2 posts tagged “vt”
On this second day after the VT killings I still can't stop watching the news about it. Jen doesn't really have a desire to watch much. She went to VT and so I thought that she would want to watch more about it but she wasn't feeling well yesterday though (bad sinus congestion and head cold) plus she said on Monday that she was tired of hearing them basically say the same thing over and over. I get that. That part does get old.
Couple thoughts.....
On the first day and since people have been quick to jump all over the VT administration and the police for their 'delay' in getting the word out to the students and locking down the campus. From the beginning I felt that we needed to just chill out a little and wait till more information came out. It's starting to sound like that was the right position to take. Now, at least from what the news says that we know about the killings, it looks like this Cho Seung-Hui kid went to the dorm and the elevator opened and 3 people were inside, Emily Hilscher, her boyfriend, and Ryan Clark the RA of the dorm. Cho shot both Emily and Ryan. When the police got there and spoke with people, they told them of the boyfriend being there and that he was a gun enthusiast. The boyfriend, who goes to school at Radford not far from VT, then became the police's 'person of interest' and went to investigate him which is what led the investigation, as well as believing that the possible shooter was now, off campus.
The governor of Va. is now appointing people to head an inquiry into how the situation was handled. This inquiry was called for by the University itself, if I understand correctly. While questioning if something else/more should have been done is a valid question, we have to remember that hindsight is 20/20. It's EASY to question it now but we have to remember that police and the VT administration did not have all the info we have now. I thought it was cool to see the support shown by all those, in the convocation at VT yesterday, for the VT president. The standing ovation for VT President Steger was longer than that for the Governer of Va. and for President Bush. Some VT students have even started pages on Facebook.com to support President Steger and the administration.
So, I think we need to definitely ask questions, but then we need to wait to heap blame or judgment until we get all the facts.
My thoughts and prayers go out to to all the students and families of the students (especially the ones of students who have been shot). As of right now, the number of confirmed dead is at 32 (including the shooter) with the possibility of ending up higher. That is just crazy. I'm not naive, I know there are just bad people in the world but was this person "bad"? I honestly don't know. Was there a mental problem? What would cause someone to just open up like that on students and faculty. Was this planned? Heck, who was this guy? At this point, from what I understand, they still don't even know who he was, whether or not he was a student. This shooting is the worst shooting in the U.S. ever, on or off campus. The previous worst was a death total of 23 people.
Many of the students at VT are posting info on Facebook.com and MySpace.com about the incident and to let friends and family know that they are ok.
Man...I'm still stunned by this.
