VT Written by Al Shoemaker In memory of those who died at Virginia Tech, May they always be with us This poem is dedicated to all that were lost, Because someone wanted power and lives were the cost For all the ones that sat there in fear, For all the ones that shed many tears, And for the ones who lost their loved ones, so kind and dear We give a salute to all of them that tried to protect, From a foolish madman that had a defect Admiration should be given to all those that went to a better place, Because their bravery shined, that moment they looked death in the face For all the ones that suffered grief, We hope very much that their pain will only be brief Many sat there in caution, petrified like stone, As that bad man took many lives, before he took his own This is for all the ones who managed to stay so strong, During that horrible moment, that felt so very long They had to be so brave, to be so filled with hope, And we wish good for the families, who are now trying to cope Now is the time to spread peace and love, In remembrance of the ones that now float above No one knows why this era has already become such a sad time, But now we must stand up, to prevent such similar crimes We must stop other things from going on now, How this became such a scary world, no one really knows how We need to stop murders, racism, gang violence and gay bashing, And we need to stop theft, violence, and window smashing So let's help all the victims, families, and survivors and show that we all care, Help them on their feet and help them recover from this scare, And clean this death and sorrow out of our air, So now we want to give love, to those whose dreams were wrecked, And everyone else, who was there at Virginia Tech -- Author's Comments It was very tragic, what happened a few days ago at Virginia Tech, so I wrote this poem in honor of the victims, survivors, families, and everyone else related to Virginia Tech, and to inspire others to help the cause. May all the lost ones rest in peace. -- Original submitted to deviantart.com on April 18, 2007: http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/53501916/ Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 License.
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Tragedy In Virginia As Some Fail To Draw Conclusions From VTech Massacre
By a4g Point Five Staff Writer @ 4:51 pm April 16, 2007 -- Fears Raised That Details Of Shooting Might Be Released Into Context-Free Void -- A massacre at Virginia Tech took the lives of 32 on Monday. But as the sun set, and sketchy details slowly emerged on what was still a largely unclear series of events, an even greater tragedy began to reveal itself, as a few irresponsible Americans had not yet drawn broad life lessons from the atrocity. "We've got scores of kids dead or wounded," said one police officer on the scene, "and there's folks out there who have the gall to tell me they haven't decided what this teaches us about America? Sometimes I wonder if I even recognize this country anymore." While most media reports wisely began to correlate the shootings almost immediately to pre-packaged positions on gun control and video game violence, few ordinary citizens have the resources of a major television network to so neatly encapsulate the horrorÃ¢ï¿½ï¿½- and the life lessonsÃ¢ï¿½ï¿½ of the shooting spree into an easily digestible sound bite. This worries analyst Greg Collier, who warned that such individuals were basically "on their own", and may find themselves without a support system when the media machine moves onto the next big story sometime Wednesday or Thursday. "Listen, if you're big on Sudden Jihad Syndrome, just for example," said Collier, "you've got a window of basically six to twelve hours before they identify the shooter. So what are you waiting for? If you don't take your shot against Islam now, and this guy turns out not to be a diabolical Muslim convertÃ¢ï¿½ï¿½- but just some ordinary shmuck with some adjustment problemsÃ¢ï¿½ï¿½- you're out of the discussion, irrelevant." He said the same devastating metric applied to race hustlers, white supremacists, militant feminists, conspiracy theorists, and Bill Maher. "If you haven't drawn your conclusions by nightfall, you're going to be trampled by tomorrow's news cycle. I mean, imagine if right now you were still pondering the implications of the Imus firing, leisurely asking yourself questions about the proper response to boorish behavior in a society that values free speech. Hello? Imus is gone, baby. Al Sharpton already solved racial inequality last week. We're on school shootings now. We've got a country to save, people." Even worse, mental health professionals feel that important "closure" may not occur in those who are unwilling to quickly find a way to make sense of the murders. "As humans, we need to make sense of the senseless," said Dr. Jane Krempsky, a grief counselor, television commentator, and frequent expert witness in civil trials. "We need to exert our control over those things that seem uncontrollable, in order to feel safe once again. Some people just don't appreciate that the clock is ticking." Krempsky said the issues involved in this shooting became plain almost the instant that the widely conflicting reports hit the wires, and included increased gun control, liberalized concealed carry, the effects of the Iraq war, America's obsession with violence, the feminization of the Western male, and the prevalence of pre-marital sex and binge drinking on campus. As one blogger noted in an iconic post near the end of the day: "Virginia who? Oh yeah... I remember that. Horrible tragedy. That was the one caused by global warming, right?" -- Original Source: http://pointfiveblog.com/index.php/2007/04/1260 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.
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Massacre at Virginia Tech: Let the Media Exploitation Begin
Posted Tuesday, April 17th, 2007 at 1:43 AM by Justin I hate it how, whenever we have a national tragedy, journos just eat it up. The TV stations make logos for it, and slogans like "Massacre at Virginia Tech" that become ominous jingles as the anchors and announcers repeat them as a story unfolds. We're watching Dateline NBC now (for the first time ever), and the exploitation of the V Tech tragedy is enraging. Matt Lauer is just getting too much mileage out of it. They take every aspect of the story and make it into an entertainment event. They interview grief counselors and find out how that works. They pull out footage of previous shootings. They interview paramedics and enlighten us about their work. It's all for entertainment and to create viewership for the network. The other people who infuriate me when we have a tragedy is the "expert" morons who get on the tube saying how this could have easily been prevented. Their hindsight is perfect, and they get to promote themselves as experts every time an unpreventable tragedy happens. There's a guy on Dateline now talking about how they should have sent in a massive anti-terrorism response team after the first two people were shot. Come on. We're going to send in the ATF or the army or whomever every time there's a shooting? Ten thousand people are shot to death each year in this country. We can't treat each incident like an act of terrorism as this guy is suggesting. The other thing I hate about the "if only" experts is that they implicitly blame everyone involved. If only the campus police had done something different. If only the email had gone out sooner warning people to stay in lockdown. None of this was foreseeable - who could have known a campus shooting (like the one that happened in Seattle a few weeks ago) would turn into a massacre? I say, mourn with those who mourn, and stop exploiting them for publicity and our need to know. If that weren't enough, they're now doing a story about a guy who survived the Columbine massacre but lost his sister, Rachel Scott. Emotional aftermath and all that. Ugh. "Soon, even prayer was no match for the terror..." -- Original Source: http://www.radicalcongruency.com/20070416-massacre-at-virginia-tech-let-the-media-exploitation-begin Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.5.
Every food vendor in the New River Valley area was out giving away free food. It was awesome. Original source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/maxpower/468730776/ Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0
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Individuals have placed flowers and other items at the crime scene outside of Norris Hall. Original source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/maxpower/468730806/ Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0
Permission Contact: Max Power (http://www.flickr.com/photos/maxpower/468730806/) Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0
Messages that show the solidarity and the university community culture that exist at Virginia Tech. Original source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/maxpower/468731200/ Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0
Permission Contact: Max Power (http://www.flickr.com/photos/maxpower/468731200/) Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0
The memorial at the Drill Field near Burress Hall and Norris Hall. Original source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/maxpower/468742227/ Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0
Permission Contact: Max Power (http://www.flickr.com/photos/maxpower/468742227/) Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0
by D. Grant Haynes Thursday, Apr. 19, 2007 at 2:10 PM The senseless murder of 32 people at Virginia Tech underlines once again the necessity for stricter gun control laws in the United States. Americans are busily soul searching one more time after another mass killing at an educational institution. This time the setting was a university rather than a secondary school. But the ghastly spectacle that unfolded at Virginia Polytechnic University in Blacksburg, Virginia, on April 16 when a disaffected student--Cho Seung-Hui, 23--systematically executed 32 innocent students and faculty members was fully as terrible as other such recent massacres in America--only worse. More were killed at Virginia Tech than at Columbine High School in Colorado eight years ago. And the killer's cold-blooded and methodical resolve, as well as an inexplicable lack of appropriate and timely responses from police officers on the scene, will put the Virginia Tech massacre in a class apart always. Media pundits, politicians, university administrators, psychologists, clergymen and others talk endlessly now about what lessons might be learned from Virginia Tech. The university should have had a better evacuation or lock down protocol in place. University and other police officers should have been more diligent in protecting students from Cho Seung-Hui's rage after his first shooting spree in which he killed two individuals more than two hours before he reappeared on campus to kill 30 more students. The mental health community should have done a better job of intervention when Cho Seung-Hui had, over several years' time, displayed symptoms of mental illness. There is ample blame to go around in this botched and bungled phantasmagoric mess that, seemingly, could not have been handled in a worse way than it was handled. But in all of the hand-wringing 24-hour non-stop media reportage and speculation about Blacksburg, few professionals and fewer politicians with their fingers to the wind and their campaign coffers chock full of National Rifle Association dollars in some cases, have been willing to state the obvious. Cho Seung-Hui could not have murdered 32 people so efficiently in Blacksburg, Virginia, on April 16 without access to two pistols and endless rounds of ammunition for them. Cho was a brooding youth. One of his teachers had identified him as deeply troubled because of the excessively violent nature of his fictionalized scenarios. She had even referred him for counseling. He had had encounters with the university police over allegations of stalking others. He had been described as a potential menace to himself and others by a mental health professional. Should not these facts alone have been a red flag sufficient to dictate a more than perfunctory look at him when he sought to acquire death-dealing hand guns? That should have been the case and would have been in a more sensible culture. Had minimally effective gun control laws been in place in Virginia when Cho sought to purchase his pistols and cartridges, he would have been denied a permit and 32 dead Virginia Tech students and faculty members would be alive today. For all practical purposes, anyone in this nation can obtain a firearm, regardless of his or her emotional stability, maturity, or legitimate need for the weapon. This is wrong and is cause for people in more sane societies to fear for their very lives when contemplating a trip to America. This writer knows whereof he speaks because he lived in Great Britain for a time and was asked often about the danger of being gunned down in America. What must they all think today? More stringent gun control is the only answer to the madness of disaffected youths and others who, repeatedly, have walked into schools and work places and murdered innocent people. But cowardly Democrats who should be at the forefront of gun control legislation are already distancing themselves from calls for tougher gun laws in the wake of the Virginia Tech tragedy. Congressional Democrats fear the wrath of the National Rifle Association and that organization's clout with a certain segment of American voters too much to do what they know is both right and desperately needed. Senate majority leader, Harry Reid (D-NV) squelched serious talk of more rigid gun controls following the Virginia Tech shootings. The Associated Press reported Reid's lackluster and cowardly response to questions of stricter gun control as blood was being mopped at Virginia Tech. "After the worst mass shooting in U.S. history, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid cautioned Tuesday against a 'rush to judgment' on stricter gun control.... "I think we ought to be thinking about the families and the victims and not speculate about future legislative battles that might lie ahead," said Reid... ." And you should also be thinking about the families and the victims of the next such massacre, Senator Reid. A ban on the sale of assault rifles in the United States--one that was in place from 1994 until 2004 when a Republican Congress permitted it to expire--should be reinstated as soon as possible. And hand gun acquisition requirements should also be made more restrictive as soon as possible. The American with a legitimate need for a personal hand gun--certainly and especially a license to carry such a weapon on his person--should become a rare exception rather than the rule. The Cho Seung-Hui's of this nation should never be permitted to purchase a handgun or an assault rifle. Background checks prior to the sale of a pistol should be infinitely more thorough--modeled, perhaps after the British system. The only viable solution to the epidemic of mass killings at American educational institutions and work places is to drastically reduce the number of guns in the hands of Americans. This can be done and should be done. And to those who would at this point trot out the tired old bromide, "when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns", one can only observe that we must start somewhere and at some point in time. The process may take decades, but if assault rifle acquisitions are stanched altogether and hand guns are made infinitely more difficult to obtain, there will be ever fewer of each in circulation over time. That would represent a move in the right direction and would be a fitting memorial to those who gave their lives at Virginia Tech because Virginia's gun laws had permitted a psychologically impaired youth to acquire the instruments to murder 32 people on a morning that will live in infamy throughout American history. How many more Virginia Techs must occur before our elected representatives muster the courage to confront the gun lobby and do what must be done? -- Original Source: http://la.indymedia.org/news/2007/04/197101.php (c) Los Angeles Independent Media Center. Unless otherwise stated by the author, all content is free for non-commercial reuse, reprint, and rebroadcast, on the net and elsewhere. Opinions are those of the contributors and are not necessarily endorsed by the Los Angeles Independent Media Center.
(c) Los Angeles Independent Media Center. Unless otherwise stated by the author, all content is free for non-commercial reuse, reprint, and rebroadcast, on the net and elsewhere. Opinions are those of the contributors and are not necessarily endorsed by the Los Angeles Independent Media Center.
Mariacristina Blog Archive for Virginia Tech
Arms Control Begins at Home April 29, 2007 at 3:28 pm · Filed under Virginia Tech, compassion, meditation, violence I need to be hit with a ton of bricks for a message to sink in. For a long time I've spoken about gun control, nuclear disarmament, and crisis prevention, but it took the VT massacre to finally get the message. I know this must appear selfish to the millions of people across the globe who wake up to gunshots on a regular basis, but since my own personal life is relatively peaceful, I didn't do anything overt to help stop violence. Until now. I used to think that all I could do was to practice a non-reactionary life by not exploding in anger toward those who cross me. Even though anger management and meditation on a worldwide scale to me is the answer to violence, I now think political activism must also be added to my list of solutions. No more cheering from the sidelines. My voice will be heard beyond the walls of my comfortable home. -- Making sense of slaughter April 20, 2007 at 7:17 pm · Filed under Virginia Tech, violence At the Virginia Tech memorial service, Nikki Giovanni gave a moving and memorable speech. Her words were poetry in motion, urging the students to "embrace their mourning". She reminded us that no victim ever asked to be rubbed out, citing examples of atrocities from Africa to the Appalachians. As an individual, I can shape what I want my life to be by acting on my dreams. That's what the students and teachers at VT were doing. But somehow their dream got tangled up with a madman's nightmare. Caught defensless and unaware, they were slaughtered as if they were still targets on a shooting range. Easy to mark. No, this guy wasn't insane. He chose to commit evil. But a long time ago a shift had taken place in his mind that separated him from the rest of the human race. He wasn't born evil. He had to become the monster. Something or someone shaped him into what he was. Where does evil begin? How do I reconcile the opposing images of slaughter with the fact of my own continued existence? I don't think there's enough time left in my life to figure out the answers to these questions. In the meantime, I act. I embrace the mourning, and also wait in awareness to feel a moment of joy. -- Where were you when it happened? April 19, 2007 at 3:06 pm · Filed under Virginia Tech, violence On Monday, the day of the shootings, I went to a yoga class, unaware of the violence unfolding in Blacksburg. The class was serene. Before raising our arms in salutation to the sun, the teacher had us fold our palms over the sternum, then place our hands over the third eye, fingertips touching. We repeated these motions throughout the class, while flowing in and out of the various postures. I went home, worked for a few hours, and then made lunch. I sat down at the table and reached for the remote. I watch CNN during lunch because I eat alone, and I'm also a glutton for punishment. When I looked at the remote, something surged inside of me. It was a thought, or a sense, that as soon as I turned on the TV I would learn of something catastrophic, something worse than the typical bad news. It was a thought that made me pause. This strange intuition wasn't like my usual fears. I worry about imagined events about 50% of the day. It wasn't fear, it was simple certainty. When I turned on the TV a nano second after that flash of thought, it was like stepping into a nightmare. Twenty-two shot dead, then thirty-two! Later, in the evening, I went for a walk. The air was softer and sweeter, the leaves on the trees more vibrant, the sky more blue than I've ever seen it. And I thought, this is so beautiful, how happy I am to be walking along this road, enjoying the evening sun reflected off the tops of the live oaks. And all the while I thought about the students and professors, who in this place and time will never again witness a walk down a country road. Their loved ones will never again enjoy the pleasure of their company. Their parents will grieve the loss of their special child until the end of their days. -- Original Source: http://mariacristina.wordpress.com/tag/virginia-tech/ Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0.
VT Massacre: Could it Happen at Hampden-Sydney???
Submitted by JohnMaxfield on Tue, 04/17/2007 - 7:30am. Would this have happened at a school like Hampden-Sydney? That is the question. And the answer must be dealt with delicately, in the aftermath of such a horrendous massacre that hopefully we will never see repeated in our history. But the fact remains--could this tragedy have been down scaled and at best, diffused, if students were allowed to possess firearms on school campuses? I noticed Cliff Garstang's blog going through the aggregator. He had a post up about the tragedy and I thought for once, that he might have a kind word to pass along to the families in mourning. Instead, it ended up being a diatribe about how guns are bad, guns are evil, conservatives are wrong and reactionary, I'm right and you all are wrong, etc. etc. He went on to say how conservatives are of the mindset that if perhaps either some of the students or faculty had been armed, then this might have stopped the shooter. Of course, he disagreed saying, "Put a gun in the hand of every college kid in the country? That's not only absurd, it's just crazy. Arming the citizenry will mean more gun-related deaths, intentional and otherwise, not fewer. The sane approach is to make sure that there are fewer guns. Not more." What? So here is where my question comes in? Do you think that this tragedy would have happened--better yet--do you think the students would have ALLOWED it to happen at Hampden-Sydney College? Of course not. Why, you ask? Because Hampden-Sydney promotes and allows the use of firearms on campus! Students sleep with shotguns under their beds! They hunt, fish, and target shoot on school property. The Admission Office houses a literal armory of firearms and weaponry under neath that building in their vaults. Statically, the college flaunts, enough firepower to defend the campus against a small country. In talking with a friend after the incident who goes to school there, he said that had discussed this exact issue. They figured that if a shooter dared tried to commit the same horrendous atrocities like at VPI, they wouldn't last but 10 minutes...alive. So is it absurd, Clifford? Is it a crazy notion? If you was that unidentified Asian...who would you be more likely to attack? A school who prides itself in the respect of the Second Amendment--or schools like VPI, UVA, or William and Mary--that have strict anti-gun polices on campus? Cliff said that, "Arming the citizenry will mean more gun-related deaths, intentional and otherwise, not fewer." Really? Well when was the last time of anyone hearing about those gun related incidents at schools that allow and promote gun usage on campus? Why do the 'incidents' only occur in school that have anti-gun policies? One can almost draw this parallel--why are the more violent crimes committed in cities like Washington, D.C. and in countries like Great Britain where firearm usage and most possession is illegal? Are we seeing a pattern here? And, sorry, just had to make this final comment, Cliff says that, "The sane approach is to make sure that there are fewer guns. Not more." So people at Hamden-Sydney are insane? Is that the point you are trying to make? And are the people in D.C. who make the gun control laws SANE? More on the tragedy: here, here, here, and here -- Original Source: http://www.progressiveu.org/103032-vt-massacre-could-it-happen-at-hampden-sydney Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0.
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People Already Profiting from Virginia Tech Shooting (Updated)
Posted On: April 16th, 2007 Normally that would take at least a couple days. The sad state of the domain squatting industry, and society in general, is that after a horrible shooting a bunch of "business people" sprint to grab up every VT shooting/massacre domain possible. If your first thought upon seeing the news of this horrible shooting, is "Oh crap, how can I make money off of this?", then you need to get off the computer because the internet has completely warped your ability to care for other people. After noticing that domains were popping up right after recent tragedies like Katrina, I was curious how often these tragedy induced domain buying frenzies actually happen, and the results were naturally disgusting and not surprising. This latest VT tragedy is just a long history of people snatching up tragedy domain names immediately and then selling them off later for a profit. The domains that were immediately purchased within 20 mins of the shooting are: virginiatechshooting.com virginiatechmassacre.com vtmassacre.com vtshooting.com Special Note: virginiatechschoolshooting.com is still avilable! Hurry, you too can profit from other people's suffering! UPDATES: The first domain is already up for sale already. These poor kids aren't even in the ground yet and this guy is already making his money: (Copy and paste if you want, I'm not linking to their auction.) http://cgi.ebay.com/Virginia-Tech-Massacre-info-Domain-name-lot-vatech-va_W0QQitemZ320104764149QQihZ011QQcategoryZ3767QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem Not only has virginiatechschoolshooting.com been taken quickly after posting this, but the following domains were grabbed up as well (hokiemassacre.com is probably the worst): Source 27BStroke6 on Wired virginiatechshooting.com virginiatechshooting.net virginiatechshooting.org virginiatechshooting.info virginiatechshooting.us vatechshooting.com vatechshooting.net vatechshooting.org vatechshooting.info vatechshooting.us vatechshooting.biz vtshooting.com vtshooting.info vatechmassacre.com vatechmassacre.net vatechmassacre.info vatechmassacre.biz vtmassacre.com vtmassacre.net vtmassacre.org vtmassacre.info virginiatechrampage.com vatechrampage.com vtrampage.com virginiatechmurders.com virginiatechmurders.net virginiatechmurders.org virginiatechmurders.info virginiatechmurders.us vatechmurders.com vtmurders.com hokieshootings.com hokiemassacre.com blacksburgshootings.com Also, thank you to the dozens of people including (Washington Post, Univ of Kansas, Wired, Hipinion, and others) who have referenced my blog and did not just steal my content! -- Original Source: http://www.secondcityceo.com/2007/04/16/breaking-news-people-already-profiting-from-virginia-tech-shooting/ Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5.
A horrible tragedy. The bottom line is that sometimes awful things happen in life and there's not a satisfactory explanation as to why. Sometimes people fail to recognize this. There's a lot of idle chatter regarding whether or not Virginia Tech handled the situation properly. I'm reserving judgment until more facts come out (interesting concept, cable news). I will say it's a lot easier to fault decision in the hindsight of a disaster than it is to make them in real time with incomplete information. In the interest of saving many hours of TV airtime, I'll answer a few questions: --Yes, this could happen at X college. (Whatever your nearby school is.) --There are no security measures which will stop people intent on going on Kamikaze-style killing sprees. --No, we don't need metal detectors and other fortress-like security measures on college campuses. --No, right-wing radio, the fact that the shooter was an alien does not mean international students are about to lay waste to America. --This could have occurred regardless of what the Blacksburg gun laws are. --This could have occurred regardless of how many violent movies or video games were sold last year. [Not that those aren't legitimate issues, but speculative cause/effect chatter on these topics before you know anything about the suspect's background is silly.] A trivial matter in the grand scheme of things, but I thought this clip yesterday afternoon is insightful in how our news media works. Here Wolf Blitzer asks if President Bush will be attending today's ceremony at Virginia Tech: HENRY: No indication yet. Obviously, that's one event certainly the White House is weighing. Typically in situations like this, although there's never been anything quite like this on a college campus -- but whenever there's some sort of a disaster or tragedy, the president, and this president in particular, tries to stay away in the early days, let local and state official do what they need to do. And then within a few days he usually goes, after they've had a chance to grieve, but also deal wit situation on the ground -- Wolf. Huh? Where did reporter Ed Henry get that analysis from? Sounds to me like he merely repeated a talking point the White House floated as it decided whether or not Bush would attend. Anyway, it was obviously wrong. Apparently, Mr. Bush is going to get in the way of local officials doing what they need to do. Posted by on April 17, 2007 11:13 AM -- Original Source: http://www.brianarner.com/weblog/archives/002209.html Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5.
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Dave Vogt / davedot.com I am honestly at a loss for what to say about the events that unfolded on the Virginia Tech campus this morning. I was walking across the Drillfield towards GBJ when firing broke out in Norris hall. I had heard nothing about the previous shootings in West AJ. While I recognize that the decision to go on with classes was an informed one, I still feel that it was the University's responsibility to inform the students of potential danger. I consider myself extremely fortunate that neither I nor anyone I know was involved. I spent the morning trying to touch base with as many people as possible until the phone network here became absolutely saturated. I hope that I was at least able to set up a cascade so that people wouldn't have to be worried about my safety. That being said, it's extremely difficult to place my reaction. Obviously I am not as heavily affected as those whose loved ones have been injured or killed. At the same time though, this is very jarring for everyone involved. I don't think I'll really know how I feel for a while yet. They don't tell you how to react to this sort of thing. UPDATE 17 Apr 2007 11:21p: I have been mostly disgusted by the media coverage of this event. I think that larger and more distant news outlets get things the most wrong, and locals do the best job. CNN's article is as sensationalizing as the rest, but if you scroll down towards the bottom, Gov. Tim Kaine's remarks perfectly echo my sentiment. "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." I don't deny that there are questions that need to be asked, but there are more important things to deal with right now. On the other side of the coin, I am deeply touched by the outpouring of support from universities and individual students across the country and abroad. There has been a huge "We are all Hokies" movement, with students wearing maroon and orange to show support. That is probably the best response that I've heard about. I'm glad that the younger generation have a grip on what's important. We're going to need it going forward. This entry was posted on 16.Apr.2007 7:41pm -- Original Source: http://log.davedot.com/backlog/2007/04/beyond-words/ Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5.
April 18th, 2007 by Ben The tragic massacre this week at Virginia Tech will be one of those events that you will remember how you first heard the news, where you were when you heard it, and what you were doing at the time. Like September 11, 2001, it will stick to the national memory for the rest of our lives. The shooting was the most violent act perpetrated on American soil since September 11. Coming almost eight years to the day after the Columbine shootings, the VT murders are the latest and most violent example of the psychotic, suicidal student rampage. Like Columbine, the VT shooter, now identified as senior English major Cho Seung-hui, was calculated and cunning. He chained potential exits shut to prevent possible escape routes. He was carrying multiple clips of ammo. He lined up students and shot them execution-style. On the Monday night newscasts, the networks went all-out, providing coverage with limited commercial interruption, and many reported directly from the campus. If you listened carefully you probably heard the most repeated phrase of the night: "This is the worst incident of gun violence in American history." This is true. But the story really has very little to do with guns. Did the anchors get hung up on "the worst incident of airplane hijacking" angle when covering September 11? The story has everything to do with a psychotic "loner" who decided it would be better to take as many innocent people with him when he ended his own worthless life. Acts of mass murder always follow a predictable pattern. First, there is the period of shock. Depending on the magnitude of the incident, this phase can last for days, even weeks. Then there is the healing process: the dead are mourned and remembered, moments of silence are observed around the country. Finally, there is the "let's-not-let this-happen-again" phase. With September 11, this phase was complex and expensive. More airport security. "No-fly" lists. Federal air marshals. All of these steps have doubtless made our skies safer and have helped prevent a repeat attack. With shooting sprees, like Columbine and Virginia Tech, the final phase revives the gun-control advocates from their slumber. "See," they say, "look what guns do. They kill people. Guns are bad." Do guns kill people? Or, maybe, is it actually people that kill people? We could prevent another September 11 by banning all airplanes. That would solve the problem, right? We would all just have to drive cars or ride riverboats everywhere. Maybe bring back the horse and buggy. No biggie. Already the gun control lobby is licking their lips. Senator Diane Feinstein (D-Cal.) said in a statement that she believed the killings at Virginia Tech would “re-ignite the dormant effort to pass commonsense gun regulations in this nation.” Of course they will. It's the preventative instinct. We could try to prevent another Virginia Tech by banning all handguns, but it's a lot easier to keep an airplane out of the air than it is to keep a gun out of someone's hand. Let's start with those evil airplanes first. Just as we learned on September 11, the issue is the attacker (in that case, radical Muslims, who we now know want to kill us all), not the weapon. If Cho Seung-hui didn't have access to a handgun, would that have stopped his homicidal plans? Doubtful. He would have just found another way to kill peopleÃƒÂ¢Ã¯Â¿Â½Ã¯Â¿Â½a homemade bomb, perhaps. Tragic as they are, school shootings will never disappear. We can't wage war on psychotic students like we can on radical Islam. The best way to stop future campus rampages is to allow students to carry handguns. If just one student or professor had had a gun in one of those classrooms, there might be a lot more Virginia Tech students alive today. -- Original Source: http://joneckert.eckertservices.com/wordpress/?p=61 Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.5
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What could have been done to prevent to massacre at Virginia Tech?
By Arlen Parsa Filed: Thursday April 19th 2007, 9:05 AM In the wake of the tragedy at Virginia Tech on Monday, April 16, many asked how such a thing could have happened. It was the deadliest shooting spree in American history, and already there seems to have been several moments where the incident could have been avoided. The killer, Cho Seung-Hui, himself said in a manifesto mailed to NBC News "You had a hundred billion chances and ways to have avoided today." While there probably weren't "a hundred billion chances and ways" to have avoided the massacre that claimed the lives of 33 people including Cho, but there were several common sense things that could have been done. It's important to recognize that this horrific incident didn't happen just anywhere: the shootings happened in Virginia; a state known for having some of the most relaxed firearm regulations in the entire country. In fact, critics and safety advocates had complained for years that VA firearm regulations were wholly inadequate and substandard when compared with the rest of the country. Here are a few ideas that the Virginia state legislature ought to consider implementing. I'm not holding my breath since it's made up of staunch NRA types and has been controlled by Republicans for years. But tragedies like these force everyone to reconsider their ideologies. First, how about a law that says if you've been classified as mentally unstable and an imminent threat to yourself or others by doctors and a court- then you're not allowed to walk into a store and walk out with a gun and enough ammo to kill dozens of students? This might sound like a no-brainer, but there is currently no mechanism in place in Virginia to stop mentally unstable people from buying as many deadly weapons and ammunition as they like. In this case, the shooter Cho Seung-Hui was diagnosed with mental disorders, had been taken antidepressants and been checked into a mental hospital in 2005. But that didn't stop him from buying deadly weapons. He had also been referred to Virginia Tech's counseling service after he wrote disturbing violent plays about killing people. Through a loophole in the law, Cho wasn't added to a list of mentally-unstable people not allowed to purchase firearms even after the mental hospital episode because although all the doctors who examined him agreed that he was mentally unstable, he didn't formally get committed and left a short time afterwards. Next, how about a law that says that if you've been accused of stalking people, you don't get to walk into a store, point to a small, easily hidden powerful handgun behind the counter and get it along with 50 bullets to use for "self-defense" in a matter of minutes. Also, what about a law that requires background checks to be done for every firearm purchase in Virginia? Oh, you thought that sort of thing was already required? Nope. Turns out there's two other loopholes in the Virginia state law: one allows people who buy firearms at gun-shows to forgo the background check process entirely. The other loophole allowed Cho to forego a Virginia state background check on one of the weapons he purchased because he bought it from an out of state gun dealer over the internet and picked it up at a local pawn shop for a 30 buck fee. The out of state internet gun dealer was supposed to handle the background check, although it's hard to tell whether they did it or not. Here's another idea. How about a law that says if a gun dealer sells five weapons to murders who use those guns to kill people, then they're not allowed to sell any more guns? Call it the "five-strikes-and-you're-out rule." A gun dealer that Cho bought a glock and 50 bullets from had been responsible for selling similar weapons to at least five other murderers in the past. Did Cho hear about the dealer's reputation for being easy to get guns at? Another thing that's gotten criticism recently is Virginia Tech's reaction to the shootings, including their lack of prompt action to warn students. I won't join the group of rabid idiots blaming Administrators for deaths because I feel sorry for everybody involved at Virginia Tech. At the same time, I think in the future there could have been more done to warn students, especially since the whole incident happened over a span of several hours. Call this the "better safe than sorry" law. Require all educational institutions (from elementary up to college) to revamp their procedures on what to do if there's a school shooting or something like that. The government can pay for consultants to help poorer schools figure out a better plan, cost doesn't matter. But the plans have to include detailed procedures about how to warn students that an incident could be ongoing. At Virginia Tech, students and staff were sent a series of short, sometimes confusing emails updating them on the situation. That's okay, but what about people in classrooms who weren't their computers while the massacre was ongoing? If the school had used their indoor and outdoor PA system throughout the morning to provide updates, it is almost certain that more students and teachers would have been warned. True, they did turn it on after a couple of hours as the incident was ending, but it should have been used immediately and continuously. If educational institutions do not use every tool they have to warn students that a violent incident is occurring, a law should be put in place that would punish them. And although a punishment shouldn't really be needed, if heavy enough it would act as a motivation for schools to develop new warning abilities and actually use the ones that they already have. Better safe than sorry. Some people have suggested that SMS messages over cell phones could be used to warn students. That's an interesting high-tech possibility, but there are a few problems with it. For one, school safety experts say that ring-tones and all other types of audio phone sounds should be stifled when schools are in lock-down- for obvious reasons. If a student is hiding in a janitor's closet (purely hypothetical) and there's a gunman on the loose, the last thing that's needed is for them to get a text message and their phone to start playing some obnoxious ring-tone betraying their location. And I'm no expert. To me, this isn't a question of banning guns, and I think the conservatives who say the debate is between having guns and not having guns are rather disingenuous. This is a matter of common-sense pro-active safety regulations that make the country safer. And these types of changes (and all the ones we haven't thought of yet) can't just be implemented in Virginia- they have to be put in place nationwide. There's no excuse to have some places in the country safer because the laws in those places were designed better. We should have learned that in Columbine in '99, and I'll be damned if we don't learn it now. Once and for all. -- Original Source: http://www.thedailybackground.com/2007/04/19/what-could-have-been-done-to-prevent-to-massacre-at-virginia-tech Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 1.0
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Submitted by Shreya Mandal on 17 April 2007 - 2:34pm. Yesterday, as I sat in the lobby of the Elizabeth Detention Center waiting to testify at a hearing, I learned about the violent incident that took place in Virginia. A small flat-screen television hangs on a wall in the detention center's lobby. I sat there for almost six hours, each hour getting more and more agitated at the cell phone and video coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings. Normally in these situations, I get up and turn the television off. But I was in a situation where I could not get away from the images bombarded at me. CNN shot the ongoing campus scenes throughout the whole day, reiterating over and over again that this was the biggest shooting ever to take place in American history. At first while I listened to the news reporters, I masked my fears, needing to act like I was in control, that everything was okay, and that I was strong enough to stomach the events they televised. I distracted myself from the flat-screen television and tried to focus on preparing for my testimony. But as the hours went by, officers at the detention center passed by me, shouting out the latest death toll. First 21, then 22, then 29, then 31, then 32, and finally 33. It was impossible to tune out. I felt my mind and my heart drift back to when I was 16 years-old, when I was also on campus during a college shooting rampage. That was almost 15 years ago. At various times yesterday, CNN provided history and statistical information of previous school shootings like Columbine and The University of Texas massacres. I waited for them to list my alma mater. But one school they didn't list was a small early undergraduate program called Simon's Rock College, tucked away in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. This is where a college campus shooting occurred on December 14, 1992, the first shooting to occur in the United States in the 1990s. Each moment I looked up at the television screen, heard the ringing of gunshots, or saw limp bodies being taken away by police officers, I went further and further back to that cold evening in 1992. A tightness settled into my chest and fear steadily grew in the pit of my stomach. It was the end of my very first semester of college and winter break was on the horizon. While most others were studying for final exams, I was involved in my usual course of procrastination and found ways not to study. It turned out that procrastinating saved my life that night. Rather than studying for exams, I attended a dance performance that took place on the other side of campus, away from my college dormitory on the main Simon's Rock campus. A friend and I went to the performance together for a little while before we began studying for the next exam. Little did we know about the murder and mayhem that occurred a few yards away from the building. A couple of hours passed and the friend decided to head back to the dorm so she could go back to studying. Enamored by the performance, I decided that pre-calculus could wait a little more and stayed behind. We said our goodbyes and told each other that we would see each other later. I went back to enjoying the performance. Ten minutes later, the friend returned very agitated and said, "There's something going on out there, I heard gunshots." Within minutes, the performance stopped. Fifteen years later, the exact sequence of that night's events seem blurry to me. But I remember someone announced that a shooter was going around campus shooting at people, and that the best way to ensure our safety was to stay calm and stay in the building. We did not know who it was. We did not know that it was a student. And most of all, we did not know if we were safe for sure. I remember staying in the building for a few hours with other classmates, wondering if someone was going to come in and shoot at us. Would I ever see my family again? Waiting quietly for answers and relief was a challenge. Listening to everyone's speculation and witnessing panic around me was even more difficult. We had no way of knowing what would happen next. That night, four people were wounded. Two people were shot dead. One of them was my professor, Nacunan Saez, and the other was a beloved student, Galen Gibson. They were both very bright, creative, and vibrant people that were loved by the entire Simon's Rock College community. But we were all victims that dayÃ¢ï¿½ï¿½all 350 students, faculty members, staff, and college administrators. And because Simon's Rock is such a small tight-knit liberal arts school, the pain of what happened hit us hard. We all went through a terrible and traumatic event that I will never forget. I know that the entire Simon's Rock community is holding a vigil to honor the tragedies that occurred at Virginia Tech and on their own campus so many years ago. Ironically similar to yesterday's incident, the shooter at Simons' Rock was also a young Asian student. He was born in Taiwan. His name is Wayne Lo. During trial, Lo's psychiatrist testified that he had Schizophrenia, while the prosecution argued that he had Narcissistic Personality Disorder. The prosecution "won" at trial and Wayne was found guilty of all 17 counts he was charged with. He was sentenced to two consecutive terms to Life without the possibility of parole. I did not know Wayne directly, but had friends who knew him. Even though I had been traumatized by the events back then, I felt that I was not in the position to judge what really happened to him or understand why he committed such a heinous crime. I was only 16. At the time, I also did not feel I was entitled to expressing the deep fear I felt since I had not been shot during the rampage at Simon's Rock. I rarely spoke about the incident that took place, until now. It seems not much has changed between then and now, except that more and more senseless acts of violence are occurring in our schools across America. The scared young faces of dismayed students, the attempts to make sense of the situation, the desperate need for answers, make the rampant violence and victimization even more palpable. Here we go again. And as time goes on, the violence is getting more and more intense, each ordeal is of greater magnitude. Another bit of irony rests in my career choice as a mitigation specialist. Often times my job is to assess mitigating factors that explain away crimes like murder. But yesterday's crisis demonstrates that we also need to look and understand the complete cycle of violence, the significant trauma that victims experience, and the insurmountable pain and torment that victims' families feel. To me the nature of violence is never a black and white issue. In my experience, the answers we look for are usually in the gray area. But today my heart is with the victims I knew fifteen years ago, and the 33 killed yesterday at Virginia Tech. -- Original Source: http://www.culturekitchen.com/shreya_mandal/story/university_homicide_trauma_revisited_0 Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0.
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Media Coverage of the Virginia Tech Massacre
Charles Warner / Media Curmudgeon Blog Television has once again gone on a rampage of gluttony over the tragic murders at Virginia Tech. However, it depends on your definition of what constitutes gluttony and what kind of TV you're talking about. First, all television is not cut from the same cloth. CNN, MSNBC, and Fox are all-news cable channels, so they have a 24-hour news hole to fill. Because TV is inelastic, the three national news channels can neither expand or contract time nor add or subtract hours to the clock. Thus they fill those 24-hours with what each thinks the majority of their viewers will find compelling. And, of course, they all choose the same stories in what has become a cycle of competitive reinforcement, confirmation, and excess. If CNN airs a story, then Fox and MSNBC producers say, "That confirms that the story is importantÃƒÂ¢Ã¯Â¿Â½Ã¯Â¿Â½CNN (Fox, MSNBC) is running it." They also say, "We've got to run the story more often and devote more resources to it or viewers will go elsewhere." Thus, the news cycle spins out of control. Furthermore, the three cable news networks have structured their programming in hour-long blocks, often with personality-hosts who do talk segments (Larry King, Lou Dobbs, Bill O'Reilly), and the assumption, generally, is that viewers watch for about an hour, so they have to repeat the news cycle and the top stories every hour. In all-news radio, the news cycles are usually shorter. For example, New York's WINS has the famous tagline, "Give us 20 minutes and we'll give you the world." TV and radio all-news outlets are like a news faucet. The notion is that you can turn on a news station or channel at any time and the latest, most important news spews out. Therefore, if you watch a TV news channel for longer than an hour, which happens with breaking news like the Virginia Tech story, you see the top story repeated, giving the impression of saturation and excess. And if you get sick of the coverage on one cable news network and turn to another, you see the same top story repeated, which increases the perception of excess coverage. Furthermore, TV has much greater impact than any other medium because it engages viewers' emotions through its blend of sight, sound, motion, and emotion. Thus videos of airplanes crashing into buildings or a killer's deadly ramblings leave much more dramatic and lasting impressions. And it is these impressions that magnify the perception of excess. TV and radio are real-time linear; you can't rewind or fast forward. They are linear-accessed push media for which the audience can't control what is pushed out; their only option is turn off or switch outlets. Conversely, print media and the Internet are non-linear pull media in which the audience can select what they want, go back and forth, and have random access to content they are interested in. Therefore, when people have no control over what is pushed to them, they are more frustrated than when they can control their content, can pull what they want as often as they want. With these parameters in mind, we can now ask several questions: 1) Should NBC have released the video, pictures, and ramblings of Cho Seung-Hui? 2) Overall, was the media coverage of the Virginia Tech massacre excessive and insensitive? 3) Is the media leading the charge to assign blame? 4) What is Cho's proper name? 1. Should NBC have released the video, pictures, and ramblings of Cho Seung-Hui? NBC News President Steve Capus made the right decision to release the images and ramblings, not only to show them on NBC but also to release them to other news organizations. First, it was in the public interest to have information about the psychopathic killer distributed for a number of reasons, not the least of which was to bring closure to the horror and reassure people that there was no larger plot. Also, as Jack Shafer of Slate, writes: "NBC News needn't apologize to anybody for originally airing the Cho videos and pictures. The Virginia Tech slaughter is an ugly story, but the five W's of journalismÃƒÂ¢Ã¯Â¿Â½Ã¯Â¿Â½who, what, where, when, and whyÃƒÂ¢Ã¯Â¿Â½Ã¯Â¿Â½demand that journalists ask the question 'why?' even if they can't adequately answer it. If you're interested in knowing why Cho did what he did, you want to see the videos and photos and read from the transcripts. If you're not interested, you should feel free to avert your eyes." NBC could not have kept the pictures for itself and away from other news organizations. But did it run the images too often? Yes, and it admitted as much by restricting their use after complaints from victims' families, and Virginia Tech and Virginia officials. And while we don't know if the complaints had anything to do with the decision, I think they probably did. However, the manner in which NBC promoted the video tapes on Brian William's "Nightly News" was a little too self-congratulatory, and MSNBC was clearly over the top in its greedy self-promotion. Chris Matthews, in particular, should be pistol-whipped for his callous, gloating promotion of the Cho videos. But what's so surprising about that? NBC's grade is B minus for sharing the material and eventually restricting the use of the images to no more than 10 percent of any news program. MSNBC's grade is F. CNN's grade is D, mostly for contributing to the feeding-frenzy coverage. Fox News' grade is F, for using the videos, as MSNBC did, as video wallpaper. NPR's grade is A. Without pictures, radio doesn't have the impact of TV, so NPR could be more thoughtful and do more meaningful, sensitive sidebars, which it did. 2. Overall, how was the media coverage of the Virginia Tech massacre; was it excessive and insensitive? Yes and yes. The amount of coverage was excessive because of the nature of cable and radio all-news outlets, particularly in the use of the killer's video on TV. Worse, in my view, was the invasion and occupation of the Virginia Tech campus by hordes of insensitive reporters who bombarded the privacy of the university, the campus, students, victims, and their families in a frenzy to get scoops. NPR recounted the story of a female student who lived in the dorm where the first killings took place. Her dorm was locked down, but, somehow, a female magazine reporter gained access, entered her room and asked her for an interview. The weeping student asked the reporter to leave and quit badgering her, and the reporter responded by handing the distraught student her business card and asked, "Call me." The student apparently replied, "What makes you think I'd call you after what you just did?" CNN sent four anchors to the campus and broadcast from there on Thursday. Was that necessary? Absolutely not. It was excessive, intrusive, and insensitive. Freedom of speech, yes. Invasion of privacy, yes. Come on, CNN, can't you see the ironic insensitivity in overkill on an overkill? If the major media news organizations don't find a way to control this expensive, invasive, counter-productive feeding frenzy on major stories, they leave themselves vulnerable to the Federal government stepping in and regulating news coverage, which would be terrible. However, people are sick of this insensitive type of coverage, which gives them yet another reason for hating the media. So, slapping regulatory controls on the media by the government would more than likely be a popular move. The VT shootings might result in pool coverage of major stories, or guidelines or standards under the auspices of the Radio Television News Directors Association (RTNDA), but, whatever, the big news organizations had better do something. 3. Is the media leading the charge to assign blame? Yes. According to Media Matters for America, on the April 19 edition of "MSNBC Live" Boston radio host Michael Graham told MSNBC's David Gregory that the whole story of the mass shooting "is a story of people just freezing, of just letting him have their way [sic], except that one brave professor put himself in between the gunman and his students." So Graham blames the victims and MSNBC let him get away with it. TIME magazine ran a commentary by John Cloud titled "Viewpoint: Va. Tech's President Should Resign," which blames Virginia Tech president, Dr. Charles W. Steger, for the massacre, which is ridiculous. Others in the media have blamed "passive students," Virginia's mental health providers, the campus police, the state's gun control laws, Cho's family, and South Koreans. All are hysterical over-reactions, except perhaps the reaction to gun-control laws. Perhaps the media gets in a frenzy trying to find scapegoats to blame because it is trying deflect blame from itself to avoid the usual kill-the-messenger attitude of the public. 4. What's Cho's proper name? The New York Times, NBC, and MSNBC, among others, used the name Cho Seung-Hui, according to the Korean tradition of putting a family name first (thus, I would be Curmudgeon Media). CNN, NPR, and ABC, among others, used the American version of the name, Seung-Hui Cho, which I believe is proper because Cho's parents came to America when he was very young and he is a product of American culture, having gone to grade school, high school, and college in this country (his sister graduated from Princeton). Therefore, he should not have been referred to as "South Korean," which caused a rash of hate directed unfairly at Americans of South Korean decent and at South Koreans. Furthermore, the media confused the American public by using two different versions of his name. So, even though The New York Times used the Korean version, all the other media should have gone along, standardized the usage, and explained the American usage, as NPR did, in order to avoid confusion. And what is the overall grade for the media? A failing grade of D. When will the media get its act together? It probably won't as long as it tries to appeal to people's baser instincts in its competition for ratings and in its attempt to find the lowest level of taste and decency. I think NBC, ABC, and, at times, CBS are trying, but they are not succeeding, just barely getting a passing grade. The cable channels aren't even trying to be decent; they're just trying to beat each other. Posted by Charles Warner at April 21, 2007 10:36 AM -- Original Source: http://www.mediacurmudgeon.com/archives/2007/04/media_coverage.html Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 1.0.
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by S L Kim | April 17, 2007 1. Race Shame As soon as I saw the shooter's name--Cho Seung-Hui--in the NYT this morning, I knew he was Korean. Crap. Ever since I got home last night after teaching, and my husband told me about the deadly shooting spree at Virginia Tech, I'd been wondering, like everyone else, about the gunman. Knowing he was a "young Asian man" made me maybe slightly more curious than I normally might have been, and finding out his name made my heart sink a little more. He's being described in the NYT as a "South Korean who was a resident alien in the United States," a 23-year-old senior English major. At first I imagined one of those Korean students who are sent to the US by themselves, as high school or college students, by families eager for them to get an American education at whatever cost. These students, with varying levels of English-speaking skills, are sent all over, to far-flung corners of the US. But it turns out that this "resident alien" came to the states with his family in 1992, when he was 7 or 8 years old. Wouldn't that make him, culturally speaking, an American? It's not so much that I'm afraid of outbreaks of violence against Koreans or Asians in general, but I worry about the generalizations and pop psychology pablum that will reinforce ugly stereotypes and perpetuate tacit forms of racism in the name of "understanding what happened." You know, looking for things in his culture or his upbringing that might have contributed, all the while the implicit message is: watch out for the quiet Asian guys, because they might just go crazy. 2. Media Rhetoric Already, the shooter is described as a "loner," already the profiles emerge about these killers on a rampage. The photos of him are now circulating, and he's described as expressionless. Apparently, he left a note with a list of grievances and he wrote disturbing stories in his creative writing class. It seems too easy to map the symptoms of pathology onto the stereotypical features of racial and ethnic identity. For a while last night, no one wanted to say whether the shooter was a student at VT, but it seemed pretty apparent to me that whoever did it was affiliated with the school in some significant way. But there's a strong impulse to distance ourselves from the killer among us, to imagine that it might have been random, unpredictable, even as we try to fit him into a knowable pattern. A student interviewed said he can't believe he used to say hi to such a "monster." Meanwhile, as we slowly learn more about the victims, the media can't help but paint the stark contrast between the happy, accomplished, and well-integrated students on one side and the angry loner who hated them on the other. I don't think I can stand to watch the TV coverage of this event. 3. Stupid Politics According to Slate and other sources, the blogs on the left and right are abuzz about what could have been different in the gun laws to have prevented or at least curtailed the violence. There are people who actually believe that the answer to preventing this kind of gun violence is for more people to be able to carry concealed weapons. Fight force with equal force, they say. If law-abiding citizens were able to arm themselves, the idea goes, they'd be able to step in and play the hero. I just don't buy it. I wouldn't want to be on a campus where I know some of those around me are packing heat. 4. Campus Life I worry about what this event will do to the climate and conditions of university life. I worry that this will be used as an excuse by the state, the right, the short-sighted, self-interested politicians to meddle in university life in the name of "security." We know how well that's going on the national level. 5. Across the Ocean I wonder how this event is being portrayed and talked about in the Korean media. Any thoughts, J Lee? -- Original Source: http://www.printculture.com/index.php?itemid=1363 Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0.
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by J Lee | April 19, 2007 When I was growing up in the 80s, it often seemed that the world was holding its breath, keeping its fingers crossed to prevent some sort of nuclear disaster. The apocalypse that I imagined then had to do with the world going up in a mushroom cloud, because of polarization along national and political lines. But this next generation's experiences (as E Wesp pointed out in his comment) have been punctuated by violence of a different type, enacted by one or a few individuals and relatively low technology. I want to pick up a few threads of conversation, starting with the comment by ms which addresses the idea of narrative and also points out that we have started this conversation with race. In our discussion and in many of the blog comments I have been reading on this side of the world, the use of the label "Korean" has been hotly debated, some arguing that the shooter's ethnicity may offer clues to his motivations, others charging that to invoke the term is racist. I am curious about how this label "Korean" gets deployed and what meaning it has. In other words, does it matter that he was Korean? What are the conditions under which someone's ethnicity becomes "visible" and how it gets worked into the stories we tell about why something happened, about who is responsible, and about our emotional relationships to the subject? In a basic way, the label "Korean" subverts the popular stereotype of the angry white middle class male shooter. It provides a potentially different kind of explanatory factor, complicating questions about Cho's mental health, his upbringing, ideas about the expression of masculine anger, etc. What I find interesting from our own discussion as well as other articles is how minorities have reacted. Personally, I heard "Korean," "parents own a dry-cleaning business," "sister at Princeton," and "Centreville, VA" and unconsciously began constructing my own narrative of Cho's life, filling in the blanks with my own experiences growing up not far from Centreville (in a similar kind of suburb) and the experiences of friends. Parents sacrifice themselves for their children's education, teaching their kids to value educational success above all other types and in doing so lower their own status in their children's eyes. Cultural divides open between the generations. The children don't quite fit into mainstream American life but have lost touch with and respect for their parents' culture. The alienation I imagine him to have felt confirms and strengthens my sense of my own alienation and my distance from what I see as the cultural center (however imaginary that notion of a cultural center may be). And on and on... In trying to understand his actions I construct for him an entirely fictitious reality which makes me feel (as he has become an extension of myself, my brothers, my sons, etc.) empathetic, invested, responsible, and guilty about the whole thing. I think there's a certain extent to which these incidents become cautionary tales to support our individual and cultural fears: video games inducing violence, fears about repressed male emotion, xenophobia, education without moral center, etc. We all explain the world in the terms we understand, I suppose. But, for the more difficult task... how does the label of "Korean" function on a cultural level, particularly here in Korea? This is a hard question to address, and I am a little hesitant to try to answer it, to (by virtue of having my little soapbox and being in Korea) seem like I have the answers. But, as E Hayot says (sorry to quote you here, E) "pontificating wildly about stuff you barely understand is what the internet is all about!" So here goes, my attempt to create context for you all out there. Kids, don't try this at home. Why the ownership of this man as Korean by those here in Korea? Why not the urge to dismiss him as Americanized, or as a deranged individual, why the urge to place him within the boundaries of the label "Korean"? I'll throw out three contexts here. Context 1: Koreans abroad (read: anyone with Korean blood), on the international stage, function in the popular imagination here in Korea in a way that Americans may find surprising. The average American probably doesn't know who Park Chan-ho, Hines Ward, Hwang Woo Suk, or Ban Ki-moon are, but they are important figures in the public imagination here, evidence of Korea's place in the global order, for better or for worse. I was in the bookstore a few months ago, shortly after Ban Ki-moon was named the new UN Secretary General, and there was already a biography of him written for children, using his life as an inspirational example of what kids could achieve. Where does this mentality come from? From a genre of history writing in which Korea is the passive victim of stronger foreign powers (China, Japan, the U.S.)? From some Park Chung-hee era idea of self-reliance? From some notion of the purity and homogeneity of Korean culture and language? From media which constantly rate Korea's performance in any number of arenas to other world powers? From the strength of the notion of blood? From a sense of social responsibility? Context 2: The educational system here is under a lot of fire for various reasons which I won't go into. Many parents feel they have no option but to send their kids abroad, often alone or with only one parent. There has been a lot of discussion recently on the various pressures these families and kids have to face at a young age. Cho came to the U.S. in elementary school, with both his parents. Any speculation about the pressures on him as a foreigner, on difficulties adapting to life in the U.S., and about the potential reasons for his mental breakdown and feelings of alienation are going to flow towards the grooves already cut by the larger social worry about educational pressures and the education diaspora. Context 3: I think the fear of reprisals against Koreans and Korean-Americans in the U.S. has to be read against the incidents of U.S. military personnel violence against Koreans in Korea. Every time a U.S. soldier is involved in an act of violence (rape, murder) there are protests and reprisals here (not widespread, from my experience, but I don't live near the army base). When an English teacher is caught using drugs or sexually assaulting a student, it is big news here, followed by calls for more regulation of foreign teachers. I think there's a kind of logic that is created by the way these cases have been treated here that would shape the expectation of what will happen to Koreans in the U.S. Thus Koreans may imagine, consciously or subconsciously, that Americans will similarly judge/ demand/protest against Koreans as Koreans do against Americans, if not in action then in belief and idea. When it comes down to it, we have to accept that something about Cho was an aberration, an anomaly; we have to talk about his mental health. Mental health itself is, I think, inseparable from environment and personal history, but the fact is that very few people ever do something this horrendous. But an act like this, like the boogeyman in the closet, has a way of heightening and illuminating our fears and discomforts. And, to go back to the question ms asked: What kind of story will we make him a part of? And how does the label "Korean" play into that story? -- Original Source: http://www.printculture.com/index.php?itemid=1365 Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0.
April 20, 2007 Friday Natalie Solent (Essex) Nikki Giovanni found one of her Creative Writing students a trial. "And every class I'm saying, 'Mr. Cho, take off your (sun)-glasses please, take your hat off please. Mr. Cho, that's not a poem. Can you work on it please,'" Giovanni recalled. "And then I finally realized that something is not wrong with me, something is wrong with him, and I said to him, 'I'm not a good teacher for you.'" One day, she arrived and found her class of about 70 students had dwindled to fewer than 10. When she asked a student after class about it, he confessed that "everybody's scared of (Cho)." Giovanni later had him removed from her class after she threatened to resign. Why did it have to come to that? Imagine if every class Cho Seung-hui had attended had taken place at the invitation of the teacher- an invitation that could be rescinded at any time. In reality his memories of school were of humiliation, but imagine if, from the age of twelve onwards, or from even earlier if your imagination can stretch that far, school had been an option he could choose if he wanted it. What if Cho's concepts of "school" and "college" had been formed by classes like the Karate class described by Brian Micklethwait? What struck me, so to speak, about these "martial arts" classes was that although the children present may have supposed that all there were learning was how to be more violent, what they were really learning was no less than civilisation itself. The children were all told to get changed into their Karate kit in an orderly fashion, and to put their regular clothes in sensible little heaps. They all lined up the way he said. They all turned up on time. They left the place impeccably clean when they'd finished, all helping to make sure that all was ship-shape and properly closed-up when they left. Were these children being "coerced"? Certainly not. They didn't have to be there, any more than The Man had to teach them Karate if he didn't want to. If they wanted out, then out they could go, with no blots on their copybooks or markings-down on their CVs. Having reached the age of twenty-three, Cho was no longer forced to be taught - but his teachers were still forced to teach him and his fellow students to associate with him. True, there were a few last ways out from his menacing presence; the students could jeopardise their education by skipping class and the teacher could jeopardise her career by threatening to resign. Unfortunately by the time these sanctions were employed Cho had already got away with too much. I sometimes think that practically every problem, inefficiency and cruelty of our education system has at its root compulsion. People who are forced into each other's society tend not to behave well to each other. Wherever the doors are locked, be the locks visible or invisible, those inside seem to revert to the hierarchy of the baboon troop. There is still room for free will: most do no worse than learn a few habits of obsequiousness or sullenness that can be shaken off. Cho was not forced to become a mass-murderer. (In fact I see his own claim to the contrary in his video as a sort of twisted acknowledgement of this fact; the thought that "I don't have to do this" had to be actively denied.) No, he was not forced to pull the trigger - but force did play too large a part in his life. Imagine if the doors had been open for the bullied Cho Seung-hui to walk away, or if the adult Cho Seung-hui had been shown the door at the first sign of discourtesy. Imagine this was the case not just for Cho Seung-hui on certain pivotal occasions but for everyone on all occasions. Then, I think, he would have learned differently. -- Original Source: http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2007/04/what_cho_learne_1.html Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 1.0.
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