Reflections on a Mass Homicide (Commentary)
(PDF, 30KB; Full text below.) Commentary Reflections on a Mass Homicide Jimmy Lee,1 MBBS, MMed (Psych), Tih-Shih Lee,1,2 MD, PhD, FRCP (C), Beng-Yeong Ng,1 MBBS, MMed (Psych), FAMS 1 Department of Psychiatry, Singapore General Hospital, Singapore2 Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School, Singapore Address for Correspondence: Dr Tih-Shih Lee, Department of Psychiatry, Singapore General Hospital, Singapore, Outram Road, Singapore 169608. Email: tihshih.lee@gms.edu.sg Introduction The names "Virginia Tech" and "Cho" will be associated forever with the tragic mass homicide of 32 persons cum suicide by Seung-Hui Cho on 16 April 2007. In the aftermath, many questions have been posed: "What happened and why?", "Was he crazy?", "Could it have been prevented?", "Could it happen here?" This was the third mass killing in a US campus, with the largest number of fatalities. The first was in 1966 in the University of Texas with 16 dead and 31 wounded, then the Columbine High School shooting in 1999, in which 13 students were killed. We do not profess to know more about what happened in Blacksburg, Virginia, or Cho's neuropsychiatric condition than whatever is published in the popular press.1 But through a series of questions, we reflect on this tragedy, attempt to place it into a human and psychiatric perspective, and offer insights into if, and how, it can be averted in the future. Question 1: Was Cho insane? Cho was described as a shy and quiet child, who was good in mathematics, but struggled with English. There were allegations of him being taunted and bullied in school since young. Both his pastor and relatives had suspected he might be autistic and suggested professional assistance. There was no record of him being involved in overt violence except that he had harassed 2 female classmates, one of whom called in the campus police. He expressed suicidal ideation and was involuntarily committed by a judge in a mental health facility briefly for assessment. A psychiatrist wrote in his chart, "Affect is flat and mood is depressed" and "Insight and judgment are normal," and released him. He was supposed to have been on some treatment regimen but may not have adhered to it. In English Literature classes he wrote on haunting themes of violence and death. Moreover, from the rantings of his final macabre video, it can be inferred that he had grandiose and persecutory thoughts. One could conceivably argue that anybody who murders en masse and then commit suicide must be insane. But insanity is an imprecise term that is no longer in the psychiatric lexicon. So we ask if he met criteria for a diagnosis based on Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-IV (DSM-IV) or International Classification of Disease-10 (ICD-10)? Or was he of a criminal antisocial or psychopathic mind? Unfortunately without having interviewed him or having access to his records, we cannot say for sure. We could speculate that he was depressed with delusional thoughts, and perhaps had undiagnosed Asperger's disorder (a mild variant of autism), or was taking illicit substances. But we do not have enough evidence to be certain of a definitive psychiatric condition that could account for his extremely violent behaviour. Question 2: Was it due to psychosocial developmental difficulties? Cho emigrated at the age of 8 years from South Korea and had difficulty speaking English. He was reportedly ostra-cised by his classmates and was isolated. The effects of migration on mental health are well described in the litera-ture. In the US, alienation is a problem for many Asians. Among Southeast Asians, the Hmong feel the most alien-ated, followed by Cambodians, Laotians, and Vietnamese.2 Many symptoms could be due to acculturative difficulties, racism, and overwork. A migrant faces difficulties with 3 main areas; changes in social environment, changes in interpersonal relations, and cultural differences.3 Reports from those who knew Cho strongly supported the roles of these 3 factors in his maladjustment to the new country. From his video and writings, it is evident that he had tremendous envy and rage projected onto better-adjusted and well-to-do American kids. Southeast Asian refugees have higher rates of brief reactive psychosis and paranoid psychosis compared to other Americans.4,5 Sometimes paranoia develops among Southeast Asians when they are dealing with a new environment and experiencing "varying degrees of miscommunication, fear of rejection, and feeling mistreated, slighted or discriminated against".6 Psychosis among Southeast Asians can take the form found in many ethnic groups, e.g. "Aliens' paranoid psychosis", a syndrome characterised by a usually short-lived xenophobia and by feelings of persecution because one belongs to an ethnic minority group.7 On the other hand, the overwhelming majority of immigrants and minorities are well-adjusted and functioning, despite having endured many of the same stressors that Cho endured. In particular, his sister, who shares much of his genetic substrate and environmental milieu, had apparently been doing very well. Many immigrants may have coping difficulties, but they do not usually resort to violence. The other 2 campus mass murderers were neither immigrants nor from minority groups. So, whereas difficulties relating to migration probably played a part in his violence, it would be simplistic to attribute it to primarily these stressors. Instead it would be a disservice to the large immigrant and ethnic minority communities. Question 3: What factors may have precipitated Cho's sudden outburst? There is a small literature considering situational factors and triggers that have consistently been found to be important in initiating a homicidal episode. Triggers for murder in Ressler et al's study8 included financial, legal, employment, marital and other conflicts. Emotional states such as frustration, anger, hostile moods, and feeling agitated and excited were reported at a lower frequency. Levin9 has offered a four-factor model of sudden indiscriminate mass killing. First, the potential offender has led a "life of frustration"; second, he has access to, and the ability to use, firearms; thirdly, there is a significant destabilising experience of a loss of "social controls", such as moving to a new area or the loss of an important relationship; fourth, there must be a precipitating event such as unemployment or divorce. Gresswell and Hollin10 have suggested that a more useful way of conceptualising the "firearms" component would be to consider that a fascination with weapons indicates a style of coping with stress, frustration, and low self-esteem that includes violent fantasies involving weapons. In such cases, the nature of such fantasies may be the best predictor of a homicidal response to a stressful event. Questions 4: Is there a neurological basis for aggression? Aggression refers to behaviour that is intended to cause harm, and is the behavioural manifestation of disturbances in the brain or mind. We now have some, though incomplete, appreciation of various neuroanatomical structures that may be involved in aggression. These structures include the prefrontal cortex, amygdala, hypothalamus, and temporal lobe. In particular, some evidence suggests frontal lobe dysfunction in violent and criminal behaviour, especially in the presence of focal orbitofrontal lobe injuries.11 Brower and Price11 proposed that clinically significant focal frontal lobe dysfunction is associated with aggressive dyscontrol. Orbitofrontal syndrome is associated with behavioural excesses, impulsivity, disinhibition and mood lability. Outbursts of rage and violent behaviour occur after damage to the inferior orbital surface.12 Abnormal brain concentrations of the neurotransmitters serotonin, dopamine and gamma-aminobutyric acid are implicated in impulsivity and aggression.13 Pharmaco-therapy with selective serotonergic reuptake antagonists, antipsychotics as well as mood stabilisers have all been used in treatment, with mixed results. Studies of aggression in patients with brain injury suggest that their aggression tends to be (1) reactive, i.e., triggered by modest stimuli; (2) non-reflective, i.e., not premeditated or planned; (3) non-purposeful, i.e., does not serve long-term goals; (4) explosive; (5) periodic; and (6) ego-dystonic.12 Some of these features describe Cho's aggression. But we do not know, and may never know, if a definable lesion was present in Cho's brain, or if present, whether that was severe enough to account for the violent behaviour. With the evolving science on aggression, a discussion about "nature versus nurture" often arises, i.e. whether murderers are born or bred. Research has now demonstrated that genetic aberration per se is not the sole reason leading to violence; environmental factors such as childhood adversities play a significant part in the development of violent behaviour.14 Gene expression is influenced by environmental factors, and brain circuits are affected by life experiences. Question 5: How is dangerousness assessed? Psychiatrists are often called upon to determine how much a threat someone will pose to others and society, also known as dangerousness. Dangerousness is a subjective assessment of the element of danger attributed to a particular person and is qualitative in nature. Predicting dangerousness, particularly in an extreme form such as mass homicide, has been an elusive goal for those investigators who have attempted it. It is often said that "Hindsight is 20/20". When a person is exposed to be a murderer, we tend to focus on those warning signs in his character and biography that were previously ignored. For a category of violence such as mass homicide, however, the low base rate and consequent likelihood of finding false-positive results are overwhelming.15 Just as in Cho's instance, numerous questions were raised about the concerns of his teachers and the psychiatric assessment in November 2005. It must be emphasised that the assessment of dangerousness is not an exact science, and cannot yield a black-and-white result of "dangerous" versus "not dangerous". In our psychiatric assessments, we weigh various factors such as past history of violence, history of mental illness, personality, social background, context and state of mind in which dangerous behaviours manifest. Past behavioural patterns provide the best insight into future behaviours. However, the accuracy of dangerousness assessments quoted in the literature is as low as 0.33.16 Mossman17 in 1994 extracted 58 datasets from 44 published studies, and revealed that mental health professionals' violence predictions were better than chance. Current risk assessment tools such as the Historical/Clinical/Risk Management 20-item (HCR-20)18 and Psychopathy Checklist (revised) (PCL-R)19 offer a structured and more systematic approach to violence prediction, but none could tell with consistent (surely not 100%) accuracy that a person would re-offend. Homicide is clearly the most serious of all crimes. Approximately two-thirds of homicides involve the killing of a victim by a partner, relative, friend or acquaintance. This may partly explain why the clear-up rate for these crimes is particularly high - the police do not need to look very far in order to solve the majority of murders.20 The relation between mental illness and dangerous behaviours has been overemphasised, especially in the eyes of the public. There is a tendency to believe that murderers are mentally ill. However, a recent study among homicides in Singapore showed that 57% of murderers have no mental illness. Out of the 110 charged with murder, depressive disorders accounted for 9.1% and schizophrenia, 6.4%.21 The proportion of foreigners (defined here as non-citizens and non-permanent residents) who committed murder in Singapore was significantly higher compared with locals, which supports the earlier point about the stressors of migration. Also, foreigners tend to suffer from more serious psychiatric disorders, are less likely to have a known history of violence, and are more likely to be new to psychiatric services.22 This implies that the first violent outburst is usually the first presentation to psychiatric services. Cho did not have a history of overt violence prior to April 16. Question 6: What about the psychological trauma to family and friends of the victims? For those who saw their friends getting shot and killed, those who were injured and those who survived unharmed, the families and friends of the victims, it would be very difficult to collectively summarise the ordeal they went and are still going through, as each will have their own individual experience of it. Some may be at high risk of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but others will cope fairly well with milder symptoms. But it is safe to say that life will never be the same again. And we must not forget the hapless and unfortunate family of Cho, whose suffering cannot be fathomed. There were positive measures taken by the school and public authorities in the aftermath that are worth learning. The measures included leave from school, time and ceremony to grief, and the provision of counsellors to all students of the school. School events such as examinations and convocation ceremonies continued as usual in an attempt to restore normalcy. The telecast of Cho's video on national TV was highly controversial. Many others around the world later saw Cho's nefarious video and images of the "massacre". The national broadcast potentially traumatised viewers and re-traumatised survivors. In addition, it helped Cho achieved his aim of broadcasting his views, possibly achieving "martyrdom", and it may inadvertently encourage copycat murderers, as if a race were on to increase the body count. We would strongly urge that TV network companies and their regulating agencies revisit the guidelines and regulations on such telecasts. Question 7: Can it happen to us? Mass murder in a US school or college is a relatively rare event - three times in 40 years, despite the widespread availability of firearms and the large numbers of disenfranchised youths. Hence, it can be described as a low-probability, catastrophic-outcome event, like an earthquake occurring on a given day. The probability of its happening is very low, but once it hits, the results may be catastrophic. For countries with strict firearm and explosive control laws, the risk of a mass murder on the same scale is much lower. With the benefit of hindsight, to discuss what the psychiatrist or the judge should have diagnosed or done is moot now. There was and always will be a balance between protection for society and infringement of the individual's civil liberties. This dilemma is all the more difficult if the assessment is made before a crime is actually committed. It would be virtually impossible for a psychiatrist to predict which of the patients would commit violence, least of all mass murder. If the decision is to commit the patients as a preventive measure, how long should the internment last, and who would set him free? Nevertheless, for psychiatrists and all doctors, this is a timely reminder to be thorough and diligent in the assessment for dangerousness, and to acknowledge that we are far from perfect in our assessments. Under Section 34 of the Mental Disorders and Treatment Act (1973, revised in 1985), any registered physician in Singapore may refer a patient suspected to be of unsound mind or requiring psychiatric treatment to the Institute of Mental Health (IMH) for evaluation and treatment. IMH is the only gazetted mental hospital that has the statutory authority to hold patients involuntarily, should the person be deemed to be suffering from a mental illness, and detention serves the person's best interests and those of other persons. For the majority of patients who are deemed not to need involuntary hospitalisation, there is little we can do to enforce treatment, other than relying on the family to supervise medications and appointments. If we suspect that a patient may pose a specific threat to another person, we may face an ethical dilemma with regard to confidentiality. This issue brings us back to the landmark Tarasoff case where the Californian courts found the therapist negligent for not warning the intended victim of a threat.23 Kok et al24 discussing this case with regard to the applicability of the Tarasoff ruling in Singapore, concluded that in the absence of local case law, a psychiatrist caught in this situation should consult the Singapore Medical Council prior to breaching doctor-patient confidentiality. The Cho case also brings to mind the problems of troubled youths in Singapore - a combination of disengagement from society, low self-esteem, poor coping with rising expectations, and academic pressures. These forces predispose them to seek alternative forms of release and validation, such as using illicit substances and joining street gangs. Therefore, parents and school authorities should always be on the lookout for troubled or poorly adjusted youths. If need be, they should be referred to mental health professionals for evaluation and treatment. Another lesson in the local context would be for us, as a society, to be more tolerant and empathic to those who are less well-adjusted and successful, especially foreigners and migrants, so as to minimise resentment and wrath. Conclusion In summary, as we try to make sense of this apparently senseless violence, we find ourselves in the recurring debate of nature versus nurture. We probably will never know what Cho was really thinking when he pulled the trigger repeatedly, or nor can we be sure if he had a psychiatric condition that fulfilled DSM IV or ICD-10 criteria. Our hypothesis is that he had an underlying neurobiological or genetic vulnerability; he endured developmental psychosocial stressors in a chronic invalidating environment; and that finally some yet unknown "third-hit" triggered his rampage. Nevertheless, we highlight the need for thorough assessments of dangerousness by mental health professionals despite the limitations of our tools; the need for a system to attend to the psychological anguish of the survivors and loved ones of the victims; and the need for us collectively to adopt a more empathic stance towards our less fortunate brethren. We also remember the 33 lives extinguished and countless more traumatised on that Spring day in 2007. REFERENCES Thomas E. Special Report: Making of a Massacre. Newsweek April 30, 2007:18-30. Nicassio P. Psychosocial correlates of alienation: study of a sample of Indochinese refugees. J Cross-cultural Psychol 1983;14:337-51. Moilanen I, Myhrman A, Ebeling H, Penninkilampi V, Vuorenkoski L. Long-term outcome of migration in childhood and adolescence. Int J Circumpolar Health 1998;57:180-7. Nicassio P. The psychosocial adjustment of the Southeast Asian refugee: an overview of empirical findings and theoretical models. J Cross-Cultural Psychol 1985;16:153-73. Westermeyer J. Paranoid symptoms and disorders among 100 Hmong refugees: a longitudinal study. Acta Psychiatr Scand 1989;80:47-59. Lin KM. Psychopathology and social disruption in refugees. In: Williams C, Westermeyer J, editors. Refugee Mental Health in Resettlement Countries. Washington, DC: Hemisphere Publishing, 1986. Tung TM. Psychiatric care for Southeast Asians: How different is different? In: Owan T, editor. Southeast Asian Mental Health: Treatment, Prevention, Services, Training, and Research. Washington, DC: US Department of Health and Human Services, 1985:5-40. Ressler PK, Burgess AW, Douglas JE. Sexual homicide: patterns and motives. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1988. Levin J. Why his last shot blew the truth away. The Sunday Times, London 1987, August 23, p23. Gresswell DM, Hollin CR. Multiple murder: a review. Br J Criminology 1994;34:1-14. Brower MC, Price BH. Neuropsychiatry of frontal lobe dysfunction in violent and criminal behaviour: a critical review. J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry 2001;71:720-6. Silver JM, Yudofsky SC, Anderson KA. Aggression. In: Silver JM, McAllister TW, Yudofsky SC, editors. Textbook of Traumatic Brain Injury. Washington, DC: American Pychiatric Publishing, 2005. Swann AC. Neuroreceptor mechanisms of aggression and its treatment. J Clin Psychiatry 2003;64 Suppl 4:25-35. Reif A, Rosler M, Freitag CM, Schneider M, Eujen A, Kissling C, et al. Nature and nurture predispose to violent behaviours: serotonergic genes and adverse childhood environment. Neuropsychopharmacology 2007. Fox JA, Levin J. Serial murder: myths and realities. In: Smith MD, Zahn MA, editors. Studying and Preventing Homicide: Issues and Challenges. California: Sage Publications, 1999. Monahan J. The prediction of violent behaviour: Toward a second generation of theory and policy. Am J Psychiatry 1984;141:10-5. Mossman D. Assessing predictions of violence: Being accurate about accuracy. J Consult Clin Psychol 1994;62:783-92. Webster CD, Douglas KS, Eaves D, Hart SD. HCR-20: Assessing risk for violence (version 2). Burnaby, BC: Mental Health Law and Policy Institute, Simon Fraser University, 1997. Hare RD. The Psychopathy Checklist-Revised. 2nd ed. Toronto, Canada: Multi-Health Systems, 2003. Ainsworth PB. Psychology and Crime: Myths and Reality. Edinburgh: Pearson Education Ltd, 2000. Koh KG, Gwee KP, Chan YH. Psychiatric aspects of homicide in Singapore: a five-year review (1997-2001). Singapore Med J 2006;47:297-304. Koh KG, Peng GK, Huak CY, Koh BK. Migration psychosis and homicide in Singapore: a five year study. Med Sci Law 2006;46:248-54. Tarasoff v Regents of University of California. California Report 1976;118:129. Kok LP, Yap HL, Cheang M. Mental disorders and public safety of the community at large - does the Tarasoff principle apply in Singapore. Ann Acad Med Singapore 2002;31:535-6. -- Archived with permission of the editor. Original Source: Annals, Academy of Medicine, Singapore, June 2007, Vol. 36 No. 6 http://annals.edu.sg/PDF/36VolNo6Jun2007/V36N6p444.pdf
Jimmy Lee, Tih-Shih Lee, and Beng-Yeong Ng
Kirat Kaur (Ms) Editorial Executive Annals, Academy of Medicine, Singapore annals@academyofmedicine.edu.sg
By KEVIN FRISCH Messenger Post Columnist Posted: Apr 23, 01:00 PM EDT What a difference a weekend makes. Last Friday, the big story was brand new man of leisure Don Imus, who was ousted from his nationally syndicated radio program after making a disparaging remark about a women's basketball team. Since the comment was racist in nature, there were calls for a new discussion on the topic of race; a new dialogue on the parallel universes that are black and white America. By Sunday, this conversation was put on hold â€” along the East Coast, anyway â€” as attention turned to more immediate concerns. Namely, the weather. A full-fledged 'noreaster made an unwelcome April visit and, for some 36 hours, it snowed slush. Or slushed snow. Or rained snow and slush. Whatever, the result was inches and inches of precipitation leading to flooding, treacherous travel and widespread power outages. By late Monday morning, even those with cold homes and flooded basements were suddenly counting their blessings as they heard the first news reports from Blacksburg, Va. An unspeakably violent week in recent American history had another blood-soaked chapter. In the past 15 years, the week between April 15 and April 22 has seen the siege of the Branch Davidian Compound in Waco, Texas; the Oklahoma City bombing; the Columbine High School shootings and, now, the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history: the massacre at Virginia Tech. Including the gunman, 33 souls were lost on the college's campus on April 16. Another 26 people were wounded. As the initial shock and confusion gave way to anguish and a search for likely-nonexistent answers, a few reflexive voices were raised. There was right-wing radio host Rush Limbaugh, who climbed onto his high horse to condemn the "drive-by media," whoever they are. (Apparently, Rush has a problem with news people showing up to cover what may well be the biggest story of the year.) There was the almost immediate debate over firearm rights, a customary echo when gun-related violence explodes. Have you ever head a loud crash in the next room, then run in to see Junior standing next to a broken lamp and the first words out of his mouth are "I didn't do it"? Then you've got some sense of the tone of a fax sent out the night of the slayings by Gun Owners of America. "When will we learn that being defenseless is a bad defense?" asked Larry Pratt, the group's executive director. "All the school shootings that have ended abruptly in the last ten years were stopped because a law-abiding citizen â€” a potential victim â€” had a gun." Actually, the Virginia Tech gunman took his own life, as did the two teens who wrought carnage at Columbine, but, oh well. On the other side of the argument were people like Josh Sugarmann, executive director of the Washington-based Violence Policy Center. "In the wake of these shootings, too many routinely search for any reason for the tragedy except for the most obvious â€” the easy access to increasingly lethal firearms that make mass killings possible," he told the Toronto Globe and Mail. It wasn't hard to side with Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine. "I think that people who want to take this within 24 hours of the event and make it their political hobby horse to ride ... I've got nothing but loathing for them," he said. Kaine's point is well taken; his revulsion understandable. An informal waiting period of at least a week before latching an agenda â€” any agenda â€” onto sad and painful events would be a welcome change in this country. The time will come for dissecting media coverage and debating the availability of firearms. In the meantime, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg and America as a whole have wounds to heal; tears to cry; losses to mourn. Whoever thought we would so quickly be nostalgic for the days when the big issue was the Don Imus controversy? Messenger managing editor and aspiring president Kevin Frisch's column, Funny Thing..., appears each Sunday in the Daily Messenger. Contact him at (585) 394-0770, Ext. 257, or via e-mail at KFrisch@MPNewspapers.com. -- Original Source: Rochester, NY - MPNnow http://www.mpnnow.com/news/view_story.php?articleId=8158 Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5.
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Finger-pointing wonâ€™t answer problem of evil
GateHouse Media Tue Apr 24, 2007, 10:41 AM CDT BLACKSBURG, Va. - A tragedy the magnitude of last week's mass murder in Blacksburg, Va., prompt most of us to ask serious questions. What compelled a student to kill 32 people on the Virginia Tech campus? How could someone so obviously disturbed gain access to the weapons he used? Why didn't anyone recognize his potential for violence and do something to prevent it? These responses are to be expected, given the scope of the collective sorrow experienced by people across the nation. And in time, there is no doubt some individuals may be forced to address some of these questions. The answers may help school officials, counselors and legislators in crafting policies and procedures designed to more effectively deal with such problems. But the finger-pointing masks an inescapable fact: Regardless of who missed what signs and who failed to raise security measures, Seung Hui Cho is solely responsible for all those deaths. And when someone decides to engage in such violence, there often is little that other people can do. Some have described Cho as a loner who didn't interact with his roommates. Others have said his writings were very disturbing. These statements are most likely true, but they don't explain why he killed so many people. How many young people across the country could be described as loners? How many of them have a bizarre attraction to violence and write rather alarming things? Thousands, tens of thousands? Perhaps more? So there are many others who face circumstances very similar to those Cho experienced. Yet virtually none of them make the leap from disturbed loner to mass murderer. While he was plagued by fear, resentment and isolation, Cho had choices to deal with his problems. The difference between him and the countless others confronting the same problems is that he chose not to find alternative ways of handling his fear, resentment and isolation. Cho opted to walk down the path of violence, and this is a mindset few others can comprehend. He took so many innocent lives because he rejected other avenues for addressing his angst. Evil is the true imponderable in life. Yes, we may get a few answers to why this tragedy occurred and how to reduce the likelihood of another. But free choice can be a weapon controlled only by the individual who wields it. -- Original Source: Brookfield, IL - Brookfield Suburban Life http://www.chicagosuburbannews.com/brookfield/editorials/x1774967103 Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0.
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April 23, 2007 Filed under: Feminism, Minnesota Monitor, Virginia Tech â€” 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 â€” that he was a deeply troubled, possibly schizophrenic and certainly psychotic man who was operating outside the bounds of normal society â€” 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 rush the guy? It's not like this was Rambo, hosing the place down with automatic weapons. He had two handguns, for goodness' sake â€” one of them reportedly a .22." Nathan Blake, a writer for the weblog Human Events caught Derbyshire's meaning and amplified it. "Something is clearly wrong with the men in our culture. Among the first rules of manliness are fighting bad guys and protecting others: in a word, courage. And not a one of the healthy young fellows in the classrooms seems to have done that." Now, you may think that blaming students for not rushing a man with two semi-automatic handguns is, to put it nicely, insane. Especially since there were more than a few examples of bravery that day, from the resident adviser who gave his life trying to protect the first victim of the shooting to the students who held the door shut with their feet while Cho fired away above them. But of course, one should never let facts get in the way of a good session of blaming women. Besides, it wasn't just the men hand-wringing about those wimpy men; there were also women hand-wringing about those tough women. Sarah Baxter, writing for the Sunday Times of London, fingered female sexual promiscuity as the reason that Cho Seng-hui went on his rampage, going so far as to quote long-time scold Camile Paglia in her argument. "The pervasive hook-up culture at college," wrote Baxter, "where girls are prepared to sleep with boys they barely know or fancy, can be a source of seething resentment and alienation for those who are left out. "'Young women now seem to want to behave like men and have sex without commitment. The signals they are giving are very confusing, and rage and humiliation build up in boys who are spurned again and again' [said Paglia]." As the Kinks once said, it's a mixed-up, muddled-up, shook-up world. And that's when the gods get angry. The scolds, of course, never really explain why it is that "young women behaving like men" is confusing and enraging â€” or at least, why young women behaving like men is worse than young men behaving like men. They don't have to bother. We all know that good girls don't, and cool boys do-the message is driven into us, all of us, from the moment we become aware of what sex might be. If anything exacerbated the insanity of Cho Seung-hui, it was this message â€” the message that if he was worthy, he should be having sex, and lots of it. That if he was worthy, women would and should be lining up for him â€” but not the pure and chaste ones. Normal people learn, at some point, that this message doesn't make a lot of sense; that sex, while entertaining, is neither the best nor the most important measure of human worth and human happiness. We learn that whether you're having sex or not is a truly meaningless measure of your worth as a human being â€” whether you're a good girl who is, or a cool boy who isn't. But Cho Seung-hui wasn't equipped to deal with this message, this drumbeat that he was a failure because he wasn't successful with women. And so he turned his rage to violence, first stalking women, then ultimately attacking them. That his rage reached a violent crescendo that included men as well was unsurprising, for it wasn't women he hated, or men â€” it was himself. The killer internalized the messages of what men are "supposed" to be, and when he could not measure up in his mind to that standard, he did the only thing he could think to do â€” he became ultra-violent, violence being another acceptable proof of manliness. It wasn't a shortage of manliness that was the problem last Monday, it was a surfeit. And so we come to find that the fault, if there was fault that we can assigned, lay not at the feet of the women who rejected a stalker, nor at feminists who want people to have rough equality, nor at men and women who faced a horrific massacre and did not all fight back against nigh-impossible odds. If there was a fault, it was that we as a society continue to try to tell people what they're supposed to be, rather than letting them determine that for themselves. That's not as satisfying as blaming women, nor as simple as blaming victims. But it's the truth, and we do ourselves and the dead no favor by pretending otherwise. (Cross-posted from MinMon) -- Original Source: Blog of the Moderate Left http://moderateleft.com/?p=3324 Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States
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Desensitization, Detachment and Virginia Tech
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 occursâ€”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 mental illness and how to handle it fairly and successfully. I was angry about gun control (a rifle I can see, an automatic weaponâ€”why?) and last but not least watching the story unfold in the media bit by bit as every one tried to become THE source for facts about the VT shootings. In many of my spiritual teachings I have learned that it is important to be able to detach with love. It seems that in order for me (and you) to be effective, we've got to be able to get our personal spin out of the mix so that we can detach from the intense reaction in order to respond thoughtfully. It's about being able to feel and yet not getting run over by our feelings. I am very hopeful about the kind of ideas and actions that will come out of this horrific event. I heard one student interviewed who responded, "What can we learn from the Amish shootings". One thing that we can do right now is to have difficult conversations such as what I'm admitting to you here and be willing to talk with each other about what is really going on. As the great Coaching guru Thomas Leonard used to say, "Be real be human". -- Original Source: http://www.smallbusinessgurus.com/content/view/460/60/ Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5.
Thursday, April 19, 2007 I first saw Blacksburg, and what was then V.P.I., almost fifty years ago, the summer of 1960. A member of my high school's chapter of the Future Farmers of America, I was attending the FFA's Virginia state convention - a wide-eyed rising 9th grader. About 5 foot six, I weighed little more than a large sack of chicken feed. I was a member of our school's second-string crop judging team; we did surprisingly well. Blacksburg was the "sleepy little college town" in the mountains then, home to a small agricultural and mechanical/military school and little else. You could count the traffic lights and have fingers left over. V.P.I. was essentially all-male and all-white; being a member of the corps of cadets was the norm. Foreign students and women on campus were not. The student body generally came from rural and small-town Virginia, where it was highly regarded. A turkey was the school mascot. It was so not UVA, William and Mary, or Hollins. It was not even V.M.I. Things change and stuff happens. By the time I graduated from high school V.P.I. was beginning its remarkable transformation into a major university. My lackluster high school record and vague aspirations did not make me highly sought after college material. But V.P.I. took a chance and accepted me. They had probably seen worse. After purgatory at their Danville Branch I finally arrived in Blacksburg in the fall of 1966. Evidence of the major commitment to transform Tech was everywhere: new buildings, overflowing dorms, expanding academic programs, a much larger and more diverse student body (though still not enough girls), and a major emphasis on athletics, mainly football. We even managed a traffic jam on some Saturday afternoons in the fall. Off-campus housing grew, a fine off-campus book store opened, along with a decent restaurant or two. Long hair and an underground newspaper appeared. The 60's arrived at Tech and Blacksburg sometime in the 70's, but it arrived. I should have been happy at Tech and Blacksburg, but I was not. Blacksburg seemed like the end of the earth. I called it Bleaksburg, a reference to more than its weather three seasons of the year. Driving into town one Sunday I nearly ran off the road laughing at a road sign where someone had written "armpit of the nation" under the word Blacksburg. The school's administrators - many holdover's from its days as a military school - seemed to be truly hostile to students. Their martial vision of what college life should be was not my vision. It was a conservative campus and I was, without much self consciousness, becoming quite liberal, at least by Virginia standards. I began to enjoy walking on their grass. My first fall on campus saw the football team invited to what I believe was its first bowl game, the Liberty Bowl in Memphis. We were to play the University of Miami. I remember walking across campus one cold, cold night headed downtown for some food (I hated the food at Shanks) and seeing a student-made sign hanging in the wind. "Beat Miami" it said. Blacksburg, Miami. Blacksburg, Miami. Hunkered into the wind I had a hard time wrapping my mind around any idea that contained those words together. Yes, true to my school, I did drive what seemed like halfway across America in my Corvair to attend that game. But I wanted out. That would not be easy. I had just changed majors, from engineering to political science. PoliSci allowed the most electives at Tech and this would give me the chance to pretend I was at a liberal arts college where, by that time, I discovered I wanted to be. My academic record at that point was not much better than my high school record, making a transfer problematic. And there was a war on and a military draft, not something to be taken lightly. I needed that 2-s deferment. And I doubt I could have convinced my parents that it was a good idea to transfer. After all they were paying for my little adventure in academia. My salvation came from an unlikely series of events. That January a friend at UVA invited me to Charlottesville for a week-end. He said he would get us some dates from Mary Washington College and we would have a great time; might get lucky. I was all for a great time and good luck, so plans were made. That Friday came and with it a snow storm. I said what-the-hell and made for Charlottesville. The weather worsened and I was lucky to make it to campus. The train from Fredericksburg was canceled, as were the events of the week-end. What to do? He had a friend who had just returned from a semester aboard a ship that had sailed around the world. We went to see him. Still very much overwhelmed by the experience, he told stories for hours. When we left he gave us literature about the college program and said we should apply as soon as possible. Sounded good to me. Fast forward and I returned from that Semester at Sea with a larger view of myself, my world, and Blacksburg. Virginia Tech would continue to annoy me from time to time as it seemed slow closing the gap between what I wanted of it and what it could deliver. But I finally had matured enough to begin to take advantage of what it did offer, and to appreciate that wonderful place in the Virginia mountains, Blacksburg. I now have two degrees from Tech, having returned in the '80s for a Master's in Urban and Regional Planning. My wife also has two degrees from Tech. She grew up just outside Blacksburg. Her sister in-law works in Norris Hall, second floor. I have wonderful friends in Blacksburg who worked for Tech for many years. Even though I also have a degree from UVA and have great respect for the University, I am a Hokie. I have marveled at Tech's growth, been amazed at the transformation of Blacksburg into a world-class small city. So watching the news over the past few days has been hard. The violent death and injury of so many students and faculty at the hands of a psychopath renders words inadequate to convey the horror. One cannot look into the faces of horrified students and anxious or grieving parents without becoming one of them. Trying to make sense of it all seems overwhelming. And yet that is what each of us will try to do, needs to do. The young man with two handguns shot at us all. As tragic as the events of last Monday morning were we have the ability to make them worse. And we will. I could feel it as I was watching the first reports on CNN. Even as the news was happening I could feel the ramp up to what was coming: the second guessing, criticizing, the self-righteous placing of blame, the spin in service to political agenda. Even before we had time to learn the fate of friends and family, grieve, or learn the name or fate of the gunman, the process was well underway. Our TV hosts struggled to learn just where Blacksburg was and fumbled about trying to describe a university they knew little about. Tech was both a major university with 26,000 students and "insular" according to Brian Williams, who also placed it in the Smoky Mountains. While we were all trying to reconcile the image of a peaceful, semi-rural college environment with violence we usually associate with our urban areas or foreign theaters of war, the talking heads moved from conveying what little they knew about the horror unfolding on campus to asking leading questions and poking around trying to find an angle. They think they are reporters. It bled and it led for hours on end. After asking students what they saw or heard Wolf Blitzer and the other CNN reporters (I use the term loosely) made a point of asking if they still felt safe, if they blamed the University and if the were planning to transfer. It took a while before they stopped seeming surprised when the students usually said they loved their school, the community, and had not considered leaving. I thought generally the students interviewed sounded much more thoughtful than their hosts. And without the "like, you know what I'm saying." I was proud of them. Once it appeared that the gunman was dead and there was a two hour gap in the shootings the focus shifted to finding a way to question the University's handling of the situation. Well before any of the details were to fill out the timeline our TV hosts were pouncing, safely behind the camera miles away from danger or responsibility past filling commercial-safe airtime. Without possibly having the facts with which to assess situation they began to invite questions of competency of local law enforcement and the judgment of school administrators. When will we come to understand that when someone prefaces a statement, "I don't understand why ___", they really don't. You are being set up. Soon "experts" with little or no knowledge of the specifics began to appear and try to shape our view of the tragedy. Dr. Phil appeared early. We eventually heard from Ted Nugent (FOX?) who said this would not have happened if students were allowed to legally carry guns on campus. He did not mention bows and arrows. Can they work in Springer next? If we were not dealing with a real human tragedy, real suffering and loss, this would almost be funny. It is not funny. Once we learned the gunman was a student and was born in South Korea the press was perplexed. Even though he had lived in the US most of his life - since he was 8 years old - he was Korean. Since South Korea is an ally of the United States it has been difficult for the press to figure out how significant that was or how to play it. Now if he had been from the Middle East... Few bothered to remark that the killer was a young man and that young men are have almost exclusive ownership of this type of serial murder. You assumed the killer was male, didn't you? I did. I didn't expect the media to go there and they didn't. We now know he was recognized as a loner and "troubled," and had come to the attention of the school as such. He had received at least some attention from mental health and law enforcement professionals. The NYTimes gave us this morning, "Officials Knew Troubled State of Killer in '05." Well he was not a killer in '05. He was just a student with problems, probably not that unlike any number of other students on campuses from coast to coast. The headline whispers that the "officials" are now partially responsible for the crime. I am sure that these professionals wish now they could have seen into the future and done something. But I doubt even Cho Seung-hui could have done that in '05. Being "troubled" and dead brings us to the possibility that the tragedy includes Mr. Cho. While I am sure many would recoil at this so soon, the compassion and forgiveness that my Christian countrymen so often trot out as a model for others, might not be misplaced for this very mentally ill young man and provoke wonder how he became so bitter and twisted. No, it is much easier and entertaining to now find fault with the living, those doing their very best to ensure safety of others when that still, unfortunately, was not sufficient. Yes, I am sure campus police and other university officials wish they had done some things differently Monday morning. Given the contents of the package Mr. Cho sent to NBC that morning between shooting it is certainly possible only the location, names and number of future victims would have changed. What is likely however is that the number Mr. Cho's victims will continue to grow as some try to use the tragedy for their own ends. Regarding making sense of it all, once again our dim-bulb President got it wrong. He said on campus trying to mean well, It's impossible to make sense of such violence and suffering. Those whose lives were taken did nothing to deserve their fate. They were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Now they're gone - and they leave behind grieving families, and grieving classmates, and a grieving nation. Well, George, making sense of things is what what people at Universities try to do, and with some success. The question is what sense we will make of it. Don't try to suggest impossibilities at a place based on possibilities. And they were not in the "wrong place at the wrong time." A convenient cliche, but again off the mark. They were in the right place, Blacksburg, Virginia Tech. Go Hokies. posted by Bibb at 5:13 AM -- Original Source: http://bibbedwards.blogspot.com/2007/04/virginia-tech.html Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0.
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Karen Harper 22 Apr 2007 There will be a lot of blame dished out in the aftermath of the Virginia Tech massacre. But one element will be missing and that is the system itself. Capitalism and the society it nurtures will remain unscathed in the big business press. In the aftermath of another school shooting in the US, many will be asking why and some will be trying to lay blame. The shooter's parents will be blamed for how they raised him; the school will be blamed for how it dealt with his mental illness; and his schoolmates past and present will be blamed for how they teased and ostracized him. However, the blame will mostly not be laid where it appropriately belongs; on the head of capitalism and the social values that it has nourished. No individual can be looked at out of context of the larger society, and this young man and what he became cannot be understood without first looking at the society he came from. Unfortunately, the "angry loner" type that has done these sorts of shootings in the past is not the product of an isolated genetic mutation that happens unpredictably and that cannot be prevented. Such people are a real product of their environment and the direct result of capitalism's impact on personal development and mental health. This society promotes individuality, self-absorption, and competition over solidarity and collective struggle. Is it any surprise that some young people are so incapable of not only identifying with the group and its larger good, but also of even, in severe cases, forming any kind of meaningful relationship with another individual? These people after years of painful experiences can come to the conclusion that they are completely unloved and unlovable. Because we are social beings, this conclusion makes life difficult to continue. Capitalism is daily bombarding our self-esteem; we are never good enough under capitalism. There is always some drug to make us happier, some surgery to make us thinner, some car or house or job that will make us more respected. The inevitable consequence of this pressure is that some people will consider themselves failures when they judge themselves up against the values of this society. In some cases this will only further increase some individual's isolation and anger. This terrible brutal crime is an ugly, warped but nonetheless, direct product of big business'â€š value system. Capitalism will continuously attempt to encourage an obsession with money, fame and the worship of individualism. This in turn will inevitably be accompanied by what we saw at Virginia Tech this week. This will not be the last individual so void of solidarity as to massacre his classmates. The outpouring of empathy towards the victims of this crime is a sign of the enormous human and working class solidarity that exists in this society. The crime itself is a consequence of the corrupt and rotten values of those who are in control at the top. Related http://www.laborsmilitantvoice.org -- Original Source: http://chicago.indymedia.org/newswire/display/77317/index.php Licensed under Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication.
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On Being A College Professor after the VT Massacre
Thursday, April 19, 2007 I had nightmares about the VT massacre last night. It was on a two day delay. I knew that eventually the horror of what had happened would start to eat away at me. In part, I think my dreams haunted me precisely because I didn't talk, or rather listen, to what students thought about this. I didn't check in to see if they were suffering, in shock, afraid . . . I had to think a lot about why I didn't, especially after the Provost sent us a thoughtful email encouraging us to do so. What it comes down to is that I didn't want to think about it. I didn't want to actually confront the horror of this event. I wasn't prepared for hearing any vitriol, anger or racist statements either (not that students would've made such statements, but I worried). I am scared and frightened by what happened, and in my selfishness, I didn't want to hear anything about it, or how it affected my students. I started to realize how frightened I was by the events yesterday while talking to my colleagues in the Philosophy lounge. I had been studying the faces of the dead at the NYTimes website. But, more importantly, I had been studying the faces of the dead professors. One of them, Jamie Bishop, looked like the sort of colleague I have here. He was young, married, and well-loved by his students. Don't get me wrong, I paused on pictures of young women and men, who could've been my own students, and found myself speechless over the loss. But, seeing the pictures of dead professors haunted me the most. And, it is precisely that which I dreamt: being hunted by a former student, being called to protect my class from an armed assailant. These are not tasks that one signs on for when he/she becomes a college professor. Kerry reminded me of a student we both had a few years ago, who I am convinced was schizophrenic. He was the right age and gender for the onset of schizophrenia. His papers were long, stream of consciousness writings full of references to disturbing sexuality. The more I was around him, the more frightened I became of him. I would shudder if he came to my office and I never had any idea of what to do with his papers. During his senior thesis presentation, I think we all just sat, aghast at what nonsense had been uttered and scrambled to figure out what to do. I think that one of the hard realities that we, as college professors, have to face in the wake of the VT massacre is our responsibility to get troubled students serious help (even if they frighten us). Many of us like to just avoid this responsibility (me included). After all, we're not therapists! And, I am not claiming we should start acting like therapists either. But, I do think we have a serious obligation to pay attention to our students who seem deeply troubled, and figure out ways to get them help. If we just try to get them out of our class, or ignore them, or rationalize to ourselves that they are just lazy, mean or insubordinate, then we may find ourselves deeply regretting that we didn't do something to stop them from hurting others or themselves. The story of Cho Seung-Hui is not an anomaly. We know that there are lots of disaffected, troubled young people in our schools. And while the news reports are starting to show that his professors, at least, tried to take action, what stands out to me is how most people just ignored his behavior. Everyone knows the loners on their campus. And, most of the time these loners are the butt of jokes. Allowing such a disconnected community to exist is no longer safe, forget the moral concerns. So, the lesson I draw from the VT massacre is that I can no longer afford to ignore the students who are manifesting very troubling behavior; I am responsible to them as well as my community. Posted by Aspazia at Thursday, April 19, 2007 -- Original Source: http://melancholicfeminista.blogspot.com/2007/04/on-being-college-professor-after-vt.html Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.
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By Salah Obeid Online Journal Contributing Writer Jun 8, 2007, 00:27 There isn't room enough on the calendar to honor every American hero, but Aug. 16, the birthday of one such hero, is a day teachers and others who cherish education should make a point of celebrating. No one knows what drove Liviu Librescu, four months short of his 77th birthday, to martyr himself to the cause of education. But that is what Librescu, a Romanian-born Holocaust survivor and mechanical engineering professor, did when he blocked a gunman from entering his Virginia Tech University classroom on April 16 -- earning him five bullets, one of them to the head -- so that most of his students could escape through the windows. Because he was slain in a public learning institution, public schools are where he should be celebrated. And because Librescu (the root of whose name, "libre," is Latin for "free") came to America searching for freedom, those who teach subjects like U.S. history and government should make honoring him a lesson on where his adopted country truly stands on freedom. By the time they enter college, many students in this country can't think critically about history and politics, having rarely been encouraged in school to think creatively outside of art and music class. Yet wolfing down hot dogs and soaking up sun on a field trip to celebrate Librescu Day could amount to more than just indigestion and sunburn, if the day were also an occasion for students to reflect on how their country, a magnet for immigrants seeking freedom, too often deprives people in other countries of the very freedoms Americans enjoy. Throughout its history, the United States has -- in places like Latin America, Haiti, the Philippines and elsewhere -- picked fights at the drop of a dime whenever dollars were to be made, a fact that is largely ignored in classrooms around the country. The result is that, as the country gets bogged down in Afghanistan and Iraq, many students don't know any better than to think thousands of their fellow citizens, most only slightly older than them, are killing and being killed in those countries in the name of spreading freedom. But freedom can mean many things. Librescu, born on Aug. 16, 1930, on the outskirts of Bucharest, was barely nine when World War II broke out and could only watch as his government, also in the name of freedom, helped the Nazis annihilate hundreds of thousands of Romania's Jewish citizens. Luckily he survived, became an accomplished scientist and, in 1986, after living several years in Israel, left for Virginia on a sabbatical and never looked back. Little did he know that years later a frustrated, mentally-ill college student would alone succeed where the focused efforts of the entire Nazi Party had failed. Still, Librescu's death will have been partly in vain if teachers ignore the dedication symbolized by a colleague's choosing to die so that his students might live to see another classroom. Ignorance that isn't necessarily willful but rather the result of intimidation. How else to explain that so many U.S. history and government teachers go out of their way to avoid discussing the context in which President Bush, in his second inaugural address, for example, used words like "freedom" and "liberty" some dozen odd times? Or in which Vice President Dick Cheney, during remarks to Westminster College in Missouri a few years ago, paraphrased Winston Churchill's assessment of the struggle against Soviet communism, in order to paint a picture of the chaos in U.S.-occupied Iraq as a contest between "those who served an aggressive, power-hungry ideology and those who believed in human liberty, freedom of conscience and the dignity of every life"? Words like "liberty" and expressions like "freedom of conscience" are easily said; the challenge is living up to the ideals they represent. But often politicians aren't so challenged to begin with, and worse, sometimes rely on such words, as George Orwell wrote, "in a consciously dishonest way." Dignity of life, after all, means little coming from someone like Cheney, whose central pursuit over the past few years has been to enrich his friends at Enron and Halliburton over the dead bodies of an estimated million or so Iraqi civilians -- people who might have lived in fear under Saddam Hussein, but who at least could've expected to live with far more certainty than can Iraqis today. Propaganda and censorship is something that, growing up in communist Romania, Librescu knew all too well. The same can be said of another Jewish hero to whom he is often compared. On Aug. 5, 1942, German soldiers stormed an orphanage for Jewish children in Warsaw, instructing the man who ran it, Janusz Korczak, that he was free to go, but that his 200 or so orphans and several staff members were slated for extermination. Unlike Librescu, Korczak couldn't save his charges from death. Instead, he followed them to the gas chamber, his final gesture to children who'd had so little and died so young. A renowned children's author and pediatrician, Korczak was also a teacher, and instructed hundreds at his Dom Sierot (Polish for "house for orphans") with little regard for convention. Those who survived the war recount being allowed to form a "kind of a republic for children, with its own small parliament, court and newspaper," according to an entry on Wikipedia.org. By contrast, a half-century later, American public schools appear intent on turning students into automatons. And even that they're getting wrong. Students in the United States, in subjects like math and science, which require learning mostly by mind-numbing rote, lag behind their counterparts in miserably poor countries like Bangladesh, Burundi, El Salvador and Nepal. Generally, though, American students also read less for pleasure, visit fewer museums and attend schools with mediocre teachers, all easily gleaned from comparing how flippant and addicted to pop culture many young Americans are next to kids in less fortunate parts of the world. Maybe that is because, as one credit card company likes to say, there are some things money can't buy. China, where teachers get paid a pittance by a government that looks with scorn at individual rights and free speech, generally has a more well-read, independent-minded, smarter population than ours. Which is what outright censorship does: breed rebellion. Censorship, though, shouldn't be allowed any wiggle room in a country billing itself as the "land of the free." Yet the United States has become fertile ground for it, an indication of which is that mainstream media, not satisfied with just obscuring the "who," "what" and "where" in its news coverage, goes to great lengths to avoid the "why" altogether. It may be just as well, then, that many kids come home from school in the afternoon only to get super glued to MTV, video games or websites like Myspace.com, since much of what's in the news would sooner confuse than educate them. Were that not sad enough, the education that does manage to seep into the minds of these would-be torchbearers of democracy is watered down to the point of irrelevancy. Not because teachers are stupid, evil or lazy but because most are simply too afraid to rock the boat. Many teachers understand they swim in murky water. Water that has swallowed teachers like Deb Mayer at Clear Creek Elementary in Monroe County, Indiana, near Bloomington (home, ironically, to liberal arts-dominated Indiana University). Mayer was fired in 2003 after she dared discuss the subject of peace movements during a general class discussion about the build-up to the war in Iraq. Similarly, a school in Wilton, Conn., recently banned a play about the conflict in that country. "In Wilton, most kids only care about Britney Spears shaving her head or Tyra Banks gaining weight," 16-year-old Devon Fontaine, a cast member, told The New York Times. "What we wanted was to show kids what was going on overseas." The school administration's reply: "You can't always get what you want." Censorship is well documented in schools throughout the country. Schools like Columbine High School in Colorado, where Alfred Wilder was fired in 1996 for showing Bernardo Bertolucci's film, "1900," which explores fascism, to a senior class studying logic and debate. That instance of censorship may even have cost 13 students and a teacher their lives. A video depicting students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold rehearsing for the massacre they'd go on to carry out at the school three years later wasn't allowed to be shown on school grounds because of the controversy surrounding the Bertolucci film. "If the video had indeed been shown," Al Hidell wrote in "The New Conspiracy Reader," "perhaps somebody would have realized the serious threat it represented, which may have prevented the tragedy from occurring." Rarely, of course, is censorship so dramatic in its outcome that it becomes a matter of life and death. But there is such a thing as a slow death. Appalled by the stifling of his film, Bertolucci wrote that it was no less than a prelude to totalitarianism when classrooms become a place "in which the voice of established authority denounced criticism or debate, and used the high school classroom to silence other voices." Voices that hold that "children are the future. Teach them well and let them lead the way." Before letting cocaine lead the way for her instead, Whitney Huston knew what she was singing about. The minute students are fit to broach subjects like history, government and political affairs is the minute they should be challenged to imagine their future roles as informed, voting citizens. Citizens like Librescu, who wore many hats but probably would have been happy to be remembered as one more in a long line of educators who eschewed empty slogans, who knew that leaving no child behind meant arming students with curiosity, compassion and courage. Courage, though, shouldn't mean that 3,500 young Americans, and counting, have to take their final breath in a country that never meant the United States any harm. Courage should mean educating the nation's youth so that they can spot a charlatan when they see one, even if he worms his way up to the presidency itself. Those who will inherit this nation need that kind of courage from those who've been here a while, so that they too can develop the courage to die if need be. But to die in the spirit of someone like Librescu, who took one bullet after another yet refused to let go, so that others might live and learn. And be free. Copyright Â© 1998-2007 Online Journal -- Archived courtesy of Online Journal. Original Source: http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_2062.shtml
Bev Conover, Editor and Publisher, Online Journal (editor_oj@yahoo.com or editor@onlinejournal.com)
[Philosophical Musing on Media Culture] By Carl Davidson 20 Apr 2007 The universe throws curve balls at us, now and then. It seems to want to wake us up, and teach us lessons in impermanence and interconnectedness. Take the killings at Virginia Tech. A strange, quiet young Korean man, Cho Seung-Hui, writer of tortured and violent plays and screeds, makes his own solipsistic martial arts-gangsta video of himself, and sends it to the media, in the course of slaughtering 32 people, then killing himself. The media sensationalizes it. MSNBC ratings go through the roof as its images are repeated, to millions and millions, then all the networks join in the frenzy. As expected, other troubled youth respond, in copy-cat fashion, often only with words, and scares shut down numerous classes across the country. At the same time, discussions of 'healing' get underway. Talk show commentators are having a time of it. I hear both liberal and conservatives alike carry on about 'looking in the face of evil' and trashing the notions of illness and therapy. Rush Limbaugh and one caller on his show go on about how the Korean youth is an 'America hater,' 'suicide bomber,' and simply evil. Retired FBI guys talk about 'training' students to be able to respond better, and hiring tougher 'security.' People debate police tactics, censorship and guns. Then a British paper goes to a tiny hut in Korea, and a reporter talks to the boy's grandparents, who say he was a bad kid and 'deserved to die' for his sins. But the grandparents also reveal the poverty of his parents as they immigrated to the U.S. Most important, they reveal their grandson was diagnosed early with autism, but the poverty all around prevented them from doing much about it, either in Korea or here. Autism is recently growing with unusual speed in the US. Parents, rich and poor, are desperate for help, since dealing with an autistic child is often beyond any couple, however well off. One radio personality, Don Imus, takes up their cause. He helps grow their organization for families of Autistic children, and raises millions. His wife, an environmentalist, believes toxins, perhaps in vaccines, are partly to blame, and demands independent research. Wealthy pharmaceutical companies and the Wall Street Journal counter-attack, smearing the couple. But Imus is relentless, and blasts away at their money-grubbing and lies. Largely through his efforts, a compromise measure, offering some relief, gets through Congress, but he pushes on for more substantive solutions, and raises millions more. Now the effort has stopped, or is at least severely reduced. Imus, as we well know, also indulged in racist, sexist and chauvinist commentary and locker-room 'jokes,' repeatedly, and finally went too far. He realized it, blamed himself and tried to make amends. He promised changes in his show, but accepted whatever he got, saying he had dished it out long enough, now it was his turn to take it. But a groundswell wanted more. They wanted his show shut down, period, and it was. Many people declared victory over racism and sexism, and to a degree, it was. The media moguls preened about their new-found responsibility and the need for change. At least until 32 people died at Virginia Tech. Now we have a new wave of violence featured in the media, and Imus is old news, history. And we have a new wave of blame, and a new staking out of moral ground against evil. But you can make a good case that untreated autism, rooted in poverty, was the root cause of what happened at Virginia Tech, however terrible the consequences and the suffering visited on those who didn't deserve it in the least, just as the Rutgers women didn't deserve it in the least. The whole thing reminds me of Thich Nhat Hanh's long poem, 'Call Me by My True Name.' It's about looking deeply, in the poem, about a Thai sailor, and his raping and killing Vietnamese boat people. It's too long a story to retell here, but do yourself a favor and read it, or better yet, listen to it sometime. But given this latest curve ball, I think I'll wait a bit before declaring either Don Imus or Cho Seung-Hui, connected in this curious way, to be evil, or at least, in the case of Imus, who's still with us, beyond public redemption. Related http://carldavidson.blogspot.com -- Original Source: http://chicago.indymedia.org/newswire/display/77298/index.php Licensed under Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication.
Media Beat (4/19/07) By Norman Solomon Many days after the mass killings at Virginia Tech, grisly stories about the tragedy still dominated front pages and cable television. News of carnage on a vastly larger scale -- the war in Iraq -- ebbs and flows. The overall coverage of lethal violence, at home and far away, reflects the chronic evasions of the American media establishment. In the world of U.S. mainline journalism, the boilerplate legitimacy of official American violence overseas is a routine assumption. "The first task of the occupation remains the first task of government: to establish a monopoly on violence," George Will wrote on April 7, 2004, in the Washington Post. But three years later, his Newsweek column laments: "Vietnam produced an antiwar movement in America; Iraq has produced an antiwar America." Current polls and public discourse -- in spite of media inclinations to tamp down authentic anger at the war -- do reflect an "antiwar America" of sorts. So, why is the ghastly war effort continuing unabated? A big factor is the undue respect that's reserved for American warriors in American society. When a mentally unstable person goes on a shooting rampage in the United States, no one questions that such actions are intrinsically, fundamentally and absolutely wrong. The media condemnation is 100 percent. However -- even after four years of a U.S. war in Iraq that has been increasingly deplored by the American public -- the standard violence directed from the Pentagon does not undergo much critical scrutiny from American journalists. The president's war policies may come under withering media fire, but the daily activities of the U.S. armed forces are subjected to scant moral condemnation. Yet, under orders from the top, they routinely continue to inflict -- or serve as a catalyst for -- violence far more extensive than the shooting sprees that turned a placid Virginia campus into a slaughterhouse. News outlets in the United States combine the totally proper condemnation of killing at home with a notably different affect toward the methodical killing abroad that is funded by the U.S. Treasury. We often read, see and hear explicit media commendations that praise as heroic the Americans in uniform who are trying to kill, and to avoid being killed, in Afghanistan and Iraq. In recent decades, the trends of war have been clear. A majority of the dead -- estimated at 75 to 90 percent -- are civilians. They are no less innocent than the more than 30 people who suddenly died from gunshots at Virginia Tech. It would be inaccurate to say that the bulk of U.S. media's coverage accepts war launched from Washington. The media system of the USA does much more than accept -- it embraces the high-tech violence under the Pentagon's aegis. Key reasons are cultural, economic and political. We grew up with -- and continue to see -- countless movies and TV programs showing how certain people with a handgun, a machine gun or missiles are able to set wrongs right with sufficiently deft and destructive violence. The annual reports of large, medium and small companies boast that the U.S. Defense Department is a lucrative customer with more and more to spend on their wares for war. And the scope of political discourse, reinforced by major news outlets, ordinarily remains narrow enough to dodge the huge differences between "defense spending" and "military spending." More broadly, the big media rarely explore the terrain of basic moral challenges to the warfare state. Everyone who isn't deranged can agree that what happened on April 16, 2007, at the campus of Virginia Tech was an abomination. It came about because of an individual's madness. We must reject it without the slightest equivocation. And we do. But the media baseline is to glorify the U.S. military -- yesterday, today and tomorrow -- bringing so much bloodshed to Iraq. The social dynamics in our own midst, fueling the war effort, are spared tough scrutiny. We're constantly encouraged to go along, avidly or passively. Yet George Will has it wrong. The first task of government should not be "to establish a monopoly on violence." Government should work to prevent violence -- including its own. -- Original Source: Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3088 Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0.
Monday, April 16, 2007 As I wrapped up my afternoon course today, my students informed me of the 31 deaths at Virginia Tech today. It was the first I heard of it and so I immediately looked to the news and am now glued to the press conference airing on NBC. It is uncanny that this shooting tragedy has occurred in the same week as Colombine, 8 years ago (the very day I was interviewing for my job here). I am not sure what to make of this event yet, other than to be utterly horrified by this event and sorrowful for the community at Virginia Tech. We don't yet know how many of the deceased are students and how many are faculty. These details are sure to emerge over time. I am dismayed by the tone of the press, who launched into an attack of VT's President for not locking down the campus after the first shooting incident in the morning. The idea of lockdown and the idea that in the future we might have to post guards on our college campuses is frightening. This is a tragedy. This was an event that no one could've forseen (unless I am persuaded by evidence to the contray), and to respond to this event with greater militarism on college campuses horrifies me (perhaps more than the event itself). I will no doubt have something more to say about this event after I learn more facts and digest the coverage. In the meantime, I would appreciate any links to blogs from VT students or other bloggers covering this story. UPDATE: From the Huffington Post A White House spokesman said President Bush was horrified by the rampage and offered his prayers to the victims and the people of Virginia. "The president believes that there is a right for people to bear arms, but that all laws must be followed," spokeswoman Dana Perino said BARF! Posted by Aspazia at Monday, April 16, 2007 -- Original source: http://melancholicfeminista.blogspot.com/2007/04/tragedy-at-virginia-tech.html Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.
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.
Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported
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.
Virginia Tech Redux: Did the Old Media Lose it in Blacksburg?
April 18th, 2007 As the words continue to flow along with the tears after the deaths at Virginia Tech, one important observation rises above the ruins: the incident represented a triumph for what the pundits term the New Media over the Old. The keys to this triumph lie in the strengths of the New Media: its immediacy, diversity, and ability to speak personally. The immediacy of the New Media put them far ahead of the Old Media even as the crisis unfolded. The on-campus emails that first informed many students that something terrible had happened became like pebbles dropped in a pond, rippling out into the ether. New Media such as Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and search engines became the preferred sources for people desperate to find out what happened. Probably the most dramatic illustration of this was the group of students who fled to the library and then frantically searched the Internet to find out what was happening. A decade ago they might have turned on the radio or television. Even the Old Media had to acknowledge the role the New Media played for the students at Virginia Tech. CBS ran a story "Students Turn To Web In Time Of Tragedy" whose sub head read, "How the Internet Helped Va. Tech Students Cope with Shooting Massacre." The Los Angeles Times reported about University of Southern California sophomore Charlotte Korchak who instead of using a cellphone to check on friends at Virginia Tech, immediately went to Facebook. "I was able to immediately find out who was OK," she said. "Without Facebook, I have no idea how I would have found that out." As for the news on campus, the Old Media struggled to catch up. National Public Radio even published a desperate-sounding plea on their web site for witnesses of the tragedy to please contact them so they could line up interviews. In short, in the first few hours after the shootings the Old Media became just like the rest of us, searching the web for information and answers. Later National Public Radio would gloat, its words a bit of an unnecessary distortion (i.e. many bloggers), on the misinformation posted on some blogs. Referring to a Wired post the NPR blog stated: Wired reports that many bloggers originally misidentified the shooter in yesterday's rampage at Virginia Tech, linking to "to the LiveJournal blog of a particular 23-year-old gun nut in Virginia." It turned out that this person was not connected to the shootings. However, the zealotry of some blogging wingnuts pales beside the old media's inability to even get the name of the institution correct. Most of them resorted to the shorthand Virginia Tech. It wasn't until a day after the shootings that the New York Times published the official name of the school-Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. As for misidentifying the killer, there were also many false reports in the Old Media, which at one time speculated the shootings at the two different buildings might not be related. Others in the Old Media recognized the role the New Media played in getting the story out. The Los Angeles Times admitted: Members of the most wired generation in history dealt with Monday's bloody rampage by connecting on blogs, Facebook and other websites. Their eyewitness descriptions, photos and video made the trauma unfolding in the rural Virginia town immediate and visceral to millions. The Hartford Courant also acknowledged: the most arresting coverage from Virginia Tech came from citizen journalists who went to work well before the media could grasp the massacre's full scope. The reliance of the Old Media on the New gave rise to a host of stories with the following disclaimer, "[this network, newspaper, radio station] is not responsible for the content of external Internet sites." Those in the Old Media who won out in the rush to tap into local sources were those like CNN who have consciously solicited the work of citizen journalists. The Hartford Courant pointed out student Jamal Albarghouti, whose cell phone camera pictures were among the first of the massacre: Was one of more than 100 so-called I-Reporters to submit Virginia Tech content to CNN. Once CNN realized what it had, it paid him an undisclosed amount of money for exclusivity, limiting other networks to no more than 10 seconds of the clip. Some students became weary of all the attention as the Old Media desperately searched for someone, anyone who could give them an interview. One Virginia Tech blogger (in keeping with his request to limit intrusions I will not link to his site here but a secondary source) wrote: As of the time I am writing this I have done a radio interview with BBC and talked with a reporter from the LA Times. CBC Newsworld, the Boston Herald, Current TV, and MTV have asked for interviews and further information. As I said I intend to share my experiences with everyone, but I want to reinstate that I am just an average student and I don't want to be made into something I am not. The Old Media have no one but themselves to blame for not having reporters near the scene. For more than two decades they have been furiously pursuing a policy that has concentrated radio and television stations and newspapers into fewer and fewer hands. The changes in media concentration first proposed by the FCC in 2003 essentially would have allowed a single company to control almost half of all broadcasting stations and, more important, two companies could control 90%. It also raised the caps on how many local stations could be controlled by a single company and widened the ability of companies to engage in cross-media ownership within a single market. What this has meant is the steady decline of local media and the Old Media. An online check of Blacksburg showed that essentially Virginia Tech itself was probably the main local media. City-data.com lists five radio stations actually in Blacksburg. One of them is owned by a national chain, Capstar TX Limited Partnerships and three are owned by what seem to be regional corporations. Only one appears to be locally owned - the FM station owned by Virginia Tech. This leaves the networks and newspapers without any local media they can instantly tap into. They have to rely on the Internet just like the rest of us. In essence the networks have no one to call. This phenomenon is happening all over the country as local media voices disappear forever. In The Strange Death of Liberal America I wrote: Control of local markets by national conglomerates gives local citizens little information about their own community. In a way, many towns become . . . [media] ghost towns with only tumbleweeds howling through them and their vibrant down towns boarded up. Along with the loss of local voices comes the loss of venerable institutions like the broadcasts of the local sports teams, local personalities dishing out tips on canning this yearï¿½s tomato crop, and that lifeblood of many rural communities, the recitation of the current commodity prices. In a sense, conglomerates such as Clear Channel not only make people anonymous, they also make their communities anonymous. The New Media have helped to fill this gap, rushing into the vacuum created by the loss of local voices. As the Washington Post noted, Blacksburg, lead by Virginia Tech, is home to the Blacksburg Electronic Village, a pioneering project launched in the mid-'90s that sought to link everyone in an online community. A Reader's Digest headline in 1996 called Blacksburg "The Most Wired Town in America." For Blacksburg, replacing the Old Media with the New was a move that, as we have seen, paid off during the massacre. It is difficult to speculate what the consequences of the shootings would have been without the New Media, but clearly on the Virginia Tech campus alone, the New Media performed a variety of crucial functions in linking fellow Hokies. If we then move to the level of the friends and family of those at Virginia Tech, without the New Media they might have suffered a great deal more agony. An online Post link observed, Friends and family embrace the New Media to get the message out. It was in the second and third areas - the personal and the diverse - that the New Media really excelled. The Internet allowed those at Virginia Tech and those with close ties to it to quickly link to one another and form an online community of grief. For the rest of us the Internet performed a similar function as blogs, chatrooms, online audio and video allowed us to link with each other and to those at Virginia Tech. Now that the Old Media finally have their satellite trucks in place and have flown down their big name reporters to Blacksburg, they again appear in control. Once again their pious pronouncements and portentous analysis fill the airwaves. They desperately want to tell us how to think and feel about this tragedy. They seem almost eager to fill in the missing whys. The Old Media still have not learned an old lesson, one as old as the Kennedy Assassination, that event that was their first national moment, the first time they had us all glued to the glowing screens. Then they kept their voices soft and restrained and let the pictures tell the story. Now the Old Media broadcast events like the Virginia Tech shootings as if they were sports contests complete with the play-by-play person talking too much by telling us what we are seeing along with the resident experts pontificating about what it all means. And of course they manage to sign up a few "witnesses" who soon become THE voices of the tragedy-and, of course, each network tries to get exclusive contracts with them, trampling over the poor students in their zeal to find the most articulate, photogenic and dramatic. Then they ask the inevitable question, whether for the NCAA Final Four winner or a student at Virginia Tech is: "How do you feel?" In contrast in the New Media, as the cliche goes, everyone can be themselves. Instead of pat answers and telegenic witnesses you find reality. We all know reality can be chaotic, it can be messy and it can be downright obnoxious. It has no pat answers, no resident experts and no one cares what you look like or sound like or even if you are articulate. In the New Media there is the feeling that anyone close to such a tragedy who sounds articulate is suspect. The power of the New Media lies in its diversity. But what makes it powerful also has its dark side. You will find no shortage of rantings in various blogs that put even Fox News to shame. In fact right now unseemly discussions are raging all across the blogsphere like a tsunami of BS over who is to blame for this, whether we should or should not have gun control and the cryptic note the killer left behind. But to have diversity we must be willing to accept the garbage along with the wisdom, even if sometimes it seems the smell of the garbage is enough to make you puke. if you are willing to hold your nose and look hard enough you will also find analysis that both moves you and provides you with more information and more unusual slants than you will ever find in the Old Media. Clearly part of the attention and volume of comments the shootings have precipitated lies not merely with their horrific nature, but with the sense that many have that the massacre signaled something major had shifted in America. The seismic shock, the huge spike in online activity registered by blogs such as this one, signifies that a new world is being born, one in which the New Media have become the preferred means of communication and information. That the New Media are less reliable and more chaotic than the old has some people worried, especially in the Old Media. In many ways the situation with media mirrors the murders at Virginia Tech, for just as the shootings now have made all of us a bit less certain about our safety, so have the New Media made us a bit less certain about our information. We have entered one of those uncertain and exciting times where an old world is dying and a new one is being born. It may take a generation or two before the situation sorts itself out just as it did with previous media changes. As we weather these changes we need to remember that above all, the New Media is about connections and diversity, two things the Old Media lost sight of a long time ago. So, in the days ahead I hope those of you who found this post will wander on to others. Above all, I hope you will make new connections, find interesting voices, and perhaps even bump into some uncomfortable ideas. For unlike the Old Media, the New Media is organic, almost a living thing, because it changes and evolves even as I write this. Posted by liberalamerican -- Original Source: http://thestrangedeathofliberalamerica.com/2007/04/18/virginia-tech-redux-did-the-old-media-lose-it-in-blacksburg/ Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported.
Published by Dave April 25th, 2007 I have been on the sidelines of quite a number of handgun deaths in my life. Thank God, I haven't really been in the crossfire, nor has any member of my family. But gun violence has come close enough to me to be very unsettling. In the late 1980s, when I was a graduate student in German at Vanderbilt, a German exchange student, Thomas Weser, was gunned down in a parking lot on campus in the very early morning hours. The murder seemed to be a robbery gone wrong. It became a murder because the mugger had a handgun. On Christmas Eve 1991, I was living in the Belmont Heights section of Nashville, a cozy suburban neighborhood near several university campuses. My kids were very young. We got along well with our neighbors. There were families all around us. Diagonally across the street from us lived two brothers. They got into an argument in the middle of the night after much alcohol had been drunk. One brother fetched a loaded handgun and killed the other. Without the loaded handgun in the house, this argument would probably have remained a drunken fistfight, maybe a stabbing. In February of 1997, our family accompanied my wife on a weekend trip to New York City. My wife had to attend an arts conference, and I was left to explore the city with the kids. On Sunday afternoon we wanted to go to the observation deck of the Empire State Building, but we weren't sure whether we should wait until Mom got finished with her afternoon meeting. We decided that I would go ahead and take the kids up to the top while Barbara was in her session. After we returned home to Northern Virginia, we learned that a man had opened fire with a handgun on the Empire State Building's observation deck later that afternoon. Seven people were shot; one was killed, in addition to the gunman, who committed suicide. If we had waited for Barbara, we might well have been there to experience the shooting firsthand. Republican Mayor Rudolph Giuliani blamed weak gun laws for the rampage. America's latest adventure in easily available firearms is, of course, the massacre at Virginia Tech. As I have mentioned, my wife and daughter, who had visited Blacksburg the day before, missed this one by about 18 hours. The world press paid close attention to this shooting for a long time. It was front-page news in just about all the newspapers of the world for four or five days. As I write this, nine days after the attack, major papers in Germany, Austria, France, and other countries are still reporting the aftermath. The one thing the world press has emphasized, without exception, is their absolute bafflement at the U.S. gun laws-or lack thereof. We are the laughingstock of the world in this department. People from civilized countries around the world look at the apparent American fascination with guns and cluck in disapproving astonishment. The unifying theme is something like this: how can a great country such as the U.S., the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, continue to allow this to happen? After all these years and decades, I cannot come up with an answer. The National Rifle Association seems to have our congressional legislators in a deathgrip. One mass murder happens after another, all carried out with handguns or assault rifles, and yet nothing changes. The morning after the Virginia Tech shootings, I heard Washington Post sports reporter John Feinstein on WTWP. I wish I could find a transcript of his remarks. Essentially what he said was this: when gun owners and gun fans complain about the inconvenience or unfairness of having to register these deadly weapons, he is sick of hearing about it. Since 9/11 we have been subject to a series of ever more humiliating and inconvenient searches of our persons and property at airports. Nobody really complains, because that's just the way the world is. Well, the world is also selling deadly handguns on the Internet to psychotic young men, who then commit mass murder. Couldn't we endure just a little inconvenience to combat such madness? I am very angry now at our American stupidity. I am angry at the weak will of the majority of Americans who want stronger gun controls, yet who will not raise hell with their congressmen or senators about it. I am embarrassed to have to try to explain to my European friends and colleagues why Americans are still allowed to buy and carry handguns. The cartoonist Pat Oliphant has captured my sense of befuddlement and rage. -- Original Source: http://davesmidlife.com/2007/04/25/blacksburg-violence-and-america/ This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.
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You vs. MSM in Va Tech Shooting Coverage
by brock | April 23, 2007 at 08:21 pm As the terrible story of the shootings on the Virginia Tech campus began to unfold last week, the tens of thousands of moving pieces that make up the main stream media were kicked into high gear. The effort to get reporters "on the ground" and "in the face" of those on campus is startling in its breadth and depth. As you see below, the Washington Post threw no less than 75 reporters at the story!! That is stunning. And when further reading the piece, there was concern among the editors on the Post because it was too windy to charter a private plane to fly their reporters to the Va Tech campus. And then there was you, citizen journalist, crowd sourcing the story from any angle. NowPublic was fielding eye-witness accounts and sifting through rumors in real-time mode; ethical discussions about what information was appropriate to release and when (NowPublic had the name of the shooter's first victim very early on, perhaps before the main stream media knew) it was appropriate to do so. The crew at NowPublic handled the chaos with grace and style and sensitivity and with more coolness and level heads than I've seen in major newsrooms during breaking stories. And they did with a fraction of the resources at the command of media outlets like the Washington Post or NBC News. And they did a more than commendable job. What's the point? Simply this: that effort couldn't have happened without YOU, the citizen journalist. I've talked to many about citizen driven journalism or "crowd sourcing," whatever you want to call it, and many people I talk to ask "what's the use?" especially when there are places like the Washington Post throwing 75 people at the story. But that's exactly the point: with all the resources available to all of you, all of your friends and their friends... citizen journalism can be (should be) a force to be reckoned with. But it starts with you; you gotta believe in this... and then just jump in. Point, click...National News Story In a follow-on segment to this piece that I'll have in a couple of days, I'm going to lay out to you a case-study in "How to Hack the Media," and by that I mean how you, sitting at home, in your office, in the park, at Starbucks or on a beach in Nicaragua can break a story and have the likes of CNN, the Los Angeles Times and FOX News all chasing after your story. Yes, it's true and it's almost too easy. I'll lay it out for you step-by-step, complete with a fresh example, using the story I broke a couple of weeks ago while knocking back some local brews in the sleepy little fishing village of San Juan Del Sur, Nicaragua. Stay Tuned... -- Original Source: Brock N. Meeks / NowPublic.com http://www.nowpublic.com/you_vs_msm_in_va_tech_shooting_coverage
too much coverage of the Virginia Tech tragedy
April 19, 2007 The amount of coverage has been staggering--dozens of stories per day in the top national newspapers, nightly broadcast news programs that are lengthened by half an hour, 24-hour repetitions of the same information on cable news, even a blow-by-blow account in the "Kid's Post" section of the Washington Post, which my 7-year-old reads. I first found out about the Blacksburg tragedy because a student TV news crew stopped me on the street to ask my opinion. This is a global phenomenon: Le Monde and the BBC also led with Cho Seung-hui's picture when I looked. It's a choice to devote so much space and time to those 33 deaths. Bombers killed 158 in US-occupied Baghdad on Wednesday. Nigeria, the biggest country in Africa, saw violence connected to its presidential vote. Comparisons are odious; they imply that one doesn't care about particular victims and that human lives can be counted and weighed. I do sympathize with the Blacksburg victims and their families. I sympathize because I have been told their stories in detail; but there are many other stories that I could have been told--other tragedies, or (for that matter) other narratives that are important but not tragic. Perhaps the Virginia Tech victims deserve sympathy from all of us, but I suspect they would prefer less attention. I find it hard to see how the deserve something they don't want. One reason to tell the Virginia Tech story in detail is to provide us with the information we might need to act as voters and members of various communities. For instance, I work at a university much like Virginia Tech and could agitate for new policies in my institution. But it is generally a bad idea to act on the basis of extremely rare events. There have been about 40 mass shootings in the USA. During the period when those crimes have occurred, something like half a billion total people have been alive in America. That means that 0.000008 percent of the population commits mass shootings. There cannot be a general circumstance that explains why someone does something so rare. The availability of weapons, mental illness, video games--none of these prevalent factors can "explain" something that in 99.999992 percent of cases does <im>not happen. (Bayes' theorem seems relevant here, but I cannot precisely say why.) It is foolish to use such rare events to make policy at any level--from federal laws to school rules. For instance, if lots of people carried concealed weapons, there is some chance that the next mass killer would be stopped after he had shot some of his victims. But millions of people would have to carry guns, and that would cause all kinds of other consequences. The day after the Blacksburg killings, two highly trained Secret Service officers were injured on the White House grounds because one of them accidentally discharged his gun. Imagine how many times such accidents would happen per year if most ordinary college students packed weapons in order to prevent the next Blacksburg. The last paragraph was a rebuttal to those who want to use Cho Seung-hui as an argument for carrying concealed weapons. But it would be equally mistaken to favor gun control because it might prevent mass shootings. Maybe gun control is a good idea, but not because it would somewhat lower the probability of staggeringly rare events. Its other consequences (both positive and negative) are much more significant. If obsessive coverage of a particular tragedy does not help us to govern ourselves or make wise policies, it does reduce our sense of security and trust. It reinforces our belief that "current events" and "public affairs" are mostly about senseless acts of violence. It plants the idea that one can become spectacularly famous by killing other people. These are not positive consequences. It is moving that some students have started a "reach out to a loner" campaign on the Internet. They are trying to respond constructively to something that they have been told is highly important. Imagine what they might accomplish if they turned their attention to the prison population, the high-school dropout problem, or even ordinary mental illness. Posted by peterlevine at April 19, 2007 8:40 PM -- Original Source: http://www.peterlevine.ws/mt/archives/2007/04/too-much-covera.html This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License.
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The vanity of reason: making sense of the Virginia Tech tragedy
Gene Koo - Thursday, April 19th, 2007 @ 5:52 pm Soon after an initial outpouring of shock and grief at the senseless murder of 32 members of the Virginia Tech community, we began seeking explanations for the tragedy. By all accounts Seung-Hui Cho, perpetrator and 33rd victim of this rampage, was a severely disturbed young man; the snippets of video released so far by NBC reveal profound paranoia. Inevitably our questions turn to what would lead him to commit such a heinous crime. We yearn for insight into his motives. Why did he do it? What was he thinking? These questions are familiar to me. I have asked them myself about my own mother, who probably developed paranoid schizophrenia some 15 years ago. I write "probably" because, like water filling a tub, the disease crept over her, imperceptibly, until suddenly it spilled forth in a flood. And somewhere in that tub, the loving woman who had been my mother drowned. I cannot know, but looking at the face in the video aired by NBC, I would guess that the real Seung-Hui Cho, someone capable of the kind of laughter and anger you and I would understand, perished long before he pulled the trigger on himself. People of sound mind often assume that individuals with mental illness think like we do: therefore, they must be misinformed, wrong-headed, or just pretending. We are, essentially, in denial. We delude ourselves into believing that we can figure these people out, and in so doing, learn how to "fix" them. In the first few years of my mother's illness, I challenged her claims that the "Chinese mafia" were spying on and stealing from her. Using lawyer's logic, I repeatedly demonstrated why it made no sense for criminals to go to such great lengths to inflict such petty wounds upon her. She would always win these fights, because madness is not susceptible to reason. What I lacked in communicating with her was not logic, but rather imagination. -- "Did you want to inject as much misery in our lives as you can," asks Mr. Cho in one video segment, "just because you can?" My mother asks these sorts of questions, too. She believes that clerks at the local store overcharge her and divert the money to her oppressors. Pedestrians stare at and spy on her. (The first part, at least, is now true due to her disheveled clothing and behavior). Vandals break into her home and move her papers around to prevent her from working. The invisible device in my ear tells her I am aiding and abetting "them." These ludicrous accusations infuriated me, but my logical counterattacks could not breach the walls around her mind. Exhausted, I learned to stop fighting her reality and to accept that she truly believes what she says. Only through imagination - a willing suspension of disbelief - could I see her world. A few years ago my mother was driving her brother around town when she unexpectedly pulled over so that the three black town cars following them would drive past. There was no one behind them, my uncle reports. But I no longer doubt that she indeed saw, in her mind, enemy agents in hostile pursuit. -- In responding to the tragic massacre Mr. Cho wrought, the public seeks criminal intent, a "motive." The media presume they can understand and explain him; the FBI believes the hateful package sent to NBC will shed insight into his motivations. I have given up that quest. The search is vanity, a misplaced faith in reason. Our criminal justice system assumes we can peer into mens rea, the criminal mind, and presumably extract thoughts and motives. Mental illness and the "insanity plea" have never fit well into this system because crimes committed by the mentally ill defy reason - and reason, it turns out, underlies our concept of justice. Like Job's entourage, our pundits and lawyers see tragedy and deduce the presence of sin. For if there is justice on Earth, then evil must have a logical human cause. But we cannot seek solace in reason when dealing with mental illness. My mother is as logical as you or I, maybe more so. Her stratagems for thwarting the spies and thieves and vandals who plague her life are subtle, cunning, and carefully executed. The only piece out of place is that you and I cannot see these tormenters. They are entirely in her own mind. -- Insanity is not stupidity, incompetence, or folly. Neither should we confuse it with evil. An important factor distinguishes my mother from Mr. Cho: while she manifests her paranoia through fear, he chose mass murder. Or is "choice" a concept that we cannot ascribe to Mr. Cho? Perhaps one day science will answer that question, reveal the origins of madness, and demonstrate which faulty wires put voices in my mother's head, or what lethal mix of hormones induced Mr. Cho to massacre. Science may yet strip the faÃƒï¿½Ã¯Â¿Â½Ãƒï¿½Ã‚Â§ade of free will from every one of us, revealing nothing but seething masses of neurons. And we would be farther than ever from finding the source of evil. Lawyers have a formula for calculating guilt that accounts for mitigations like provocation or insanity. That formula may be readjusted now and then, but its ultimate function is to balance the equation of justice and ensure that criminal debts are paid. But we cannot so easily cancel the pain we all feel when a man guns down innocents, or when a mother neglects her family. It is more than the pain of our immediate loss. We suffer because we are separated from mortal understanding; we have peered over the edge of reason and seen the whirlwind beyond. -- Original Source: Anderkoo - The vanity of reason Permissions: CreativeCommons-Attribution-Sharealike 2.5
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Thursday, April 19. 2007 As all of America mourns the deaths which occurred on the Virginia Tech campus, bloggers are drawing comparisons to the body count that issues daily from Iraq. See a particularly poignant post from Floyd Rudmin of commondreams.org titled "32 Senseless Deaths: A Chance for Empathy, Change of Heart, and Change of Course" which concludes: The tragedy at Virginia Tech was caused by lone gunman, probably deranged. It was a one-time event. It is finished. The tragedy in Iraq was caused by the US government, with the over-whelming support of the US Congress, most of the US media, and much of the US population. This war was planned and executed by rational men and women, none of them deranged. The US decided to start the war against Iraq. The US decided to destroy the infrastructure of Iraq. The US decided to destroy the Iraqi government and to disband its police and army. The US decided to send too few soldiers to secure the nation after doing these destructive deeds. And the tragedy of Iraq is not a one-time event. It is not finished. It continues, apparently without end. By many reports, the US is now preparing to start another war, this time against Iran. Americans feeling the shock and grief of the tragedy at Virginia Tech should look into their hearts and realize that they through their government are bringing this same tragedy again, and again, and again, and again, and again, endlessly and needlessly, to other people in the world who also have hearts that can be torn out, who also feel grief and loss when family and friends are suddenly killed when doing ordinary things of life, like going to school. Tragic deaths force us to feel our humanity and to see we are similar to others in the world. The tragic deaths in Virginia might serve to motivate Americans to curb their militarism and to minimize the tragedies of sudden death that they have been bringing to other families in the world. Read the full article. It is heartening to witness a vigorous debate emerging online as people come to terms with these killings and their significance, not only for the victims and their families and friends, but for an entire culture. As Americans draw comparisons to Iraq, we who are not American are reminded that America is a house divided. I sometimes catch myself drawing hasty generalizations, styling all Americans as arrogant war-mongerers. But the comments I read online remind me that, in fact, those who share the president's world view stand in a minority. I must pause to recognize that most Americans grieve for the state of their country and fear for their safety abroad. As non-Americans, our generalizations merely implicate us in the sins we condemn. Perhaps a more difficult task comes in moderating the generalizations we make as we consider Cho Seung-Hui who was the perpetrator of these killings. Every account I have read thus far refers to him as "deranged." Doubtless a person who commits mass murder is mentally ill. But the use of this particular epithet continues the media habit of drawing a causal connection between violence and mental illness. This is an oversimplification, much like the suggestion that American troops are in Iraq to stabilize a country that has no infrastructure of its own. The media's continuing association of violence and mental illness perpetuates the stigma which haunts millions of people who suffer from major mental health issues. In fact, mental illness is not a significant indicator of violence. See this pdf document from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. Indicators which are more significant include: youth, male gender, and history of violence or substance abuse. Let me make that a little clearer: if you are a male, that fact alone is a stronger predictor of violent behaviour than if you suffer from schizophrenia. A non-clinical list of indicators might also include such factors as availability of weapons and exposure to desensitizing materials (e.g. video games, movies, media that televise a killer's manifesto and cell phone video of shots being fired, etc). From the CAMH document comes this quote: "While it is true that some people who have a mental illness do commit crimes, public perceptions of mentally ill persons as criminally dangerous are exaggerated. In fact, 80 to 90 percent of people with mental illness never commit violent acts. They are actually more likely to have acts of violence committed against them, particularly homeless individuals who may also have a mental illness." (Italics added.) If the mentally ill are more likely to be victims of violent acts, then it is possible that Cho Seung-Hui only became a risk after he was, himself, victimized. Following the shootings at Columbine, it was revealed that the shooters, Harris & Klebold, were victims of significant bullying. The same is probably true in this instance. See here for a profile of Cho. Let's not perpetrate a generalization about mental illness. Let's seize this moment as an opportunity to put an end to a cycle of violence by putting an end to our fears of mental illness. I would invite Floyd Rudmin and commondreams.org to revise their post. There were 33 senseless deaths. To state that there were 32 reveals a stigmatizing bias that we must reckon with. Otherwise, our generalizations merely implicate us in the sins we condemn. Posted by David Barker in Health/Mental Health at 23:08 -- Original Source: http://theoblog.ca/serendipity/archives/248-Cho-Seung-Hui-A-Lone-Deranged-Gunman.html Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5.