante. By the time children reach their teens, they have already seen thousands of murders and killings on television. And these days even more suspense is added in countless programs that involve stalking and terror against women—and increasingly children.
As the Duke rape case and so many "escort service" ads show, women of color are particularly subject to exploitation and have little recourse to any justice. And as the murders along the border show, immigrants of color are fair game for racist killers.
The social soil of capitalism can alienate and enrage an unstable and miserable person who should be getting help but can't find it. If, as reports are saying, the young man accused of these killings was on anti-depressant medication, it is all the more evidence that, at a time when hospitals are closing and health care is unavailable for tens of millions, treating mental health problems requires more from society than just prescribing dubious chemicals.
Many liberal commentators are taking this occasion to renew the demand for tougher gun laws. Yes, assault weapons are horrible, but so are bunker buster bombs, helicopters that fire thousands of rounds a minute, and the ultimate—nuclear weapons. Disarming the people is not the answer, especially when the capitalist state is armed to the teeth and uses brutality and coercion daily.
The best antidote to these tragedies is to build a movement for profound social change, for replacing capitalism with socialism, so that people's energies can be directed at solving the great problems depressing so much of humanity today, whether they be wars or global climate change or the loneliness of the dog-eat-dog society.
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Original Source: <a href="http://www.workers.org/2007/editorials/virginia-tech-0426/">http://www.workers.org/2007/editorials/virginia-tech-0426/</a>
Workers World
2007-06-10
Brent Jesiek
Copyright 1995-2007 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.
eng