We Are Virginia Tech
creator: Chris Berry
contributor: Brent Jesiek
rights: 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. You must be 13 years of age or older to submit material to us. Your submission of material constitutes your permission for, and consent to, its dissemination and use in connection with The April 16 Archive in all media in perpetuity. If you have so indicated on the form, your material will be published on The April 16 Archive web site (with or without your name, depending on what you have indicated). Otherwise, your submitted materials will only be available to approved researchers using The April 16 Archive. The material you submit must have been created by you, wholly original, and shall not be copied from or based, in whole or in part, upon any other photographic, literary, or other material, except to the extent that such material is in the public domain. Further, submitted material must not violate any confidentiality, privacy, security or other laws. By submitting material to The April 16 Archive you release, discharge, and agree to hold harmless The April 16 Archive and persons acting under its permission or authority, including a public library or archive to which the collection might be donated for purposes of long-term preservation, from any claims or liability arising out the The April 16 Archive's use of the material, including, without limitation, claims for violation of privacy, defamation, or misrepresentation. The April 16 Archive has no obligation to use your material. You will be sent via email a confirmation of your contribution to The April 16 Archive. We cannot return any material you submit to us so be sure to keep a copy. The April 16 Archive will not share your email address …

Stop the Violence
description: 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 ev…
creator: Rev. Dr. Renita J. Weems
date: 2008-02-11
contributor: Brent Jesiek
rights: Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States
language: eng

The Virginia Tech Shootings: A Case for Redundant Communications
description: By Fred Burton Tuesday, April 17th, 2007 Campus police at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Va., on April 17 identified the perpetrator of the shooting rampage on campus a day earlier as South Korean English student Cho Seung Hui. Thirty-three people died as a result of the attack and several others were injured, some seriously. The shooting began about 7:15 a.m. on the fourth floor of co-ed dormitory West Ambler Johnston Hall. According to reports, Cho shot and killed his girlfriend and then a resident assistant who responded to the sound of the shots. Police were investigating those shootings when Cho stormed Norris Hall, a classroom building some half a mile away, and opened fire on faculty and students, killing another 30 people. The rampage ended when Cho killed himself. Authorities have not released many of the details of the attack, though several important points can be ascertained from the known facts. Given the history of school and university shootings in the United States, the certainty that others will occur and the warning from the FBI about a possible Beslan-style militant attack, the lessons from the Virginia Tech attack can be instructive - perhaps even lifesaving. Methodical Planning First, the shooting was planned in advance and methodically executed. This conclusion is supported by the fact that Cho carried two pistols and loads of ammunition, that he went directly to another building for the second phase of the attack and that he used chains to secure the main doors to Norris Hall before opening fire. The chains served to keep targets inside the building and to impede the entry of responding law enforcement officers. Cho had studied the building and planned accordingly. Although criticism has begun over the level of security at Norris Hall, and Virginia Tech in general, attacks of this nature cannot be prevented by security devices and programs. Educational institutions, especially sprawling universities, are sof…
creator: Fred Burton
date: 2007-09-22
contributor: Brent Jesiek
rights: Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License
language: eng

Where do we go now?
description: Sometimes I can be really eloquent. Giving a toast at a wedding, a briefing at work; I can really hit the post. I've been wanting to write about how I feel here for two days. But I haven't, stopped by disbelief, the taxes I couldn't bring myself to finish on Monday, and the belief that I wouldn't adequately be able to put together words to explain what Blacksburg and Tech have meant to me. That picture, http://farm1.static.flickr.com/5/6929893_3276db6dfb_m.jpg, is of a couple of my old room mates Jeff (in glasses) and Donnie tailgating at the Tech - USC game in August of 2004. I graduated from Virginia Tech in 1986, with a Bachelor of Arts in International Studies. 20 plus years later, we are still close friends. Probably closer than we were in school. We vacation together, are godparents to each others kids, and watch football obviously. Blacksburg is a special place. When you're there, you might not realize how special. It's beautiful, peaceful and even knows how to have a good time. I have idyllic (and therefore heavily filtered) memories of my time at school. I think that's why all of my old room mates and I are still such good friends. When you leave Blacksburg, you realize that the real world isn't so beatiful, isn't so peaceful, isn't so special. And you reach out and hold on to whatever can give you a little of that Blacksburg feeling again. After 20 years you'll still see most of the alumni I know dressed pretty much like the kids you've been watching on TV this week. Virginia Tech Sweatshirts and Hats are ubiguitous. Returning to Blacksburg, was to drink in that atmosphere, to rejuvenate the energy that the real world has sapped from you. Coming around the 460 bypass and seeing the mountains rise up beyond campus elated me. A burger at Mike's, a pitcher at Hokie House, a walk across campus returned me to the man of my youth. And now that bastard has let so much of the real world into Blacksburg, where it doesn't belong and isn't welcome. It's amazing the l…
creator: Paul Trumble
date: 2007-08-19
contributor: Paul Trumble
language: eng

Virginia Tech Massacre--Finding Peace
description: 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 …
creator: RichardZ
date: 2007-08-09
contributor: Brent Jesiek
rights: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States
language: eng

Status Anxiety Pt. 2: How Did We Get Here...How Do We Get Out
description: Yesterday we talked about Status Anxiety and how it related to the Virginia Tech shootings. Today we continue talking about it and focus in on Alain de Button's book by the same title Status Anxiety. Part of understanding Status anxiety is viewing the transition from status that was given by heredity to a system where people who don't earn status are seen as failures. The example used in Alain de Button's book is that of Christianity the major religion of western societies and the one that the VT shooter ranted about in the infamous videos sent to NBC. The gospels have three stories that Jesus told during his life time that provide an example of how people were viewed. The first story is summarized as, "The poor are not responsible for their condition and are the most useful in society." The second story says, "Low status has no moral connotations," and the final story says, "The rich are sinful and corrupt and owe their wealth to their robbery of the poor," aka, "It is harder for a rich man to enter heaven than it is for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle." Now contrast those with the stories that have emerged in our western societies. The first of these says, "The rich are the useful ones, not the poor." The second says, "One's status does have moral connotations," and the final alteration to the stories surmises that, "The poor are sinful and corrupt and owe their poverty to their stupidity." This is a form of meritocracy. In this system, "all persons, however humble, know they have had every chance...If they have been labeled dunce repeatedly they cannot any longer pretend...Are they not bound to recognize that they have an inferior status, not as in the past because they were denied opportunity, but because they ARE inferior." All of this plays into the recent shootings because something of this magnitude generates questions that demand answers. Questions like, how could this have be prevented? What causes people to act out in such a violent fashion? I…
creator: AJ Meyer
date: 2007-08-05
contributor: Brent Jesiek
rights: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5
language: eng

Status Anxiety and What Happened at Virginia Tech Pt. 1
description: By now the mass media has inundated you with coverage of the Virginia Tech massacre, but I don't want to rehash the details of the event. I want to take a deeper look at a possible motive. Some people will argue about gun control, or the failure of the mental health community. While these are salient issues they miss what I gathered from the videos to be an overarching reason behind his rampage. He like many school gunman before him felt inferior to his peers. He turned this "status anxiety" inward until it manifested in a maniacal rampage. Status Anxiety, I'm pretty sure that the people living in Rublyovo know all about it. From what I've heard Los Angeles is right up there too (I'll let you know this summer). Increasingly and unexpectedly another type of high status local has begun to emerge in previously quite towns like Bloomington, IN. That's right, university towns are working hard to be included in the same breathe as other high status locals. It used to be that college was a time when people ate ramen and being "poor" was rite of passage. Not anymore. I'm sure that some students still have a tough time at college, but increasingly the term poor college kid is a joke. Youth and excess money make these towns the perfect starting place for status anxiety. Before we go on lets give a quick explanation of status anxiety before I am labeled a communist and you quit reading. The basis of the problem can be summed up by William James's simple equation Self Esteem = Success Expectations The problem is that in our modern society expectations continue to rise at rates that are unattainable for most people. This creates a rise in levels of status anxiety which translates into a rise in levels of concern about importance, achievement, and income. What happens then is that self-esteem suffers. People feel anxious about their lives. They feel that life is not amounting to what they expected. In the worst case scenarios like the one at Virginia Tech people take out their fr…
creator: AJ Meyer
date: 2007-08-05
contributor: Brent Jesiek
language: eng

What If It Happened Every Day?
description: By Keith Boykin, in politics Tuesday, April 17 2007, 10:24AM The news was gruesome and alarming. Reuters reported that at least 30 people were shot yesterday in a deadly gun rampage that rocked a city once known for its safety and scholarship. By now, you've heard about the story, and many of us have already stopped paying attention. But I'm not talking about the deadly school shooting in Virginia Monday morning. I'm talking about the deadly violence in Iraq 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 shot and killed in Baghdad on the same day. The shock and horror of watching such dramatic violence in Virginia immediately resonated with Americans. But here'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'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'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're still fighting in Baghdad? I don'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 1.4 million violent crimes in the U.S. in 2005 and more than 16,000 murders. That's a drop from the record high figures in t…
creator: Keith Boykin
date: 2007-07-17
contributor: Brent Jesiek
rights: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 1.0
language: eng

Virginia tech shooting
description: Wednesday, April 18, 2007 A nutcase shot 32 people and himself in Virginia tech. He was a loner, was obsessed with violence, and left some notes blaming "rich kids" and "debauchery" (that is, disapproved of other people having more money and getting laid more often than himself - which is a rather common human emotion, but most people don't go postal because of it). The university is being blamed for not acting fast enough on the day of the shooting. I don't know if they should be blamed for it - I am sure an investigation will find out, one way or another - but what I would like to know is how come the university did not do anything after the guy harassed a few women and set fire to the dorm. (Maybe there is some good answer to that, too.) The man has also written two plays that the readers found very violent and highly disturbing. Here they are. I have read them and have not found them particularly violent or disturbing: they are rather violent, but I and people I know have written worse without shooting anyone, and they are quite angry in a teenagery way, but nothing really out of ordinary. They would not have rung a warning bell with me. I wonder if that's just me being desensitized to violence, or the people did not really see anything scary about them earlier and are just having a flash of hindsight now, or do the creative writing teachers and students see warnings much more efficiently than ordinary people like myself. There was a lot of conversation of gun control after this. I have no strong opinion on gun control one way or the other, at least as long as it does not interfere with my pistol shooting hobby (and currently in Finland it doesn't), but after seeing several people in the US point out that the gunman could have been stopped earlier if any of the students or teachers had a gun on them, and several of my friends on IRC make fun of this argument, I must say that those people in the US really do have a point: I don't, generally speaking, believe that…
creator: Vera Izrailit
date: 2007-07-17
contributor: Brent Jesiek
rights: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License
language: eng

Guns Don't Kill People, Kids Who Play Video Games Kill People...
description: April 18, 2007 I apologize in advance for the tone of this piece. I thoroughly appreciate the devastating gravity of the situation, and I extend my heartfelt condolences to those families and friends affected. Blacksburg, Virginia. Less than a week ago, nothing would have sprung to mind. In fact, many would not even have known this small town existed. Now, for obvious reasons, it's on the map. The events of April 16 serve as a reminder - a reminder that society is imperfect; that society is unpredictable; and that society is unprepared. In fairness to those involved, the events at Virgina Tech could not have been predicted with any ease. What happened was not a commonplace, run-of-the-mill, every-day happening. I won't even go so far as to say that what happened could have been prevented - there is no reasonable way of knowing that. What I will do, however, is take a few quick shots at the aftermath. Everyone has their own concocted theory on how to respond to this type of situation. Pat Brown, for example, argues that whoever was the owner of the weapons used in the attack should be held accountable for the deaths of each and every student and professor on Monday. She believes that somehow, this would prevent a psychopath from acquiring the weapons they would choose to employ for such causes. The real world begs to differ, Pat. What we need to take away from the Virginia Tech Massacre is very simple - there are people out there that need help. Guns didn't kill those students; the Asian man didn't kill those professors; what transpired at Virginia Tech is exactly what happened at Columbine, Taber, Montreal, and every other mass shooting. These people were neglected. Do I believe in any way that whatever circumstances the shooter may have been put through justify his actions? No. Reciprocity, particularly when it involves violence, solves nothing. With that said, however, how do we take ownership of Monday's events? Do we pretend that this was an isolated incident - …
creator: keh619 / Tales of a Back Seat Prime Minster (blog)
date: 2007-07-09
contributor: Brent Jesiek
rights: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 1.0
language: eng

Some Analysis of the Killings at Virginia Tech
description: April 17th, 2007 As a part of my Homicide Investigation class at George Washington University, my instructor has asked us to write a brief analysis of the killings that occurred at Virginia Tech on Monday. Even though I am only a student and haven't had the experience, statistically speaking, there are many things that are common when this type of crime occurs. I am in no way stating that any of the following is fact, it is just my interpretation of the events as based on my knowledge gained in my Homicide Investigation course. * * * It appears that the offender's motivation for the first shooting is domestic. There have been much speculation as to the offender's relationship with the female victim. Some feel that they may have been in a relationship or that Cho had feelings for the female victim. It is possible that his motivation to kill her was caused by Cho's apparent hatred for "spoiled, rich kids." Is it possible that Cho had feelings for the female and was rejected? Thus taking his hatred out on her? Based on the fact that Cho walked across campus (at least half a mile) to Norris Hall to commit his crimes shows he had been planning this. The killings at Norris were not spontaneous at all. Cho wanted to destroy what symbolized the high class that he felt such disdain for. Since he associated many, if not all, students at Virginia Tech as being in this class, he felt that everyone encountered could potentially be his victims. This murder seems most likely to be an authority murder. The perceived authority being the higher class. If Cho grew up in a middle or lower income family, then this could explain his problem with the higher class. Northern Virginia can have very large gaps in the income levels among families. Cho probably felt this gap during his time in school in Northern Virginia and this is what probably helped escalate his hatred. But the question remains of who was his primary target? Was it the first two victims? Or was his primary target someone in…
creator: fallenposters / Do Not Cross (Blog)
date: 2007-07-09
contributor: Brent Jesiek
rights: Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0
language: eng

On the Forbidden Subject of Culture
description: April 19, 2007 UPDATE: Thanks for the various thoughtful comments, thoughtful commenters - I'm sure you know who you are. First off, I do acknowledge that I was a little snarky and "aha!" in the initial reaction to things, and I agree that it just puts people in a bad mood. But, I could have easily erased what I said, and not because I think it was wrong to have the thought, but because it distracted so much from the majority of the stuff I was really trying to say. Yet, I would somehow feel it dishonest to do so, and the reason I write is to organize my thoughts and logic for people to see; I just wish people in general, and not just over the past few days, could read this blog as one man's thoughts in motion, as opposed my final thoughts on matters. I have strong opinions, but those thoughts wend and weave according to other good opinions. That said, I also know I write a lot. Loooong posts. Opinionated posts. Wordy posts. And that's off-putting as well. I know that, but it would take me forever to get this stuff out if I had to condense it down, distill it, make it simpler. And since the vast majority of blogs out there write in short form, I don't feel like I'm adding to a trend in need of reversal - on the contrary, I wish there were more thoughtful people who tried to think carefully, put in the time to express their opinions fully, and really engage with difficult subjects. So I think that perhaps the blogosphere is better off with a few wordy fools who try to think aloud and in the sense of intellectual full-contact sports. As for race, I think the media is talking about it pretty minimally, as I assumed they would. And looking at this from primarily an American perspective. I'm inevitably looking at this from a Korean perspective, because it is here in Korea that I sit, live, and work. It's here that I have worked with a lot of kids who look just like Cho in background, culture, and personality. I thought that I'd be one of the few people talking not about …
creator: Michael Hurt
date: 2007-06-21
contributor: Brent Jesiek
rights: Michael Hurt (kuraeji@gmail.com)
language: eng

The Politics of Pride and Shame
description: April 18, 2007 [Update: I stand by my piece, which is mostly a bunch of questions, rather than statements linking race and culture in the explanative way it is being taken. I merely pointed out that as an American working deeply in the education field for years now, and having identified just such problems (and seen them connected in the Korean-language media for years), that perhaps questions about culture, as related to specific conditions that surround child-rearing, education, being educated overseas, the taboo of discussing mental health in Korean society, etc. might not have played some role here, on top of the fact that many Asian and Asian American males indeed might have specific ways of feeling alienated in "white society." Obviously, to even broach mere questions is deemed "racist" by many readers. Fine. I don't delete comments (unless they are abusive) and people have a right to come in and say what they want - that's why I blog, after all. Yet, before we start flinging around the "R-word" I hope people actually think about what I'm saying, and remember that what I said was that cultural context may be helpful as far as looking at context, but that "Korea" and the rest of the world should look at him as an individual. I spend half my post saying that, and the two need not contradict. And yes, when it comes to the fact that most serial killers have been/are still white men, it does astound me that America seems to have trouble talking about this obvious fact, and mums was the word when Columbine happened. Yet, broaching the topic is going to get one accused of saying their horrendous acts were committed "because they were white," which would again, be not what I said. But pundits of all kinds of backgrounds have license to talk about the concerns of "black youth" as it relates to drugs or violence for years. I don't call doing so "racist" although some strains of it certainly can be. For those who call such explanations as this "back-tracking," well, I gu…
creator: Michael Hurt
date: 2007-06-21
contributor: Brent Jesiek
rights: Michael Hurt (kuraeji@gmail.com)
language: eng

In the Mind of a Murderer
description: Justify it as you like, I cannot think of Cho Seung-Hui as anything other than a murderer. A lot has already been said about the subject, so apart from the links to his plays here[link], I won't be saying much. The content of his plays being sophomoric aside (in all honesty my high school freshmen have written richer and deeper material than this), I don't think the content of his plays immediately says that he "fits the profile of a school shooter." As a previous entry said, there is no such thing as a profile; each situation is born of unique circumstances mingling with the unique turmoil in each unique individual. However, it is a definite warning sign of a person being disturbed, coupled with his general attitudes and way of pushing others away. Help was offered, but he refused it and did what he wanted to do anyway. One can't help but feel powerless when confronted with a person like this. The other school shootings we had in the past were perpetrated by children who I think could have been talked to—just that insufficient attention was given to their behavior. However, this guy was already an adult—like many other instances of adults going on a rampage, they have already made up their minds and will no longer respond to reason. This is why it is imperative that schools should take events like this seriously. Sure, they are aberrations, but this implies that somewhere, something went wrong. The most immediate problem seems to be security, of course. Students will not be able to bring firearms (or poison, as in the case of Gelyn Fabro) if the security weren't so lax. Guards search bags, yes, but do they know what they're searching for? Of course, there's also the whole issue with of how the person is treated. The school can only do so much—personal and parental problems are already beyond the reach of guidance counselors—but still, the school can provide the student with an environment where he or she can express his or her frustrations in a harmless way…
creator: J. R. R. Flores
date: 2007-06-20
contributor: Brent Jesiek
rights: Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License
language: eng

Confessions of a Would-Be School Shooter
description: By now the subject of Virginia Tech has been much publicized and probably hackneyed. We talk about lax gun control laws, wasted lives, disturbed young men and how we wish things like these would never happen again. In my previous entry[link], I talked about how problematic Cho Seung-Hui is and the difficulty with which we tend to see the minds of these people. We always talk about things like these happening to someone else. However, as Bill Watterson once said in his great comic strip series Calvin & Hobbes, "We are all someone else to someone else." And so instead of talking about Cho from a distance and saying how crazy he was, I'd like to talk about how I was probably just like him. As I read through TIME's articles on the VTech massacre, I began reflecting on my own past and how disturbingly close I came to becoming a school shooter. In real life, I'm a very quiet person—meaning I don't speak much. If I have something to say and feel it's absolutely necessary, I have a very loud voice. Most of the time, though, I prefer to keep to myself and do not really talk. This habit caused one of my co-teachers to remark "You know, if one of us is going to become a psychopath, it would be Joey." Of course, I'd just laugh and shrug off the remark. It was only today that I realized how close I was to this. In one of my earlier posts I talked about how I was so maligned by my classmates in grade school. I really hated them; there were times I'd think about seeing their corpses hanging from a large weeping willow tree on campus. Seriously. I think this started after my parents' marriage was annulled, but I don't blame it entirely on them (and I presently harbor no bitterness toward them in this matter). There were a lot of events that led to certain, er, emotional imbalances I had in the past, I myself am not really sure how they add up to one another. Regardless, I was a young boy who was full of hate and I can very clearly remember that at one point I really thought about…
creator: J. R. R. Flores
date: 2007-06-20
contributor: Melisa Rivera
rights: Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License
language: eng

No Shortage of Manliness
description: April 23, 2007 Filed under: Feminism, Minnesota Monitor, Virginia Tech — Jeff Fecke @ 12:21 pm It is human nature to try to figure out why bad things happen. Long ago, we blamed natural disasters on the capriciousness of the gods. The flood was caused by Poseidon's wrath, the storm by Thor's fury. Gifts were given to the gods, sacrifices of fruit, of animals, even of people, in order to placate them and turn their anger into love for their human charges. Today most of us (Pat Robertson excepted) reject the notion that bad things happen because of an angry and vengeful God. And yet, when tragedy strikes, we still seek to find the pattern underlying the madness, our ultimate failing that led to our punishment by...well, we're never quite sure, but we're sure we're being punished. After Cho Seung-hui opened fire on his classmates in Blacksburg, Va., it was only natural for us to ask why. The primary answer — that he was a deeply troubled, possibly schizophrenic and certainly psychotic man who was operating outside the bounds of normal society — is unsatisfying and seems to beg more questions than it answers. And so some writers have seized on an explanation that has a mythic history as rich and powerful as any blameworthy figure in human lore: It's the women's fault. Not all women, of course, but specifically feminists. These horrid people have, we are told, upset the natural order. They have made women more like men, causing them to demand for themselves the same privileges and prerogatives that men alone have traditionally enjoyed. At the same time, they have demanded that men stop behaving like louts, thus feminizing them, making them more female, robbing them of their manly virtue. National Review columnist John Derbyshire started the drumbeat by arguing that all of the students should have been armed, the better to kill the shooter. But that wasn't his main point. "Setting aside the ludicrous campus ban on licensed conceals," he wrote, "why didn't anyone rus…
creator: Jeff Fecke
date: 2007-06-19
contributor: Brent Jesiek
rights: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States
language: eng

Virginia Tech: The Challenge of Instant Communication in a Crisis
description: Wednesday, April 18, 2007 I have been percolating some ideas about how to better integrate technology into a crisis plan I am currently working on. My work with the Red Cross over the years has sharpened my senses and I do have some idea of how to successfully communicate during a crisis. However, this week's events at Virginia Tech have given me some further ideas. I don't want to start getting clinical about this before I say that I am deeply moved by the tragedy this week. Having lived in Virginia for many years I feel close to the tragedy, and moreover, because we have a dear friend who is a professor in the engineering department in V-Tech. I heard from him Tuesday night and am grateful that both he and his freshman daughter are okay. That expressed, there are many lessons to start learning, especially as we prepare for the unexpected and communicating to large groups in crisis. There was a great story in the Wall Street Journal today that (registration req.) discussed the use of disseminating information via texting in a crisis. I have pulled some of the information about services from that article. My main takeaway from this event is the need for redundancy of communication. There need to be both high and low tech layers of communication to be most effective. First and foremost, an organization has to have a strategy to get in touch with all of the stakeholders and employees that need to be reached. A good start is a list of employee cell phones and home phone numbers that are ready to use in an emergency, as well as emergency contacts. Having a crisis communication plan is essential to get the most out of our communications, but here is an incomplete checklist of tactics to consider: High Tech Strategies Have a service set up to send instant text messaging (SMS), one such service is run by Omnilert and costs about $9,000 per year, another for schools is and opt in service run by Mobile Campus Set up redundancy in the servers to handle any increased load Set …
creator: Kami Huyse
date: 2007-06-19
contributor: Brent Jesiek
rights: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License
language: eng

The Altar of the Gun
description: Note: I found writing this piece to be a way of channeling my own anger at the massacre this morning. But I recognize that anger is only one part of the grief process. Please join me in praying for the families and friends of those killed. American worships the gun. Today, 33 more were sacrificed on the altar of our devotion to the gun. Specifically to semi automatic handguns. There are already dozens of articles from disciples arguing that the massacre today at Virginia tech could have been avoided if some of the students had been carrying guns so they could shoot the killer before he killed them. We trust the gun more than we trust God. The brutal reality of our gun fetish is that selling guns and ammo is highly profitable. But it is not simply the fact that the market values short term earnings from gun sales more than the social, cultural, political and long term economic damage that gun violence does to our society. More importantly, the gun industry long ago learned to effectively invest their short term earnings into the social, political and cultural sphere. Their investments in the NRA, especially since 1977 years have returned 10 fold and the results are a culture in which gun ownership is intimately connected with the values of self-sufficiency, responsibility and security that so many Americans identify with. We'll call these frontier values. As much as we'd like to wish that the new Democratic congress would seize on this moment to pass some common sense gun laws, the reality is that many of the new members of Congress were partly by actively courting those with frontier values. Unless their constituency shows signs of disconnecting handguns from frontier values, any vote for limiting the sales of hand guns will be doomed. It may be that changing our gun culture requires looking at movements that have successfully challenged large corporations with large amounts of cultural capital. The anti-smoking movement comes to mind. The last 30 years have seen a …
creator: Tim Nafziger
date: 2007-06-17
contributor: Brent Jesiek
rights: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5
language: eng

on the VT massacre
description: 17 April 2007 The talking heads keep talking about the "VT Massacre", not that it doesn't deserve attention, but this is too much attention. And VT is getting a bad wrap unfairly on one specific point: the notification of students on campus as to what was going on. The media seem obsessed with the 2-hour gap between the first shooting and the campus-wide email. They think the whole campus should have been told immediately. This is a short-sighted and impatient assumption, and is definitely not appropriate in a time like this when cooler heads should prevail. First, when the first shooting occurred, no one knew what the hell was going on! As with any incident like this, the police responded immediately, and their first priority was to figure out what happened. From what the VT police have said, they had reason to believe the shooter had left campus. So, what good would it have been to lock the campus down? And even if they had, how would that have stopped the assailant from coming back, as this may have only added police officers to the list of the dead. My point is VT authorities didn't notify anyone immediately because they didn't know what to tell them! In this age of information and 24-hour TV news, many have been spoiled into thinking they should have answers immediately, and that someone has failed them if they don't. Spoiled is definitely the best word for that outlook. Answers aren't always available right away, and rarely is the complete picture seen even days after an event like this, if ever. So, why are some in the media out to vilify the very people who were trying to protect the public and figure this whole thing out? I can see no reason other than lack of understanding and sensationalism, neither of which is an acceptable answer. --- On a different note about the incidents of yesterday: As a life member of Kappa Kappa Psi Honorary Band Fraternity, as was receiving updates on the status on members of our chapter at VT. All were accounted for by midday a…
creator: Matt Collins
date: 2007-06-17
contributor: Brent Jesiek
rights: Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License
language: eng

Desensitization, Detachment and Virginia Tech
description: Apr 23 2007 Written by Lynn Kindler To all family, friends, and people affected by the horrific and sad shootings at Virginia Tech, please accept my heartfelt sympathy. I know that I am joined by many others who are keeping you in their thoughts and prayers. With that said, I've been putting off writing about how the shootings affected me because I did not want to add to all the hype and gander that is already going on about it and because my initial reaction was NOT what I had expected to feel. Being an extremely intuitive person, I'm used to "getting" insights and a heightened sense of awareness before incidents like the one at VT occurs—often weeks before. This time not only did I not intuit anything but as the events unfolded I had no feelings about it. I'm a very caring person and since my initial non-feeling bubble, have had many insights but the initial non-feeling sensation really caught me off guard. I checked with many of my friends to find out how they reacted and found out that there were many very caring, spiritual people who had the same initial reaction as I did which was the absence of intense emotion. After listening and reading some of the news about VT, what was revealed to me was the seemingly collective response of not wanting to fan the fire of the media. The way that many of the people from Blacksburg handled this event, showed a majority of caring and thinking people who wanted to respect the event and all its complexities without the media circus. I am inspired by the people who have been writing and communicating under the mass media radar through www.facebook.com At first glance, I wondered if what "we" were experiencing en-mass was desensitization towards violence. How many of us wake up to NPR in the morning with the latest recount of a suicide bomber event? But someone very close to me noted that as listened to me she could hear anger under my numbness and upon closer inspection I realized that I was angry about our ignorance of menta…
creator: Lynn Kindler
date: 2007-06-17
contributor: Brent Jesiek
rights: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5
language: eng