In Memoriam: Virginia Tech, April 16, 2007
April 16th, 2007 As one who worked with school districts across the country, I know the issue of school shootings is every school official's nightmare. The apparent random nature of all the shootings only makes the nightmare more fearful, for after dozens of workshops at countless conventions, the only thing anyone can say for sure is that they do not know where the awful sounds of gunfire will next echo down the hallways and in the classrooms. But no one I knew or any of the workshops ever talked about the possibility of the equivalent of a Columbine occurring at a college. Every school district in the country has detailed policies in place if it ever happened to them. Their teachers, administrators and staff are trained in what to do and local law enforcement officials participate in the planning and the drills. Now that it has happened at a college they, too, will have to undergo similar training and create similar plans. Campuses will seem less safe, new rules and drills will need to be implemented and college officials and teachers will now understand the nightmares of their secondary colleagues. At the center of that nightmare lies a dark, bottomless pool. As with the Columbines of this country, people will stare into the pool seeking answers. Some will see reflections and try to generalize from them about the nature of the shooter and the victims, but the reflections they see will only be their own. Interest groups will look into the pool and see their causes, filling the talk shows with spokespersons who will say that if we had only done "x" the event would have never happened. Others will take a longer view trying to peer into the depths of the pool seeking confirmation of trends historical, social and psychological. They too will see only their own reflections. For those at the center of it all, the parents, relatives and friends of the victims and the shooter, those who witnessed it and lived, and those who somehow made a decision to not go to those places at that time the pool will seem more like a maelstrom in which they are caught and cannot get out. Spinning helplessly they will try to maintain some sort of equilibrium, some rationality to keep from drowning in it all. For some this may mean just focusing on the immediate, the details of that which has to be done and it is only days, weeks, even months after that a delayed reaction will overcome them. To help them survive the maelstrom the college will bring in the teams of counselors whose jobs are to somehow get everyone through this. Going in they know theirs represents a task akin to diving into that bottomless pool and seeking to build something solid. They will work miracles with some and experience heartache with others. Each case will be different, but will they will also hear the echoes of past times like this and try to somehow connect them with what now faces them. Our country will experience yet another crack in its marble-like structure. And it too will become part of that pool if we let it. But staring into the pool accomplishes nothing, breeding only frustration, despair and even anger. The dark pool will beckon us with its siren songs to stare into its depths or even dive in. Instead we need to turn away from the pool and remember that at least for a brief tick in time all of us will be as one, united with those Hokies at Virginia Tech into a collective version of Hokie Nation. For now is not a time for politics or debates or even business as usual. Instead families and communities need to realize how fleeting order and life can be and hug one another because that is all they can do. This time as with all those other times we will pledge to love one another a little more and show it. We will swear not to hate and to watch out for those stray souls who slip between the cracks only to emerge from those dark places with guns in their hands. Perhaps this time we can make that oneness last longer. Perhaps we can remember that kind words can conquer hate and vitriol. Perhaps we can remember to succor the meek, the powerless, the people who have been dealt a bum hand through no fault of their own. Perhaps we can remember that in situations like the Virginia Tech shootings that we are in fact all equal, that it could have been any one of us who died or knew someone who died and yes who knew the shooter, for death recognizes no classes, no races, no languages or cultures as superior. Most of all we can try to nurture that feeling that all of us struggle to feel right now, that feeling of empathy with other human beings we did not know before and whose friends and family we somehow each wish we could help. Posted by liberalamerican -- Original Source: http://thestrangedeathofliberalamerica.com/2007/04/16/in-memoriam-virginia-tech-april-16-2007/ Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported.
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The Tangled Thicket of Cho seung-hui, Don Imus, YouTube and American Idol
April 21st, 2007 Cho seung-hui, the Rutgers University women's basketball team, the students and Virginia Tech all form a tangled thicket nourished by the American media, overgrown with too many words, too many pictures and too many answers to too many bad questions. We, the American people struggle to navigate this thicket, for during the last few weeks we have only become more confused as if we have lost our sense of direction. You can enter any of these words in a search engine and lose all hope of finding any rationality, any thread that will lead you out. Technorati lists 152,000 blog selections for Virginia Tech, 23,000 for Cho and 4,788 for the Rutgers' team. With new posts on all of these each day, there are enough words that it would take a person probably a year to read them all. And yet we all seek a way out of this thicket of information, a clear path, a why that puts the last few weeks all in perspective. That the media have become such a tangled thicket rather than a clear voice represents perhaps the only generalization we can draw from these events and an indication of what has happened to America's sources and ideas about information. During past tragedies-the Kennedy assassination, Jonestown, the space shuttle explosion-somehow the media brought us together and enabled us to not only have a common source of information but also a shared sense of perspective. Just the opposite has occurred over the last few weeks. Instead of coming together we have thousands of information sources; instead of a shared sense of perspective we have something resembling a cubist painting crafted by a random group each with their own paints, brushes and sense of reality. Trying to come together has become an exercise in frustration, disappointment and even anger. The equilibrium many have found may even be misleading, for it comes from linking with a group of like-minded people who share their own prejudices and views of the world. So instead of finding a way out of the thicket they only wander in circles, going round and round in the same place, but thinking they have found the true path. The gun control people, the gun nuts, the racists, each have their own sources, each of which views the events through a different set of glasses. It is as if one saw green where another saw red. It is ironic that as the mainstream media have become more concentrated, the rest of our information sources have fragmented becoming the equivalent of those drug store magazine racks with titles and content that remain a mystery to those who are not part of whatever group to which that publication caters. We have an information system that in a metaphorical way reminds me of our increasing income gap, with a small amount at one end who have a lot and a lot at the other end who have only a small amount. The concentration of the American media has had what systems people would call an unintended consequence, for with that concentration has come increasing distrust produced by that very concentration. When you are so concentrated and so big it is very hard to hear disparate opinions, harder to evaluate them, and all but impossible to find a insightful analysis. That distrust in turn fuels the alternative media, for when people feel they are not listened to they turn to other sources. Those sources are most likely to be those whose web pages reflect their own minds. And because of our natural diversity, those alternative sources continue to multiply. Other factors also are at work. One I term the American Idol myth. That show exists in part because of the first premise-that the media are so concentrated they can no longer truly connect with people and so they neglect natural talents that in another time would have been stars. But it also exists because more and more people hunger for their thirty minutes of fame in a society that gives people little personal reinforcement. Then there is the most troubling part of it all: egos that drive many to think they ARE good. You can find all these themes in Cho's video and writings. Now transfer the previous paragraph to the world of information rather than entertainment. Our information sources no longer connect with people. People in turn think their information or research is as good as the experts. Pretty soon information and misinformation, truth and rumor become quickly entangled. You can find these themes in coverage of the shootings. In a society without any common definitions of what is good and what is trash, what is valid and what is fantasy, it is not surprising that people should often wander over the line between them. And it should also not be a surprise that when they wander over that line they should also wander over the line between what is moral and what is hellish, what are values and what are prejudices. Don Imus, Cho, certain blogs and YouTube videos all have that in common, for their minds were in themselves tangles of their own egos, a false reality, and ultimately a lack of values. Another factor is that the line between public and private no longer exists any more than the line between talent and trash, information and garbage. One of the most fascinating parts of both the Rutgers and Virginia Tech stories is that for the victims the media became almost as serious a problem as the perpetrators. In a story in this week's Sports Illustrated, the Rutgers women speak of being harassed by so many microphones and cameras that they were unable to lead normal lives. They talk about having to find ways to sneak to class so the media would not catch them or trying to escape the media in various way only to find the microphones have again invaded their privacy. One picture that sticks in my mind from Virginia Tech is of a banner hanging from a dorm saying "Media Stay Away," for those students, especially anyone with even the remotest connection to the shootings or the killer was hounded unmercifully. Think of each of these as maps that could help lead us out of the tangle. The lines between expertise and trash, information and misinformation, public and private have blurred as if someone spilled water on the map so everything ran together. That is what we have to guide us out of that thicket. The good news is that history tells us this information chaos is characteristic of changing times, especially times of large changes in how we understand and organize information. Marshall McLuhan saw this as driven by changes in media, so as we move from print to Internet just as we moved from oral sources to print, there is a period of unrest. Such periods, though, by their vary nature produce a flowering of creativity, some of which is not recognized until long after. So in that thicket lie geniuses. The message, then, of chaotic times is paradoxical for it asks that instead of closing our minds and walling off alternative realities we need to remain open to them. As anyone who has been in the woods can tell you, the way out of a confusing thicket is not to keep walking circles, but to carefully mark where you are and then explore various alternatives. It would be tragic if after the last two weeks America was to become more suspicious, more rigid, more judgmental. Posted by liberalamerican -- Original Source: http://thestrangedeathofliberalamerica.com/2007/04/21/the-tangled-thicket-of-cho-seung-hui-don-imus-youtube-and-american-idol/ Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported.
When I came around the corner, I was moved by the care given in this simple, but strong message.
Ignite-LA, a Southern California young adults ministry shows support for those at Virginia Tech by holding a special memorial service for those who lost their lives on April 16th. This is image of a collection of personal notes of prayer and encouragement, written by individuals in the congregation, that were later sent to Virginia Tech along with a banner that had similar notes written on it. Photo: Raul Moreno Jr.
Ignite-LA, a Southern California young adults ministry shows support for those at Virginia Tech by holding a special memorial service for those who lost their lives on April 16th. This is image of a collection of personal notes of prayer and encouragement, written by individuals in the congregation, that were later sent to Virginia Tech along with a banner that had similar notes written on it. Orginia source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nmly/469204121/in/set-72157600114401206/ Photo Courtesy of Raul Moreno Jr.
please visit the site below for a very touching tribute to what happened to all of Va. tech. The song writer who wrote this had just played the previous weekend in your area he was very touched, and was moved to write this song. www.blessthetechs.com may god be with each of you. P.S. This has been on my space and you tube since wednesday after the tragedy.
A nation can't be tarred by one killer
By Raymond Zhou Updated: 2007-04-19 07:10 The shooting rampage at Virginia Tech on Monday shocked the world. My thoughts and prayers are with the families and the community that suffered this senseless tragedy. Anyone with even a modicum of human compassion would feel the same. It is only natural for people to be curious about the identity of the gunman. However, in the quest for truth, there is a disturbing sign of linking an individual act with something larger. As long as the killer did not represent any group or harbor any political motive - as seems to be the case - any suggestion about his ethnicity will only add insult to injury and death. The rumor that he was Chinese before police positively identified him is indicative of a troubling trend, both in the US and in China, that one person, good or bad, somehow personifies a whole community, even a whole nation. Some US media commentators' implications based on his ethnicity were not only unprofessional but insidious. If he were Chinese, did that mean Chinese people are intrinsically hostile to the US? Or that an average Chinese would act that way? In a strange way, this reaction is reciprocated here in China. When news came that the killer was not Chinese, people heaved a collective sigh of relief. If you analyze the underlying logic, it means that his being Chinese would have incriminated all of us. Now that he was not, a few would say: "We Chinese would never do a crazy thing like that." The truth is, a lone killer with no agenda could be of any ethnicity. We have our share of these loners, including Lu Gang, who gunned down several of his schoolmates and teachers on a US campus, and Ma Jiajue, who hacked several of his classmates with a machete. Any society, no matter how well-balanced and harmonious, cannot be totally devoid of these people. They can never represent the society that they live in or that brought them up. Equating them with the society at large is to impugn innocent people who happen to share the killers' traits such as ethnicity or profession. It is guilt by association association of the most untenable kind. I can understand why some would resort to such simplistic reasoning. The tragedy is so enormous that it is sometimes hard to reckon with the cause without further embellishing it. How can one crazy person mow down so many others, people he probably didn't even know? While there is no way we can totally rid the world of such elements, there are, I believe, ways to minimize their damage. One is psychological aid, especially for those who, shut in a cocoon of their own, have difficulty communicating with others and have no outlet for releasing negative energy. In the US, postmen are said to be more vulnerable than other professions. In China, college students should receive more counseling. Sometimes, it is up to peers to reach out to those who do not seek help. Then, there is the easy availability of guns in America. While I fully respect US citizens' constitutional right to own guns, we must recognize that, in cases like the Virginia Tech incident, the use of guns was a crucial factor. If the killer did not have guns, he would probably have killed only a few people and could have more easily been constrained by others. It is not an exaggeration that it became the deadliest killing spree on an American campus mostly because he had two handguns, legally purchased. We will never live in a world where everyone is happy and treats others with respect. That's a utopian ideal. But we can at least limit gun access so that one person won't be able to inflict destruction on a massive scale. -- Original Source:China Daily http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/cndy/2007-04/19/content_853882.htm
All of the students and staff at my kids' school wore orange and maroon in honor of those killed at Virginia Tech. They then took this picture to send to the university. Simply beautiful. Original source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/razzlefrazzle/466540753/ Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommerical 2.0
Razzle Frazzle http://www.flickr.com/photos/razzlefrazzle/466540753/ Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommerical 2.0
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 http://www.somethingwithin.com/blog/?cat=73 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
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I am a college student at WCC in wytheville, Va. I am honored to stand with the faculty and students of Virginia Tech as a Hokie. I was able to visit VT on the Saturday after and i was overwhelmed by the sadness and heart break. They will over come because they are Hokies and they are strong. I will continue to pray for those who will grieve endlessly. Know that God is still God and no matter what we go through or the pain we feel Jesus is still here to see us through, to comfort us and guide us to the place He wants us. Much Love in Christ for the families and friends that lost loved ones..
Artist's Comments Image made for the newspaper I work at (Nyhedsavisen). Asking questions like "was the evil or just haunted? Was it something in his head or the society around him?" Kinda funny... A few months ago this was a guy I'd never ever have a chance to even know. And now I'm actually drawing him. Amazing what killing some people will get you. The media said he had no feelings, but I think he had too many of them. -- Provided courtesy of Riana Møller, http://www.fealasy.com/ Original Source: http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/55107879/
One week after the events at Virginia Tech UNLV students held a vigil. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5. Photo Taken by Ricardo Estrada
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 Permission: Ricardo Estrada estrad14@unlv.nevada.edu
Se entrega medalla póstuma a estudiantes
Por Ricardo Valdivieso y Yolanda Puyana Viernes 11 de Mayo del 2007 Después de la tragedia ocurrida en Blacksburg el 16 de abril, Sigma Delta Pi chapter de Virginia Tech, así como el profesorado y cuerpo estudiantil de esta institución, continúa con su agenda de trabajo en la organización de la ceremonia de graduación hispana. Como en años anteriores, esta sociedad entregó la ceremonia de graduación y reconocimiento académico a 30 estudiantes hispanos de Virginia Tech. Estos graduados con grados de licenciatura, maestría y Ph.D.,fueron distinguidos con la medalla Gesta Hispana por parte de esta asociación. Este año, esta ceremonia de graduación adquiere un significado muy especial, ya que la misma se dedicó a los estudiantes Juan Ramon Ortíz Ortíz originario de Puerto Rico, candidato para la maestría de ingeniería civil, y al peruano Daniel Alejandro Pérez Cueva. Estos dos jóvenes hispanos a los que se les entregó su medalla en forma póstuma, fueron dos de las víctimas de la masacre en la que otros 30 estudiantes y profesores perdieron la vida. Los hechos trágicos del pasado mes, que han comovido no sólo a las comunidades de Blacksburg y Virginia sino al mundo entero, no deben ser un punto de referencia cuando se habla de Virginia Tech, una institución de un alto nivel académico y una de los mejores institutos politécnicos en el país. Esta universidad fué fundada en 1872 y cuenta con más de 60 programas de licenciatura y 140 maestrias y doctorados. También está considerada dentro de las 100 universidades en el país con mejores programas de investigación. Fundada en 1919, Sigma Delta Pi es una Sociedad Honoraria Hispana y miembro de Association of College Honor Societies. SDP honra a estudiantes que han completado tres años en el estudio del español a nivel universitario Antonio Fernández Vásquez, associate professor of Spanish y el director del Intensive Second Language Institute de Virginia Tech, y quien recientemente ha sido electado vice presidente regional de Sigma Delta Pi, mencionó que el capitulo de SDP de Virginia Tech se ha ganado la condecoración "Capitulo Honor y Mérito" los último tres años de entre más de 500 capítulos en la nación. La comunidad hispana del Valle de Roanoke se unió a la celebración de esta ceremonia de graduación, felicitando a los graduados hispanos, que al completar sus estudios superiores son ejemplo y modelos a seguir para muchos de nuestros niños y jóvenes. En un mundo como el de hoy, dinámico y voluble, es necesario recordar el papel de las universidades. Además de educar un rol importante de una universidad es el de establecer lazos comunicantes con la comunidad y ser un reflejo de la sociedad donde se encuentra. El pensador francés Michel Maffesoli cita en su libro Posmodernidad: "Toda Universidad debe aspirar a ser una ciudad, sólo así se podrá evitar la tajante separación entre el estudio y la vida diaria, entre el aula y la calle, entre el claustro y la urbe." Después de la tragedia, Virginia Tech continúa dinámicamente con su ritmo de vida, cumpliendo con su labor formativa y manteniendo estrechos vínculos con su comunidad. -- Fuente Original: The Roanoke Times Roanoke.com - Roanoke, VA. http://www.roanoke.com/columnists/spanish/wb/wb/xp-116444
Yolanda Puyana, Columnista mcyrp@hotmail.com Autorizacion: 22 de julio del 2007
By Richard Crocker, College Chaplain Friday, April 20, 2007 To the Editor: We mourn the deaths of students and faculty at Virginia Tech ("Virginia Tech gunman kills 32 in bloodbath," April 17). It is appropriate and natural that we should do so. We identify with the victims and their friends and families, because they are like us. They are students and staff at a university in a very pastoral location. Our own sense of security is threatened by this violence. Already, in e-mails and blogs, I am hearing calls for greater college security, ranging from arming campus police to allowing students to arm themselves. Our sense of invulnerability at Dartmouth has, despite some very tragic events, remained rather strong. Last year I attended my son's graduation from a college in New York City; all guests went through metal detectors and had their belongings examined. This is, of course, a great contrast to the Dartmouth graduation. While I understand that conversations about campus security will inevitably, and perhaps productively, occur, I hope that one important fact does not get ignored: senseless violence is horrible wherever it occurs, whether in Darfur or Israel or Palestine or Iraq. The deaths at Virginia Tech are devastating, but their number is a fraction of those being killed daily in Iraq or Darfur. This does not mean that we should grieve these students' deaths less; rather, it means that we should grieve all violent deaths more. And, unless our grief produces opposition to violence, it is futile. Every life lost at Virginia Tech was precious; the loss is incalculable. But every life lost to violence anywhere is equally precious. Let us remember, and speak. -- Original Source: The Dartmouth - April 20, 2007 Reprinted with the permission of The Dartmouth
"Edward D. Kalletta III" <publisher@thedartmouth.com>
By Richard Lodge/Daily News staff GHS Fri Apr 20, 2007, 12:20 AM EDT The debate over gun control in the wake of Monday's massacre at Virginia Tech had already reached the presidential campaign trial by midweek, and it's sure to surface many times between now and November 2008. Why had it been so easy for Cho Seung-Hui to buy a 9mm handgun from a Virginia gun shop, then use it to kill 32 fellow students and professors at Virginia Tech, those within the gun-control faction asked? If only the Virginia legislature hadn't voted down a bill in late 2006 that would have allowed students and staff at VT to carry guns on campus, Cho would have faced armed resistance before Monday became a massacre, declared the defenders of the Second Amendment. This tragic slice of life in America is only partly about guns, although that's likely what the debate will boil down to. The Virginia Tech massacre is about mental illness and whether we can learn to recognize it and treat it. As more comes out about Cho's disturbing behavior, the trail of red flags seems clear. One of his professors, Lucinda Roy, raised the alarm years ago about Cho's disturbing writings and behavior and tried to urge him into counseling. Virginia authorities revealed that in December 2005, a court magistrate ordered Cho to undergo an evaluation at a psychiatric hospital. The magistrate signed the order after an initial evaluation found probable cause that Cho was mentally ill and was a danger to himself or others. So how could Cho so easily buy a handgun - legally - from a Roanoke gun shop to use in his murderous spree? Tougher gun laws might have delayed Cho's purchase with a waiting period, but his lack of a criminal record would not have prevented the gun dealer from selling him the weapon. Should psychiatric exams be part of the process to buy a gun? There's not a legislature in the country that would have the backbone to do that. And even if they did, how would such an exam be done without excluding and stigmatizing anyone who has been treated for depression or sought psychiatric help at some point? Unlike a felony record, which is an obvious stop sign in the legal purchase of a gun, mental health records would be open to interpretation, and possibly abuse, by the reviewing authority. But history shows you don't need to buy a gun legally to commit a massacre. Anyone bent on crime can buy a gun on the black market or steal one. Closer to home, the tragic fatal stabbing at Lincoln-Sudbury High School earlier this year shows that a weapon as basic as a kitchen carving knife can be the means to a terrible end. But for wide-scale school violence, the common thread of mental illness and easily obtained guns is clear. For example: Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the Columbine High School killers, bought a rifle and two shotguns through a straw purchaser, illegally circumventing the law. Five years after the Columbine massacre and the suicides of Harris and Klebold, the FBI's lead investigator and several psychiatrists labeled Harris a clinical psychopath and Klebold as a "depressive" under Harris's influence. In 1998, Mitchell Johnson, 13, and Andrew Golden, 11, stole seven firearms from the home of Golden's grandfather and used some of them to kill four students and a teacher at a school in Jonesboro, Ark. In March 2005, Jeffrey Weise killed his grandfather, stole two of his guns, then used those guns and a third one to kill seven people at Red Lake High School in Minnesota. Even mass murderers who bought guns legally have tended to have mental problems as a common theme. Charles Whitman, who used the rifle he bought at a hardware store to kill 15 people from his perch in a University of Texas clock tower in 1966, had been prescribed medication for depression. In 1992, student Wayne Lo used an SKS rifle he bought legally at a store in Pittsfield, Mass., to kill a teacher and student - and wound four others - at Simon's Rock of Bard College in Great Barrington. Experts at his trial disagreed on whether Lo suffered from schizophrenia or simply had a "narcissistic personality disorder." Time and time again, killers - almost always men - murder innocents. It's impossible to imagine that any of these killers is sane. The Rev. Paul Papas, a pastoral counselor and president of NAMI (the National Alliance on Mental Illness, Framingham chapter), agreed Wednesday that mental illness is a likely trait among those like Cho. "It's all about choice, about a person's ability to choose," Papas said. In Cho's case, evidence now says a professor and several others who knew Cho tried to convince him to seek counseling. Apparently immersed so deeply in his own mental quagmire, Cho rebuffed offers of help and rarely even spoke with other people. Asked what lesson might come out of this week's tragedy in Virginia, Papas suggested that people paying attention and caring for others might be a good start. "Anybody who has any kind of relationship with somebody else, hopefully they would see changes in that person and recognize that they might need help, and that they should seek help," Papas said. But, as we're learning this week, getting through to a person as deeply troubled as Cho might be more than is humanly possible. Richard Lodge is editor of The Daily News and writes a column published on Friday. His e-mail is rlodge@cnc.com. -- Original Source: http://www.dailynewstribune.com/columnists/x232888155 Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5.
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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. http://www.hokiesports.com/convocation.html -- Archived with permission of the author. Original Source: Manufacturing and Technology News, April 27, 2007, Volume 14, No. 8 http://www.manufacturingnews.com/news/07/0427/art1.html
Richard McCormack (editor@manufacturingnews.com)
Sometimes I'm just amazed at the ignorance of people. I've come across many blog entries that are outright idiotic but usually chalk it up to 'that's where they're coming from' or 'everyone's entitled to their opinion'. However, some Erie bloggers recently have been spewing forth complete garbage that needs to be addressed. The gist is this: those students killed at Virginia Tech were partly to blame for their death by not fighting back. Underlying this is the premise that American's have been lulled into submission and taught not to self-defend. I reject this in all of its absurdity and callousness. I was absolutely furious this morning after reading these two Erie bloggers, Sassafrassin and Kodera, for their statements. To try and disguise their comments as intellectual or serious commentary would be disingenuous. Flat out, they are out of line and need to be called out on their statements and insinuations. Disregarding the fact that no one really knows what was going on in the minds of those who were murdered, but to turn around and somehow place the blame on them is reprehensible. It's disgusting. It's obscene. Although part of me realizes that what is going on here are people trying to understand and give meaning to what is completely senseless and without explanation, these kinds of statements reveal underlying problems of our society. Not only does it reveal a deeper violent tendency, but a lack of ability for compassion and understanding--both of which are essential to Peace in this world. To these two bloggers, who seem to be professedly conservative (and at least one has expressed he is Christian), Jesus Christ would be considered a liberal pansy for allowing himself to be executed and for making the statement, "If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn to him the other also." Instead we're all expected to be like warriors in some Hollywood flick, living up to superficial ideals. You know, part of my response and anger to these two bloggers has to do with the fact that I'm confused and angry about what happened as well. But I hope that I have enough sense to step back and to see the humanity of it all but more importantly God in all of this. While working out at the gym, I was randomly watching the overhead television sets when a particular segment on Good Morning America caught my eye. A young woman who almost found herself killed and even lost a friend in the massacre said this: "I lost, I lost a friend. I lost one of the girls in my Bible study. And I know, I know, I know that she's already forgiven him. I know she was probably praying for him when he was in her classroom and when he was shooting people." I was shocked when I saw that she said this and also said herself that she wants to forgive as well. Instead of placing blame or expressing hatred, this young woman has a sense clarity and perspective that those of us could only hope to have. Also, if you watch the video of her accounting of what happened, I think you'll see how ridiculous these two bloggers suggestions are. We should be trying to do more good in this world, not talk about how if we would be in the situation of those students at Virginia Tech how we would beat our chest and smash someone's skull in. Violence begets violence and this kind of discourse only sustains the miserable status quo. Instead of trying to blame one another, we should be supporting each other through prayer and solace. Here's something you can do if you're feeling helpless after this tragic event: do something nice for a complete stranger this week if the opportunity arises--hold the door longer than you normally would, resist flipping off that driver who cut you off, or buy that homeless guy a cup of coffee or a sandwich. Your act doesn't have to raise to the level of heroic--just human. It's all that we can expect of each other. Posted by RichardZ.com on April 19, 2007 11:46 AM | Permalink -- Original Source: RichardZ.com http://richardz.com/blog_archive/2007/04/virginia_tech_massacrefinding_peace.php Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.
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Former Buckeyes retell events of VT massacre By: Rick Krumreig Posted: 4/25/07 Locked down in an office. Shades drawn, lights off, TV on, laptops humming. Ambulances screaming down the street with police scattered all around, guns drawn. This is the scene associate professor Beth Waggenspack witnessed last Monday on the Virginia Tech campus. "It was more surreal than you can imagine," she said. Waggenspack is an associate professor of communication at VT and a 1983 Ohio State graduate. She was locked down in her office - two blocks from Norris Hall where the second shooting took place - for almost three hours after word of the shooting spread. "Loudspeakers were going off saying, 'this is an emergency, lock your doors and windows,'" Waggenspack said. "You just don't expect to hear that." Nearly a week and a half after the incident, Waggenspack said the university is doing everything it can to get things back on track. Counseling is being offered to any student who needs it and the Red Cross is on campus to offer assistance. Waggenspack said the semester is almost over at VT and some students have decided not to return, but many are staying the course and banding together. "You have never seen hugging on a college campus like this in your life," she said. Waggenspack also said the local media has covered the story thoroughly, including showing the outside support that VT is receiving. Julia Reusch is a 2003 OSU graduate and the 6 p.m. producer for WSLS, the NBC affiliate in Roanoke, Va. Reusch said when the story broke, the newsroom was in awe. "Things like that don't happen around here, it was just shocking," Reusch said. Reusch said the station made a decision to pull the footage that NBC received from the shooter. Reusch said it was important to get some of the questions surrounding the incident answered, but after they were answered, the footage did not need to be shown again. She also said students for the most part have been willing to talk about the situation to the local media. Waggenspack said the national media, however, has been an intrusive presence. "They are going up to crying students and sticking a microphone in their faces," Waggenspack said. Waggenspack also said there are flyers posted on all classroom buildings asking the media to stay out. Despite being in the national spotlight and having such a media presence on campus, Reusch said the resolve of the VT community has been incredible. "They are so proud of where they are from and who they are and I think that has really helped them so far," Reusch said. Aside from that, Waggenspack said the amount of outside support has been tremendous. She said VT's student center is full of banners from colleges and universities across the country. Waggenspack has heard from people that she has not spoken to in years. Everyone from her OSU adviser to her high school boyfriend has been in contact with her. "Every bit of this support is appreciated," Waggenspack said. Now that some time has passed, Waggenspack said campus is starting to return to normal. "I can no longer think of the 'what ifs.' Now I am thinking of what's next," she said. Waggenspack said campus is as close to normal as possible, but there is a different feel. People are still somber and there is a large police presence on campus, but the mood is generally optimistic and the VT community wants to move forward. "One victim who was shot three times forgave Cho two days after the incident," Reusch said. Waggenspack is confident that VT will not waver and the Hokie spirit will continue to stay strong. "This is something that we will recover from, but we will be changed by," Waggenspack said. Rick Krumreig can be reached at krumreig.2@osu.edu. -- Original Source:The Lantern - April 25, 2007
By: Rob Olson Posted: 4/19/07 This is how it happens, a tragedy so great that if we were to truly comprehend it, we would find ourselves incapacitated with grief. Speeches, national debates, 24-hour news channels, investigations, prayers and vigils. Feelings of confusion, anger, sorrow, despair. Politicians and community leaders across the nation issuing statements with identical tones and meanings. The same words appear in every one: tragedy, grief, horrific, shock, violence prevention, counseling services, thoughts and prayers, and so on. We go through the same motions and emotions. We find the old familiar paths in our minds that we've tread before with other instances of mindless slaughter: Columbine, the Amish schoolhouse shootings, people going postal at work. At least 9/11 and other terror attacks were part of some greater war of ideologies, a "clash of civilizations," as historian Samuel P. Huntington has dubbed it. This was about nothing. It had no larger purpose, no thought or reason, none of the usual gains for the perpetrator, like money or power. This was evil in its purest, most basic form. Evil for the sake of evil. Killing for the sake of killing. I write a political column. So what's my political angle? The abhorrent way some in the world community have spun the tragedy, with the Italian Il Manifesto newspaper calling it "as American as apple pie"? A vessel to expand the debate on gun rights versus gun control in America? No, I don't feel up to the task of such columns. They feel like hollow diversions in the face of such an atrocity. I want to take no political angle. Politics is about division and conflict. A tragedy of this magnitude should not be used for political debate; not yet, anyway. I don't know if justice can be done to the topic, or if I have the capability to address the worst school shooting in United States history. But here I write, attempting to describe the indescribable. How naive of me. Sueng-Hui Cho, 23, killed 32 people on the Virginia Tech campus and then turned one of his guns on his own face. His rampage was probably inspired by an argument with an ex-girlfriend, who may have gotten a new boyfriend. She was the first of his victims. It seems Cho simply lost it, just like the killers at Columbine, and hated the world so much that he sought to do as much damage as possible before ending his own life. Killing so many people without a logical motive required a ruthless mixture of hatred, insanity and, as one friend pointed out to me, selfishness. The terrible truth that no one talks about is that we really have little power to prevent these occurrences. Supposedly a number of people around this psychopath were afraid of what he might do, and referred him to counseling and to authorities. At first glance, people around him acted correctly in response to various warning signs. But only so much could be done, and it wasn't enough. We rely on some sense of sanity from our fellow man that stops us from doing what Cho did. When that is gone, when sheer malevolence and bloodlust find home in someone's heart, what are we to do? How can atrocities like what happened at Virginia Tech be prevented from occurring on our own campus? Usually these catastrophes are headed off, but other times they slip through, and all we can do is pick up the pieces, and mourn those lost to us forever in this world. But when we "pick up the pieces," we have one overriding but unspoken goal in mind: to restore faith in our own humanity. When we hear of what Cho did, we no longer believe in ourselves and in our species as inherently good, and we are compelled to respond. We cannot let Cho have the final word. That's why the politicians make their pronouncements of grief, why we write our columns, congregate for our vigils and join our Facebook groups that reach thousands of members before the first day is even over. The tragedy of Virginia Tech isn't a political debate, but a debate on the soul of humanity. No wonder we feel it so keenly. You lose, Cho. Humanity wins. -- Original Source:The California Aggie - April 19, 2007
Thursday, April 26, 2007 The latest death toll figures from Hurricane Katrina can be seen on this website here. Have any fellow Lefties noticed that the Blogosphere seems to be a disgusting, rightwing place? Have you noticed that it seems like rightwing blogs are far overrepresented in terms of the percentage of rightwingers in society, and leftwing and centrist blogs seem to be less common? I do not know what the answer is, but it may have something to do with how organized the rightwing is in this country and how unorganized the Left and even the Center are. The whole newspaper, newsmagazine, TV news and radio news industry in the US is tilted towards the Right. The Left is broke or lack voices in a corporatized media. Anyway, seems the VT shooting case has been most taken up by rightwing bloggers. Why is that? Doesn't the Left have anything to say about this? But a look at the rightwing blogs and their take on this shooting is instructive. For one thing, the entire rightwing blogosphere is in hyper-defensive screech mode regarding gun control. That's the only significant noise I hear out of the US media, bloggers or otherwise, these days on gun control and VT: Well, despite this shooting, we sure as Hell don't need gun control, now do we? The cries for more gun control are few and far between. What a strange way to react to a mass shooting. One wonders how many more mass shootings it will take before Americans come to their senses about gun control, if ever. The reaction of the foreign press is instructive: Most foreign outlets, from India to Britain, are flabbergasted at how easy it is to buy a gun in the US. They treat Americans like a bunch of insane aliens and our society as sick and depraved. On that level, they are correct. Do we Americans deserve what we get? We love our guns, we react furiously to any attempts to control them, and consequently we put up with appalling amounts of gun crime and regular mass shootings. Are we asking for it? Just as I suspected, a poll showed no change in Americans' attitudes about gun control. The public is pretty much split down the middle on this issue, with 49% supporting no change or loosening of gun laws and 47% supporting increased restrictions. 60% of women support tightening gun laws, while only 35% of men do. 55% of minorities support tougher laws, while only 44% of Whites do. Urban dwellers support tougher laws, while suburban and rural residents (read: Whites) do not. 60% of Democrats support tougher gun laws, while only 35% of Republicans do. What is truly insane about these statistics is that the populations that are least affected by gun violence are the most vociferous in favor of guns, usually on the basis that they are terrified of crime. Republican White suburban and rural males are the strongest gun supporters, yet they are the least likely males to be affected. Same with Republican White suburban and rural women. The more gun violence a population experiences, the more they are in favor of restrictions. The less gun violence an area experiences, the more strongly they want their guns. I'm sure there is a psychological explanation for this somewhere, but I wish someone would show it to me. The political class is terrified of the issue, including both the Republican and Democratic Parties. Democratic Party operatives blame the party's pro-gun control stance to the party's losses in the 1994 elections and Al Gore's win, which the Supreme Court turned into a loss, in 2000. For those who doubt that the US has an insane gun homicide rate, check out this statistic: America has a higher gun homicide rate amongst kids age 5-14 than in the top 25 other industrialized countries combined. Now tell me that statistic is caused by "too few guns" or has nothing to do with America being a gun-flooded society. To show you just how deranged the US rightwing is, look at the coverage of the VT shooting. What was it focused on? Stupid liberals allowed the shooting to happen by refusing to arm all your students! I kid you not. Update: As of April 30, in light of this case, Virginia has tightened up its gun laws so that no one who has ever been involuntarily hospitalized for psychiatric reasons can buy a gun in the state. Cho slipped through a loophole in a previous law because he was treated as an outpatient, and, while evaluated, he was not committed. The loophole enabled him to make his gun purchases. Predictably, Furious Seasons is opposed to the new regulations. This blog strongly supports gun control and thinks hardly anyone should be able to own a handgun, much less someone with a record of being hospitalized as a danger to yourself or others. Another common theme was the lunatic Right's insane Islamophobia and outright hatred for all Muslims. Although Cho surely is about as far from being a Muslim as anyone can get, the Rightwing has been utterly obsessed, to the point of near-psychosis, with the notion that Cho must have been a Muslim terrorist! Evidence? Well, that Ismail Ax thing written on his arm. That proves he's Al Qaeda, right? They have been digging up statistics showing that a whole 50 South Koreans are studying Islam at madrassas and that Islam is the fastest growing religion in (largely nonreligious) South Korea (a dubious statistic). All this proves that Cho is...a South Korean Muslim terrorist Al Qaeda! What about Emily Hilscher, his first victim? Name sounds kinda...Jewish, huh? Bingo! Al Qaeda Muslim terrorist! He nailed a Jew first thing. None other than "Drudge" came up with that bit of insanity. What about that Saudi reporter who shot the video camera footage of the shots outside Norris Hall? Investigate the Arab bastard! He was obviously in on it! Not to mention, Arabia being evil enough, that his name is Bargouti, and he is really one of those evil Palestinian non-peoples; in fact, he is related to a prominent Palestinian family and one of his relatives is a dirty Pallie terrorist! Investigate the Arab-PLO-Saudi-South Korean Al Qaeda connection right now! When people talk about Islamophobia or hatred of Arabs, I tend to roll my eyes. There is certainly a lot to criticize about Arab culture and Islam period, actually existing and historical versions. But the Rightwing's hatred for Arabs and Islam is simply pathological and insane, and nothing proves it more than the VT shooting. How bout some other angles. I would have thought pulling an anti-immigrant angle out of this would be too low, but a number of rightwingers found reason to call for an end to immigration. Why? One guy, who immigrated 15 years ago, went nuts and killed some people. Let's lock down the borders! We all know the Rightwing is racist, no matter how much they insist that they are not. What I didn't know is that they hate Asians too. But of course they do. When they weren't examining the hidden Cho-Al Qaeda link, they were plumbing the depths of something called "South Korean supremacism". Does it even exist? Turns out a lot of South Koreans don't like Americans too much. Consequently, Cho being an anti-American South Korean Leftist radical and all that, this inscrutable Asian supremacism combined with Commie America-hatred surely spurred this mad spree. You would think this is the lunatic Right, but no, what we are talking about is the solid 30% of population or so that continues to support George Bush and everything dumb he has ever done to the hilt. The "normal" Right and the insane Right in the US are equivalent. That's almost as scary as Mr. Cho. Examples? Look at the comment threads on Hot Air, the huge rightwing blog, here, here and here. Check out the comment thread on the big rightwing blog Riehl World View. Don't even bother with the comments - check the actual post itself on the loony Lord of Swans blog. That's pretty representative, but if you look around you find that insanity reproduced all over the rightwing blogosphere. Note: Readers should carefully read the Commenting Rules before commenting to avoid having their comments edited or deleted and to avoid being banned from the site. posted by Robert Lindsay at 4/26/2007 06:00:00 PM -- Original Source: http://robertlindsay.blogspot.com/2007/04/rightwingers-go-insane-over-vt-shooting.html Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.
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