When massacres are normal: guns and Virginia Tech

Binoy Kampmark

Brent Jesiek

You are contributing your stories and/or files to The April 16 Archive, which is developing a permanent digital record of the events surrounding the tragedy on the Virginia Tech campus on April 16, 2007. Your participation in this project will allow future researchers, and people such as yourself, to gain a greater understanding of these events and the responses to them.

eng

Stop the Violence

Thursday, April 19th, 2007

While we spent the last two weeks railing at each other about racial insults, sexist jokes, hip hop music, apologies that won't fly, and weighty matters related to the First Amendment, a deranged college student sat plotting the mass murder of his classmates along with his own suicide on the idyllic campus of Virginia Tech.

Now that the fog of horror is beginning to lift everyone is scrambling to find someone to point a finger at.

Last week rap music was to blame for the arsenal of racist and sexist insults that are at the disposal of shock jocks like Don Imus. This week the NRA and Hollywood are to blame. The NRA, says the Left, makes it possible for mentally sick young men like Cho Seung-Hui to get his hands on an arsenal of weapons to act out their private fantasies of murder and suicide. At the same time, says the Right, Hollywood is to blame for churning out an arsenal of violent movies like Quentin Tarantino "Grindhouse" that feed our appetite for carnage and violence.

Nothing like hateful speech and violent rampages to keep things in perspective.

If we're going to blame NRA, Hollywood, or even video games we all have some blame to shoulder. Lord knows, ours is culture that is fascinated with violence.

I am as liable as the next person for indulging in the guilty pleasurable pasttime of watching crime dramas on television every week (e.g., Law and Order, CSI, Cold Case). I don't know when it happened. Recant: I do know. But that's another story. What I also know is that figuring out the motivation behind the murder is half the" fun" of watching the crime show. But the rampage at Virginia Tech is a sobering wake up call, or it should be.

It doesn't matter what "motivated" the gunman behind the Virginia Tech shooting. I won't join the media detectives in pouring over the identity of the killer's family and the putative ethnic nature of his rage, nor do I care to watch as journalists shove a microphone in the face of every person who ever bumped up against him in the hallway or try reconstructing what he had for breakfast the morning of his rampage. Besides, we haven't bothered to do the same type of psychological and cultural analysis upon those who four years ago committed our youth to the bloodbath and carnage reported weekly out of Iraq. Enough.

Stop the violence by keeping up the protest against pro-gun lobbyists and by boycotting movies that showcase gratuitous violence. Better time is spent praying for the tortured souls that commit these acts of violence. Stop the violence by turning it off in ourselves. After tragedies like the one this week, says one Virginia Tech student who also survived the Columbine massacre of ten years ago this week, normalcy never returns.

After a steady diet of violence all these years, can any of us say what normal — or decency and civility, for that matter — is anymore?

--

Original Source: Something Within by Rev. Dr. Renita J. Weems
<a href="http://www.somethingwithin.com/blog/?cat=73">http://www.somethingwithin.com/blog/?cat=73</a>

This work is licensed under a
<a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License</a>.

Rev. Dr. Renita J. Weems

2008-02-11

Brent Jesiek

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States

eng

Cho&#39;s World was rooted in a Christian Tradition

In the Aug. 26 Roanoke Times, reporter Duncan Adams had a news story that succinctly wrapped up what we knew about Seung-Hui Cho at that point, before the Virginia Tech Independent Review Panel released its final report. The article, "There was something evil aiding him," answered some old questions and highlighted some that have yet to be answered.

What really struck me, as a medievalist and researcher in the history of religion, was the section titled "Demon spirits" and specifically the comments of Pastor Dong Cheol Lee from One Mind Church in Cho&#39;s hometown of Woodbridge. Cho and his family didn&#39;t attend that church, but the pastor felt compelled to reach out to Cho on the recommendation of a neighbor.

Lee believes Cho was basically a good person but that he was possessed by the devil or some sort of "demonic spirit" when he murdered all those people. This raises a significant point, one thus far generally overlooked in the reporting about the events of April 16 -- the role of religion in motivating Cho to do what he did.

I suggested this in a June 6 commentary, "Cho&#39;s violent crusade ripped from the Middle Ages." Look again through this and the rest of the coverage of Cho&#39;s manifesto. Look how often he evoked God/Jesus. And look again at these new snippets: the Bible as Literature class that he felt so "content" in, his contact with a particular type of Christianity during his upbringing, how he told the literature professor, Nikki Giovanni, she was going to hell.

Reporter Adams may have been more right than he knew when he ended his story with: "During one session, Giovanni described having once eaten turtle soup. Students shared experiences of consuming other unusual animal fare. Cho&#39;s poem the next week lashed Giovanni and the class. &#39;He told us we were going to hell,&#39; said [fellow student Tara] Marciniak-McGuire. During Cho&#39;s short, tortured life, he knew that territory well."

Cho&#39;s mental illness made him live in a world of his own creation, but that world was one with recognizable roots in the Christian tradition -- a world populated by God and the devil, in which they are both still active forces in the world; a world where Cho could choose sides in this struggle and think that he was doing God&#39;s work; a world where violence in the name of religion is justified because the stakes, one&#39;s immortal soul, are so high.

Cho likely thought himself to be a "soldier of Christ," like the crusaders; like the Lord&#39;s Resistance Army in Uganda; like Eric Rudolph and Paul Jennings Hill, who killed to stop abortion. Mainstream Christianity does not -- and the vast majority of Christians may not -- condone such actions, but perhaps it&#39;s time to stop burying our head in the sand, pretending that such ideas aren&#39;t ultimately understandable, if still unfortunately familiar.

--

Originally published in <em>The Roanoke Times</em>, 9/11/07

Source: <a href="http://www.roanoke.com/editorials/commentary/wb/wb/xp-131592">http://www.roanoke.com/editorials/commentary/wb/wb/xp-131592</a>

Matthew Gabriele

2008-01-08

Matthew Gabriele

eng

Cho&#39;s Violent Crusade Ripped from the Middle Ages

As a medieval historian, one rarely feels that his expertise can shed some light on a current debate. But I teach at Virginia Tech.

Now that the semester is over and there is time to reflect, I have been struck by how "medieval" the events of this past April seem -- both Seung-Hui Cho&#39;s violence and our collective revulsion to it.

In the snippets of Cho&#39;s "manifesto" that have been released to the public, there is rhetoric of (likely imagined) persecution of the innocent, violent defense of the helpless, and Cho&#39;s perception of himself as a martyr by appropriating explicitly Christian imagery -- Jesus himself, the cross, and even the torments the saints endured for their faith (burning like St. Polycarp, suffocating like St. Cecilia and beheading like St. Denis, etc.).

Even Cho&#39;s oft-repeated statement that "Jesus loves crucifying me" reinforces the idea of martyrdom, suggesting, as countless biographies of the saints have, that God triumphs through the martyr&#39;s sacrifice.

Taken alone, these statements might be interesting from a purely academic standpoint. Unfortunately, we all know what followed Cho&#39;s statements.

So, it&#39;s this combination of language and action that&#39;s most "medieval," since the essential elements of Cho&#39;s manifesto mirror Pope Urban II&#39;s speech at Clermont (in modern France) in 1095 that launched the First Crusade.

From what we can reconstruct of that speech, Urban first railed against the sins of his listeners. But then, when the hellfires beckoned, Urban offered them a way out -- a path to heaven.

Go to Jerusalem. Reclaim the land where Jesus was crucified and where he would return in triumph. This land rightfully belongs to us, Urban continued, so emulate the suffering of Christ and "take up [your] cross daily and follow me" (Luke 9:23).

Defend your fellow Christians who suffer under (an imagined) oppression by God&#39;s enemies. Become a "soldier of Christ" and destroy "the enemy." God would reward you with martyrdom if you died. Jesus. The cross. Suffering. Martyrdom. Defense of the innocent. Violence.

Cries of "God wills it!" rang through the crowd. More than 100,000 people, many of whom had never left their village, decided to walk the 4,000 miles to Jerusalem. Again, we all know what came next.

It&#39;s important to note that neither of the events of 1095 or 2007 "just happened." There are explanations, even if they&#39;re not comfortable ones.

Urban&#39;s message met a receptive audience because long-held ideas and traditions in the West came together just so. So too with Cho.

He created a mental world, which only rarely touched reality, drawn from our culture&#39;s obsession with violence and guns as well as a radical Christianity, likely generated by his upbringing and continued interest in the religion, witnessed by the number of courses on religious topics that he took here at Tech.

This particular Christianity isn&#39;t unlike that unleashed during the First Crusade, even if such language of violence can still be found at places in our own, modern society.

Cho&#39;s mental world divided everything between good and evil and called for the oppressed to rise and take vengeance. Cho&#39;s mental illness made him cross a line and act upon these ideas. Unfortunately, it did not generate the ideas themselves, though.

But just as Cho was, in a way, an heir to the ideas of the First Crusade, so too are the rest of us for, in addition to violence and intolerance, the First Crusade was also about peace -- true, lasting peace.

As conceived in 1095, the violent reconquest of Jerusalem would hasten the arrival of God&#39;s kingdom on Earth, an earthly paradise in which all would share.

Later in the Middle Ages, the influential thought of Joachim of Fiore changed this tradition, stripping away the violence that preceded this kingdom, saying that all would peacefully -- peacefully -- come together.

And just as Urban&#39;s vision has endured, so too has Joachim&#39;s. The world, without hesitation, now condemns actions like Cho&#39;s. Violence is not normative anymore.

If nothing else, the Middle Ages show us how the intellectual path we&#39;re on isn&#39;t the only one available. In 1095, 100,000 people thought that violence could bring peace. In 2007, Cho believed the same and the world cried out in horror.

Cho took one path from 1095 and the vast majority took the other. In and of itself, and in the middle of all this sadness, this is a reason to look forward with hope.

--

Originally published in _The Roanoke Times_, 6/2/07

Source: <a href="http://www.roanoke.com/editorials/commentary/wb/wb/xp-119117">http://www.roanoke.com/editorials/commentary/wb/wb/xp-119117</a>

Matthew Gabriele

2008-01-08

Matthew Gabriele

eng

Violence by mentally ill not the norm

By:Sarah A. Newlin
Posted: 4/27/07

I am writing in response to Richard Poskozim&#39;s opinion piece in the 4/25 issue of The Lantern.

In the article, the author seems to imply that Cho&#39;s motivation to kill somehow originated from his alleged mental illness: "After everything that&#39;s come out about him, I think it&#39;s pretty safe to say his motivation was that he was crazy." While it is clear that something had deeply distressed Mr. Cho, one should be careful about jumping to conclusions about how mental illness played a role in this tragic event. Numerous studies have shown that it is incredibly rare for someone with a mental illness to commit gross acts of violence, especially on the scale of the Virginia Tech shootings. Violence is no more prevalent among individuals with mental illnesses than among the general public.

In actuality, those suffering from a mental illness are more likely to be the victims of violence than the perpetrators. Furthermore, I am concerned that the focus on the shooter&#39;s possible mental illness will cause many students on college campuses who suffer from mental illnesses to not seek mental health services or to be feared and shunned by their peers, leading to their further isolation and discrimination.

If any positives can come out of this horrible event, I hope that one will be a larger discussion about the need for increased recognition of mental health issues among college students and the need for adequate treatment, support and recovery resources on college campuses. I ask that The Lantern staff take this into consideration as they continue to cover the tragic circumstances surrounding the Virginia Tech shootings.

Sarah A. Newlin
Program Manager
Campus Suicide Prevention Program

--

Original Source:<a href=http://media.www.thelantern.com/media/storage/paper333/news/2007/04/27/Letters/Violence.By.Mentally.Ill.Not.The.Norm-2885645.shtml>The Lantern - April 27, 2007</a>

Sarah A. Newlin

The Lantern

2007-08-16

Sara Hood

GERRICK LEWIS <lewis.1030@osu.edu>

eng

Why Virginia Tech Shootings Happened

<b>A Statement from the International Action Center</b>

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&#39;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&#39;s impossible to make sense of such violence and suffering," he said.

Don&#39;t ask why, don&#39;t try to understand. It makes no sense. "Have faith" instead, was Bush&#39;s message.

But there ARE reasons these things happen here, and they are pretty clear to the rest of the world. It&#39;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 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&#39;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&#39;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 government 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, a movement 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.

--

Original Source: <a href="http://www.iactucson.org/VirginiaTech.html">http://www.iactucson.org/VirginiaTech.html</a>

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

International Action Center of Tucson

2007-08-04

Brent Jesiek

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5

eng

What If It Happened Every Day?

By Keith Boykin, in <a href="http://www.keithboykin.com/arch/politics/">politics</a>
Tuesday, April 17 2007, 10:24AM

The news was gruesome and alarming. Reuters reported that at least <a href="http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/KAM628011.htm">30 people</a> were shot yesterday in a deadly gun rampage that rocked a city once known for its <a href="http://www.schoolshistory.org.uk/baghdad.htm">safety</a> and <a href="http://islam.about.com/cs/history/a/aa040703a.htm">scholarship</a>. By now, you&#39;ve heard about the story, and many of us have already stopped paying attention.

But I&#39;m not talking about the deadly school shooting in Virginia Monday morning. I&#39;m talking about the deadly violence in <a href="http://icasualties.org/oif/IraqiDeaths.aspx">Iraq</a> that goes on everyday. While most of the world was understandably horrified by the campus shooting at Virginia Tech yesterday, almost no one paid attention to the 30 people who were <a href="http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/KAM628011.htm">shot and killed</a> in Baghdad on the same day. The shock and horror of watching such dramatic violence in Virginia immediately resonated with Americans. But here&#39;s something else to ponder. What if it happened every day? What if we saw that kind of carnage in our communities every night on the evening news? It sounds far-fetched, but that&#39;s exactly the situation that faces many Iraqis almost every day of the year.

If the shooting in Virginia tells us anything about human society, it should tell us that violence is far too common in the world. It&#39;s not just an American problem or an Iraqi problem, it is a global problem. What kind of world do we live in where young students have virtually unfettered access to sophisticated deadly weapons that can be used to kill their classmates and teachers? And how did we become desensitized to the tens of thousands of civilian casulaties in a war we&#39;re still fighting in Baghdad?

I don&#39;t think it is possible to stop every murder or every killing that takes place in this country or abroad, but I do believe we have a responsibility to promote the conditions for peace.

For all the talk about our Christian values in America, we are an extraordinarily violent society. The FBI reported <a href="http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/05cius/data/table_01.html">1.4 million</a> violent crimes in the U.S. in 2005 and more than 16,000 murders. That&#39;s a drop from the record high figures in the early 1990s but it shows that we are still far too violent.

Through elective wars, capital punishment, gang violence, and media depictions of violence, we demonstrate our collective societal preference for violence as a solution to our problems. I don&#39;t know what motivated the young student in Virginia to shoot up his classmates, and I don&#39;t know what motivates the suicide bombers in Iraq to blow up their neighbors. But I do know that we have a duty to promote peace in this country and abroad.

Imagine the impact that could be made if America lead an international campaign for peace instead of a war on terror. Imagine the goodwill we could generate if we diverted some of the $500 billion we&#39;ve spent on war in recent years so that we could build hospitals, schools, and housing throughout the undeveloped world.

Imagine the difference it might make if our leaders dropped some of the macho rhetoric and talked about service, duty and community responsibility? I know there will be much discussion in the next few days about gun control and mental health counseling and legislation, and I welcome that conversation. But we should also ask ourselves about the world we&#39;ve created and what each of us can do to make it better and more peaceful.

The Virginia shooting was shocking, in part, because it was so unusual. Unlike the Iraqis, we&#39;re not accustomed to seeing such large-scale violence on a regular basis. Or, more precisely, we&#39;re not accustomed to seeing it here in the United States, because clearly we know it&#39;s happening in Iraq. But what if it happened here everyday? That might be the tragic catalyst that would finally inspire us to do something positive and constructive about the violence in our country and the rest of the world.

It would be tempting to point to the shooter in Blacksburg and isolate him as the problem. But the problem and the solution don&#39;t lie outside of us. They answers are within.

--

Original Source: keithboykin.com
<a href="http://www.keithboykin.com/arch/2007/04/17/what_if_it_happ">http://www.keithboykin.com/arch/2007/04/17/what_if_it_happ</a>

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

Keith Boykin

2007-07-17

Brent Jesiek

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 1.0

eng

Thoughts About Media Coverage of the Virginia Tech Tragedy

posted 5.01.07

<a href="http://www.miwatch.org/about.htm#Wahl">Otto Wahl, Ph.D.</a>, University of Hartford

The tragic death of 33 students at Virginia Tech has shocked and saddened us all. Given the mental health aspects of the situation, it is not surprising that there has been much in the coverage about mental illnesses and their treatment. Unfortunately, the articles and editorials that followed the shootings have often been troubling in what they convey to the public about mental illnesses and mental health interventions.

One troubling aspect of the media coverage has been the frequent vilification and dehumanization of the troubled young man who perpetrated the killings. Appropriately sympathetic descriptions of the background and lives of the "32" victims were widespread, and such descriptions helped us to better appreciate the tragedy on a more personal level. However, descriptions of the 33rd person who died in the tragedy, Cho Seung-Hui, focused almost exclusively on his pathology, his anger, and his menacing manner. Some media sources characterized Cho as motivated by "meanness;" others labeled him as a "fiend," a "psychopath," or "just plain "evil." Such coverage ignored the fact that Cho&#39;s death—and much of his life—was also a tragedy. His alienation, isolation, anger, and ultimate suicide are probably not the life goals he set out for himself. Much of the media coverage did discuss Cho&#39;s mental health, but mostly without notable empathy for his difficulties.

Related is the mistaken implication in coverage of Cho&#39;s actions that mental illness and violence are synonymous. The widespread images of Cho brandishing weapons epitomized the already prevalent public image of the "menacing madman," and that image was underscored further by the fear-inducing labels Cho was given in many media accounts, such as "maniac" and "psycho" and worse. Likewise, the repeated discussions of the need to protect the college community—and the larger community—from such individuals served to reinforce unwarranted public fears of people with mental illnesses. The vast majority of people with mental illnesses, including severe mental illnesses, are neither violent nor criminal. The vast majority of students on campus who are living with mental illnesses are not threatening others, but working and studying to make better lives for themselves. I saw little discussion of this in media coverage.

The events at Virginia Tech were truly horrendous. The media, like the public, searched to make sense of the tragedy and to find clues as to how future tragedies could be prevented. However, there was a tendency to focus on mental illness as the sole or primary explanation for the horrific outcome at Virginia Tech. Many reporters and even mental health professionals seemed to commit what social scientists have dubbed the "fundamental attribution error." This term refers to our tendency to attribute the actions of others, particularly unacceptable actions, to their inner, psychological attributes and to neglect potential situational influences. If we succumb to this error and focus mainly on the possible internal causes of behavior, the mental health of Cho Seung-Hui in this case, we may overlook other potential contributors to the event and, thus, other potential and important avenues for prevention.

Often overlooked, then, were questions about how we engage or do not engage students on our college campuses or how we do or do not integrate diverse students to better create a sense of community, questions about what gaps in understanding and education about cultural differences might have contributed to Cho&#39;s apparent isolation and to the ultimate outcome, and questions about the extent to which stigma and negative attitudes about mental health problems could have contributed to Cho&#39;s apparent reluctance to accept counseling assistance despite the recommendations of Virginia Tech faculty.

Instead of looking at the factors above, many media reports implied—directly or indirectly—that the major preventive solution is the lessening of restrictions on involuntary hospitalization. After horrific events like the Virginia Tech deaths, it is easy to forget that the current criteria for involuntary psychiatric commitment result from a long history of indiscriminate and abusive use of forced hospitalization and from a belated recognition that the individual civil rights of people with mental illnesses need protection. Just as the tragic events of 9/11 should not have allowed us to dismantle the basic civil liberties on which our country is founded, a tragic event like Virginia Tech should not serve as justification for diminishing the hard won civil protections of the millions of people with mental illnesses. But it may, and some of the news coverage is suggesting that it should.

Also, it is not clear that involuntary commitment for Cho would have been the appropriate solution. Coerced treatment may have poorer long term outcomes than voluntary treatment if it creates trauma and fuels antagonism and poorer treatment compliance. For a person like Cho, who already felt persecuted and angry, this may have been likely. So hospitalization might have only postponed the tragic outcome. Outpatient treatment may have had a better chance of succeeding in helping Cho and preventing the lethal outcome. In hindsight, we know it was not successful, but we do not know that involuntary hospitalization would have had more success.

The events at Virginia Tech have led to calls for greater security on campuses and for a better ability of campus authorities to exclude people with serious mental illnesses from the campus. Again, this represents a troubling inclination to further restrict the rights and opportunities of people living with mental illnesses. Easier hospitalization and campus restrictions are not what is needed for preventing tragedies such as the one at Virginia Tech. Instead, we need better training of service providers to deal with individuals who are reluctant to accept treatment, and therapeutic alternatives that are more attractive, less aversive, and better funded. We also need reduced stigma for seeking and accepting treatment, along with greater outreach and prevention efforts.

I do not mean to suggest that there was no sensitive and appropriate media coverage of the events. Many stories were sympathetic to the needs of troubled youth on campuses, urging improvements and cautioning against attempts to exclude students. Former Rosalynn Carter Journalism Fellow, John Head, for example, wrote, in the <i><a href="http://www.ajc.com/search/content/opinion/stories/2007/04/20/edhead0420.html">Atlanta Journal Constitution</a></i>, "A policy that punishes students for enduring emotional and mental disturbances will only discourage them from seeking help." Articles and editorials have called for expanded suicide prevention programs and improvements in culturally competent services, as well. An article in the <i><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/22/AR2007042201190.html">Washington Post</a></i>, by another former Carter Fellow, Shankar Vedantam looked "beyond the shooter," to consider social factors that may have contributed to the fatal outcome. And there did emerge a number a number of pieces that looked more fully and sympathetically at the life of Cho Seung-Hui and at his family&#39;s pain and suffering.

Media coverage also brought to light the archaic and offensive language of the federal statutes for regulation of gun purchases. I am referring to the prohibition against selling guns to "mental defectives,&#39; a category which, for the federal government, apparently includes persons with mental illnesses. I am amazed that such a reference to mental illness—language that was discarded decades ago because of its pejorative nature and its connection to eugenics and Nazi cleansing—could still be the chosen terminology in the laws of our country.I can only hope that the wide exposure of this language in the press may lead to sufficient embarrassment and/or outrage as to generate an appropriate updating.

I am, however, cautiously optimistic. Despite the great deal of stigmatizing coverage that has surrounded the tragic loss of life at Virginia Tech, the discussions that are occurring have the potential to generate important changes. Chief among these are greater understanding of and improved responsiveness to mental health needs on campuses. I do not mean to suggest, as some media coverage has, that these are needed primarily to protect the student body from unstable shooters, but rather that they are needed so that universities can enhance their abilities to support the learning and accomplishment of all students, including the many who experience mental health problems.

--

Archived with permission of the author.

Original Source: MIWatch.org
<a href="http://www.miwatch.org/Wahl.htm">http://www.miwatch.org/Wahl.htm</a>

Otto Wahl

2007-07-17

Brent Jesiek

Otto Wahl (owahl@hartford.edu)

eng

After VaTech, violent creative writing raises concerns on campuses

By: Sean Moroney
Posted: 5/17/07

Other than being two of the most-read playwrights in history, Sophocles and Shakespeare share another common thread-a knack for writing gruesome but also unforgettable scenes.

Likewise, Cho Seung-Hui, the Virginia Tech shooter who was a senior majoring in English, graphically described murder and violence in two plays he wrote for a class in the fall of his senior year.

One difference between the well-known playwrights and Cho, however, was that their words stayed on the stage and Cho&#39;s played out in real life.

Since the Virginia Tech massacre April 16, critics have questioned whether university administrators and professors could have taken further steps to prevent the shooting. Specifically, they have focused on Cho&#39;s two plays-"Mr. Brownstone" and "Richard McBeef," in which a 13-year-old threatens to kill his stepfather.

"There is that understood latitude in creative writing," Duke English Professor Deborah Pope wrote in an e-mail. "There has to be that room to reach deeply. Not least of all because some of the greatest writers we know have written about quite disturbing events and characters. Many of the Greek plays and Shakespeare, as just two examples, are full of gore."

In the English department at Duke, students can take a number of courses that either integrate creative writing into the curriculum or focus solely on it. Pope, who teaches creative writing, said she is not aware of an official policy on regulating a student&#39;s creative writing.

"I don&#39;t know how there could be," Pope said. "It must rest with a teacher&#39;s individual judgment."

Creative writing in college is a delicate issue because professors oftentimes encourage students to express themselves freely in their writing but at the same time must recognize when highly imaginative writing signals problems in the personal lives of the student.

"I read both of [Cho&#39;s] short plays. I was pretty horrified and disgusted because I hate violence," said senior and English major Stephen Lee. "I haven&#39;t written anything equally violent or disturbing."

Lee said he sometimes feels self-conscious about sharing his writing that is particularly grotesque due to fear of how other students might react. He added, however, that his creative writing professors have never censored a student&#39;s work just because it was violent or disturbing.

"At Duke, I have read some disturbing stories written by fellow students, but I&#39;ve never felt remotely endangered because the author has always been able to explain and defend his or her creative choices," Lee wrote in an e-mail.

A senior in Cho&#39;s playwrighting class, Steven Davis, told The New York Times that after reading Cho&#39;s play "Richard McBeef" one night, he turned to his roommate and said, "This is the kind of guy who is going to walk into a classroom and start shooting people."

After noticing a pattern of odd behavior from Cho-which included taking pictures of women with his cell phone camera in a poetry class in his junior year and a taciturn personality, Lucinda Roy, chair of the English department and co-director of the creative writing program at Virginia Tech, began to tutor Cho privately.

Roy and other professors took further steps to ensure that counseling was sought for Cho, who was ordered to attend a psychiatric facility in late 2005. But their actions were not enough to prevent the shooting.

"Fortunately, I have never had to deal with writing that struck me as truly psychotic or sadistic," Pope said. "When I heard that the Virginia Tech&#39;s writing teacher, of all people, had raised red flags, my first reaction was, &#39;My god, it must have been something really, really, unsettling-it must have just been completely over the edge.&#39;"

English major Melanie Garcia, Trinity &#39;07, said the way she approaches writing is to write about things that mean a lot to her.

"By writing things down that are personal, I make them permanent-they become something outside of me," she said. "If it were a painful memory, it would not be as painful."

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Original Source: <a href=http://media.www.dukechronicle.com/media/storage/paper884/news/2007/05/17/News/After.Vatech.Violent.Creative.Writing.Raises.Concerns.On.Campuses-2904875.shtml> Duke Chronicle - May 17, 2007</a>

Sean Moroney

Duke Chronicle

2007-06-24

Sara Hood

David Graham <david.graham@duke.edu>

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Korean church leaders caution against backlash after US shootings

News Brief

By staff writers
21 Apr 2007

Korean and American Korean church leaders are calling for "healing, reconciliation and peace" amid concerns that the Virginia Tech shootings by a South Korean native could lead to a backlash against Koreans.

"I was really shocked to hear that this senseless crime was committed by a Korean-immigrated student," said Bishop Kyung-Ha Shin, president of the Council of Bishops of the Korean Methodist Church.

In a letter from Seoul sent on 18 April 2007, Bishop Shin offered condolences to the bereaved families and the American people while hoping "there will be no undesirable negative feeling and attitude toward Koreans."

Meanwhile, in the United States, more than 250 leaders of the National Association of Korean American United Methodist Churches were holding their annual meeting 16-19 April in Chicago when the shooting occurred. As word of the shooter&#39;s identity spread, the mostly clergy participants began receiving calls from their home churches asking for guidance.

"The whole community was in shock and did not know how to respond, but we prayed for the victims and their family members and the school and the community," said the Rev Keihwan Ryoo, editor of United Methodists in Service, who was reporting on the gathering on behalf of the Korean-language magazine published by United Methodist Communications.

Several pastors received reports that Korean American students had been bullied in their mostly white schools as the week progressed, Ryoo said.

The caucus held a memorial service for the shooting victims and released a pastoral letter.

"We pray that the violence that has needlessly taken innocent lives does not escalate nor happen again," said the Rev Hoon Kyoung Lee, chairman of the association. "Furthermore, we are especially concerned that the immigrant community and the children of minorities may become targeted by anti-racial backlash because of this incident.

"We pray that all of our friends and neighbors will support the Korean-American community in striving for healing, reconciliation and peace."

The 16 April 2007 massacre in Blacksburg, Virginia, left 33 people dead, including the lone gunman, Cho Seung-Hui, a 23-year-old senior majoring in English literature. Born in South Korea, he moved to the United States in 1992 at age 8 and was raised in the suburbs of Washington DC, where his parents worked at a dry cleaner store.

Authorities said Cho appeared to shoot his victims randomly. In a video made prior to the killings and sent to NBC-TV, he ranted about rich kids and portrayed himself as persecuted.

Lee asked people throughout the church to prayer for the shooting victims and their families, the family and friends of Cho, and the minority and immigrant community in the United States.

"We departed from this meeting with a heavy heart," Ryoo reported. "A lot of churches planned special memorial services over the weekend."

Bishop Hee-Soo Jung, of the Northern Illinois Conference, said the church&#39;s American Korean community is "weeping and praying" with the rest of the world. He said grief and concern over such events cross all racial and ethnic lines.

"We pray for our young people and those feeling a sense of vulnerability, isolation, insecurity and fear on their campuses, and even in their homes," Jung wrote in a pastoral letter from his Chicago office. "... I encourage each of us to offer the ministries of comfort, healing and love."

<i>[With grateful acknowledgments to the United Methodist Church News Service USA and reporter Marta W. Aldrich]</i>

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Original Source: Ekklesia
<a href="http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/5109">http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/5109</a>

This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/uk/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 England & Wales License</a>.

Ekklesia Staff Writers

2007-06-17

Brent Jesiek

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 England & Wales License

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