Virginia Tech Shooting
This morning, our hearts go out to parents and other loved ones of those killed in yesterday’s Virginia Tech shootings. Once again, a school campus housing our children, many of them teenagers ha s been the scene of seemingly senseless violence. The deadliest shooting spree in U.S. history has occurred at a place where most parents feel their kids are relatively secure.
Information is still sparse, although one of the deceased students has been identified as Ryan Clark, of Augusta, Georgia. The gunman has been identified as Cho Seung-Hui, who was a senior in the English department. He lived on campus in another residence hall.
Already, questions are being posed by many people about why classes were not cancelled and security tightened after the shooting of the first two students, which occurred approximately two hours before the rest of the victims perished. The following is a quote from a student:
“I think the university has blood on their hands because of their lack of action after the first incident,” said Billy Bason, 18, who lives on the seventh floor of the dorm. “If you had apprehended a suspect, I could understand having classes even after two of your students have perished. But when you don’t have a suspect in a college environment and to put the students in a situation where they’re congregated in large numbers in open buildings, that’s unacceptable to me.”
At this point, as we wait for more information, we can only offer our support, comfort and prayers to those who lost family members in this tragedy. Give your kids extra hugs and kisses today and, no matter what problems your feel they are causing, give thanks for them.
Virginia Tech, Virginia Tech shooting, college, Billy Bason, Ryan Clark, Cho Seung-Hui, parenting teens, parenting teenagers
April 17th, 2007 at 10:29 am
We need to take time to love on those that are not at the top of the social chain. We may never truly know the motive behind such horrific actions that the killer uses to justify his or her means. However when the downtrodden and socially uncool are are excepted I believe a major motive is removed.
http://www.hollywoodsquared.com/
April 17th, 2007 at 11:42 am
I’m not sure what to make of all this. I don’t think the school should be blamed at this point. It would be like evacuating an entire town due to one domestic dispute. Hindsight is always 20/20 and they realize now what could have been done, but we can’t dwell on that.
What we need to do now is pray for the victims, hug our kids a little more and teach them to be aware of the loners around them as well as to know that depression is a terrible thing that can be fixed.
I’m constantly amazed at the thought processes that drive a person to horrible acts of this magnitude. As a society, we should look around and do what we can for our friends and family to help avoid such acts.
If this were an act of desperate depression - which I feel in my heart it was.
April 17th, 2007 at 11:55 am
I agree with you, Gayla. I think most people now are asking these questions out of shock and fear, which is certainly understandable. In reality, I think the authorities acted in an appropriate manner, given the information they had-which is, realistically, all anyone can do. My heart also goes out to the police offers, who must have already said to themselves “If only…”
April 17th, 2007 at 3:00 pm
As I watch and listen to the Virginia tech service on the television the thought keeps going through my mind that the shooter was a hookie too. I wonder if anyone from Virginia tech has reached out to the parents and family of this troubled soul. They too lost a son.
April 17th, 2007 at 4:20 pm
I am wondering the same thing myself. I posted it in a response to another blog, and I’ll probably be including it in another post shortly. I hope people are thoughtful enough to remember his family.
April 17th, 2007 at 6:07 pm
The Virginia Tech tragedy brings to mind a similar school shooting in 1979 California. 16 year old Brenda Spencer wounded nine and killed two in a shooting spree at an elementary school. She said, “I had no reason for it, and it was just a lot of fun,” “It was just like shooting ducks in a pond,” and “(The children) looked like a herd of cows standing around, it was really easy pickings.”
I Don’t Like Mondays Either, But …
April 18th, 2007 at 12:40 am
“…If this were an act of desperate depression - which I feel in my heart it was.” I don’t personally buy the “depression” theory: depressed people commit suicide, not murder. I would bet my life that this young man gone berserk was on a psychiatric drug and went into a psychotic break as a result. This will continue to happen as long as drug companies put corporate profit above public safety. The only thing further gun bans will do is raise the price of a handgun - a little. If you don’t want to arm the public, fine.
Deputize a select group of volunteers as campus police officers with a background check, training and proper credentials and put them in every school - because as long as you declare a “gun free zone”, you’re advertizing a vulnerable soft target for every crackpot who wants to die with publicity and notoriety. There’s no reason administrators should have no access (under emergency conditions) to a military rifle. It can be safeguarded in a biometric safe requiring two or more authorized persons to access simultaniously (like the missile launch scenario: two people; retinal scans from opposite ends of the room). Not perfect perhaps, but an idea worth considering and with faster response time than 911. It would also be a deterrent to copycats the next time around - and you know there will be more shootings.
April 18th, 2007 at 10:52 pm
I think that even though this gunman made a mistake and killed all these wonderful people, that his parents also lost a family member and now more than likely they are going to get blamed for their sons actions. Which isn’t right at all. We are all thinking and praying about the families of the ones who are pasted but we need to think about the gunmans parents also.
April 29th, 2007 at 9:34 pm
24 months ago in a small Minnesota town, a mentally unstable student murdered and wounded 14 students before killing himself (my April 2005 weblog posting http://www.invisiblechildren.org/weblog )
Jeff Weise also kept an outrageous website openly referencing homicide and suicide. Jeff was also denied treatment and prescribed Prozac*. After the carnage, Red Lake community found the money for a mental health family center to counsel troubled youth.
At that time in Minnesota there were 15 child psychiatrists in the entire state (population about 4 million) and the student to counsellor ratio in MN high schools was 900 to 1.
As a child advocate (long time guardian ad Litem) I strongly feel the need for mental health therapy for those who need it. The children I work with have been severely traumatized and need adequate attention paid to their needs.
In my many years as a guardian ad-Litem it has been my experience that at risk children don’t get help until after their behaviors have become unmanageable and dangerous. Often the help they get comes in the form of a pill and not the personal professional counselling that they really need.
A Hennepin county judge has shared with me the psychotropic drug medications being taken by children in her courtroom. It is truely unbelievable how many disturbed and undertreated youth walk among us.
When attention to mental health services comes earlier, our communities can save themselves from the immense suffering that follows these horrific events.
* Not too many years from now it is my hope that we will recognize the repercussions of legally drugging children with psychotropic medications without adequate mental health services. Today we can only read about these consequences in the newspaper.
February 15th, 2008 at 1:28 am
[...] It’s a shame that we don’t seem to teach that well enough in schools. [...]