A Dark Day In Blacksburg
The easiest thing to do in a time of tragedy is to point fingers, and that game has already begun in the wake of the deadliest shooting spree in American history. It's simple to criticize what the Virginia Tech cops did, and didn't do, particularly when the school president vapidly says of the first shooting, "we thought we had it under control."
The police and administration made a number of mistakes, to be sure. But, come on... Can a group of people normally assigned to deal with underage drinking, parking violations and traffic flow at football games really be expected to execute a thorough murder investigation in real-time on a 2,600 acre campus?
Yeah, the administration should have sent the e-mail out more quickly and probably should have cancelled classes. Those measures might have thinned out the crowd in Norris Hall a little; but, either way, the shooter was intent on killing people and a simple e-mail wouldn't have stopped him. (This theoretical "lockdown" that should have occurred after the first shooting; what were the logistics behind it? How would a campus of 45,000 have been shut down by a relatively small police force that dealt with 43 reported felonies in all of 2005? It's a great idea, but could it have been executed properly? It's doubtful. But the best part about mob mentality is that nothing has to be logical. It just has to make the speaker sound smart.)
As a nation, we're so eager to assign blame and point fingers that we seem to fail to cast blame on the actual perpetrators. Look at it this way: If some crazy-fuck hadn't decided to murder 32 people, we wouldn't be talking about e-mails, or cancelled classes or response plans. Place the blame on the killer. It's his fault. He did it. Not the police, not the administration. Criticize the police all you want, but they didn't pull the trigger. They didn't walk across campus, planning to massacre innocent students in a building. They didn't go out in a blaze of gunfire and take 32 lives with them because they were spurned by a chick. Blame the shooter. Not the guys who couldn't keep up with him.
Again, I'm not condoning the action (or inaction) of police. It sounds like they screwed up plenty. (And don't get me started on their press conferences. The school president spoke like a third-grader giving an oral report his mom had done for him and the chief of police sounded like he had never fielded a question from a reporter before. Why couldn't both have given perfunctory talks and let a PR person do the rest? The administration is opening themselves up to criticism, particularly when they decided to go on the defensive while the bodies were still warm. It's amazing that just hours after the shootings, the main tract of this story was the inadequacy of VT to deal with the original shootings. While I'm semi-defending them on that, there's no excuse for letting the story shift to blame this early. That's on the administration. For them to fail to officially connect the two shootings by now (11:15 p.m.) is appalling.) It's just that in the quickness to figure out what happened, we're glossing over what actually happened: An extremely tragic and rare murder spree that was nearly impossible to prevent.
Over the next few weeks a slew of information will be released about the murderer and people will try to connect dots that aren't there in an attempt to prove that the killer never should have been allowed in the country, on campus, to own guns, etc. That's all trivial today. Thirty-two people are dead and no amount of detective work is going to bring them back.
Monday, April 16, 2007
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9 comments:
Thank you for taking a reasonable point of view on this tragedy. People seem to be looking past the one person responsible for this crime and looking for a living person to blame. I agree that mistakes were made, but I also hope everyone realizes that the administration is heartbroken and never intended to make a decision that could would harm any of the students. I am an ACC college student myself, and I have spent the day glued to my computer in shock. Not even Marcus Vick could prepare anyone for this
No police force could possibly be prepared for this kind of thing, and the fact that the chief is named W.R. Flinchum...this guy's going to get slaughtered in the court of publich opinion. How much more would e-mails have prevented? Does every VT student have a BlackBerry?
The VT officials are digging themselves in deeper with their inexplicable defense to legitimate, if misguided, questions. Like I wrote yesterday (and Scott and Ian have echoed), the VT police couldn't have fully prevented the second tragedy. But for the VT President (who almost surely will have to resign) to say this morning, "we've handled this as skillfully as anyone," is absurd. No you didn't. Thirty-two people are dead. I'm not saying the blood is on VT officials' hands, but there's also no need to praise what was, at best, a botched response.
Let the media speculate about what could have been done; making idiotic comments like that only fuels their fire.
It's the same thing with the initial "murder-suicide" theory for the original shooting. How could there be a suicide when no gun was recovered from the crime scene??? That they're still promoting this theory and hiding behind it is baffling. VT really needs to do damage control here, and all they're doing is making things worse.
I completely disagree with Chris.
In the more than 225 years America has existed this has never happened and yet a small school in Blacksburg, Virginia is getting railroaded by the media for not being prepared for something like this. Give me a break.
Nobody in the world is more thoroughly prepared than the U.S. Gov't and it's armed forces yet we've had horrible incidents throughout history that just can't be foreseen. Whether it was Pearl Harbor or 9/11, the guilt lies solely on the perps, not the victims/protectors. All we can do is learn from it to prevent it from happening again.
Aside from that, I also believe that this notion that VT could have stopped the second murders by canceling classes is also ridiculous. What would have happened if say the original two victims had shot each other or commmitted suicide or any variation along those lines? The police probably didn't show up until 7:30 at the earliest, and didn't have the slightest clue what had happened by 8:30 and couldn't have eliminated suicide (by then everyone was on their way to class), what would have happened then?
VT would have had egg all over their face if they'd canceled class for an entire campus because some kid went crazy and shot his girlfriend and then himself. It's like saying the first 9/11 plane was understandable but how the NYPD let that second one hit the other tower is inexcusable.
No, it's not. Crazy people do crazy things. Always have and always will. The real concern should be that crazy people now have the access to weaponry and other means that cause much more serious damage. Crazy guy in 1650 could only do so much with a bow and arrow. Times have changed.
I'm not quite understanding how you're completely disagreeing with me. It seems like you're pretty much concurring with everything I wrote.
while I agree with you that the president & police chief have not done well in front of the cameras, how many times have they ever been asked questions by a huge group of reporters, much less been the focus of international coverage? they're all clearly still in shock. even if they had cancelled classes, i'm not sure how many students would have heard in time. you're also right that the shooter would have found a way to kill people since that was his intent.
in the spring of '95, right before i arrived in chapel hill, law student wendell williams had a breakdown and wandered down franklin st. shooting people. it was just luck that he only managed to kill a few people. it probably would have been akin to blacksburg if he'd gone into one of the campus buildings instead. even a year later, people were debating his mental care & what could have been done to prevent the incident. we learn something each time this happens, but probably not enough.
Chris, what I meant was that I just respectfully disagree with your opinion about how VT officials were acting in the aftermath.
Now's not the time to be blaming VT officials, and that's exactly what the media was doing, so they were forced to respond. My point is that they shouldn't have to be defending their actions right now, or ever, really.
Sure, maybe they didn't handle it 100% perfectly (who could with no precedent or warning?) but I do think they handled it as well as any other small town college in America would have handled it.
based on the post he deleated yesterday and other derogatory comments he has made about tech it would not be unreasonable to believe chris has a bone to pick with va tech, and is looking for reasons to throw their president to the wolves (even if he is at the same time arguing against doing the exact same thing)
The comments I've made about VT in the past are:
A) The football team is a lawless crew led by a coach without a speck of integrity. Frank Beamer cares only about winning and not who helps him do that, thus he recruits players with spotty records who end up leaving campus not with a diploma, but with felony indictments.
B) VT never should have been allowed in the ACC. John Swofford, so desperate for a football championship game that, was held hostage by Virginia Governor Mark Warner and eventually caved, this bringing VT into the ACC when nobody in the league wanted them. I hated ACC expansion, in general, but hated it even more when the proud basketball conference admitted two mercenaries with no basketball history in Miami and VT. Those athletic programs feign integrity, yet still allow thugs like Marcus Vick to come to their schools. It's disgusting and the actions of BC, VT and Miami besmirch the good name of the ACC. Swofford ruined the conference, has a football Championship game that doesn't sell-out and destroyed the best college basketball Tournament in the land. And he did it all to get Virginia Freakin' Tech.
And, Ski, none of that has anything to do with 32 murders that happened on campus. I'm able to seperate things that make me mad in a superficial way and things that actually matter.
As for your argument that I'm advising laying off the VT Prez while still condemning him; I'm not quite sure I get where you're trying to go with that. My whole point has been that VT was powerless to stop a massacre and shouldn't be blamed for that. However, they're only contributing to the mounting criticism with a lame defense of their actions. Today, they wisely didn't put the school president or the chief of police on the podium, likely because they realized those guys were doing more harm than good. In their place was a woman (whose name I didn't get) that clearly had handled the press before. She should have been on the podium from minute one.
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