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The Morning News - Personal Essays
It stunned the nation that the Virginia Tech murders took place; it shocked Virginians that they occurred in Blacksburg. A former longtime resident, BENJAMIN COHEN traces his connections to the tragedy.
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I drove home from Charlottesville in confused panic after cancelling my afternoon class. Noah Adams was on NPR talking about the stark clash of nature and humans, setting and event. It was the visual, sensory contrast between Blacksburg, the bucolic valley town in southwestern Virginia, and mass murder news story. That this human tragedy could happen there, in that natural majesty. From all the 11 scattered years I lived there, before moving to the University of Virginia last year, the bucolic descriptor is one that sticks. It’s exaggerated, I know, but it works. And it’s the one the media evoked all week: Blacksburg, a quaint, off-the-beaten-track bucolic college town nestled in the mountains of southwest Virginia. Being “nestled” also seems key, the town cradled by the mountains, the students by the valley. I walked that nestled town too many times to count, and ever after have the image of my son cruising down Draper Road sidewalks wearing his red Keds and pushing his toy lawnmower.
Adams apparently had written about the New River a few years ago—a river paradoxically named, since it’s in fact one of the oldest in North America, if not the world—and thus knew the area. He was speaking in the first phase of tragedy, when people confront the fact that senseless things don’t make sense. This was before the pre-spin spin phase, when people talk about what people will soon be talking about: too many guns, not enough guns, no Bibles in schools, too much God in schools, moral decay, media glorification, video games, actual worldwide wars, daily death in Iraq, numbness, surveillance cameras will save us, mental illness is awful, failure of health-care system, campus judicial systems, parents, society, it’s “society’s” fault, and however else Nancy and Greta might try to understand it. After 9/11, they gave us, what, a three- to four-day opening phase? The duration is apparently proportional to death count; this time it lasted three to four hours.
<I>I</I> didn’t know any of the victims, but <i>everyone</i> I know knew one or more. From this, I found there is only one direction with things like violent tragedy: It isn’t that I was fortunate not to know any of them directly, but that it was unfortunate so many did; you can’t feel better, you only feel worse or more worse.
I went to Virginia Tech because its application didn’t require an essay. When I graduated, I had no idea why I’d chosen my major (chemical engineering), and I wasn’t even particularly fond of the school itself. But Blacksburg was significant to me. In this way, I have always been critical of an institution that has also come to define me; I placed the natural setting of Blacksburg as one thing, the human institution of Tech as another, as if they were separate, which they are not. So yes, I finally admit it, my adult identity was born there. There’s that. My biography’s tightly intertwined with the town, the valley, the school.
I met my wife there. She had been a freshman in West Ambler Johnston Hall. Three months after graduation, we got married in the chapel on the Drill Field at the center of campus. I played wiffle ball out there all afternoon on my wedding day, getting a slight sunburn in the calm afternoon sun. The sunburn shows in the wedding pictures. The Drill Field is that seemingly fabricated collegiate setting, the only one admissions folks want you to see—frisbees, wiffle ball, rugby, picnics, sunbathers, dogs and tennis balls, kites. It’s also a good place to hold candle-light vigils.
If anything, Blacksburg was known in the mid-’90s because of <a href="http://www.cni.org/tfms/1995b.fall/BEV.html">the Blacksburg Electronic Village</a>. (It was the first “wired” town. Soon, obviously, everyplace was a wired town, so I guess it didn’t really matter anymore.) Yes, Axl Rose supposedly once stopped by The Cellar after a concert in nearby Roanoke, but I never found out if that was really true.
When we, my wife and I, came back for graduate school later in the decade—for something called “science studies,” something explicitly<i> not </i>engineering—Blacksburg had become a football school. Plus, <a href="http://outside.away.com/outside/destinations/200109/200109towns_10.adp">one year <i>Outside </i>magazine said it was a great place to live</a>. So much hiking; the Appalachian Trail close by; lots of mountain biking; did you know they filmed <i>Dirty Dancing</i> in a mountain retreat just miles away? Yes, everyone does; rolling hills; serene sunsets; a great vegetarian restaurant downtown; cows, horses, sheep, farms; tubing on the same New River that enchanted Noah Adams. One summer I lost a T-shirt in that river, and my keys and a shoe. It wasn’t until reading the <i>New York Times</i> last weekend—<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/22/us/22norris.html">”Students Recount Desperate Minutes Inside Norris Hall”</a>—that I remembered my classes had been in Norris Hall that summer.
Once when my wife was an undergraduate, there was a peeping Tom incident at the dorms. It was unsettling. That such a thing could happen in that little town. By the time we returned for our graduate stint—living the next county over, a few mountains to the west, in fact, not even in town—Blacksburg was a football school, and there had been a shooting at a local bar, several stabbings, and other violent incidents downtown. This added to my ambivalence about the school and the town and my place there. I didn’t see how I was tied to the area in the way I do now.
My graduate department was likely the most liberal-leaning one on the generally conservative campus. Our offices were in the middle of the ROTC quad. We’d be talking about ethics and technology and social structure and the military-industrial complex inside; they’d be doing roll call and formations and hut-hut-huts outside. In further contrast to this, a fellow graduate student friend was an activist organizer in town. Her friend, another grad student and probably the most visible and active of the activists, was murdered by yet another peace activist, an unstable married man who was having an affair with her. His subsequent suicide kept the motive unclear. Unsettling, in that case, is a disrespectful understatement. It was horrific.
Our children were born in Blacksburg. We lived there for 11 of our first 15 post-high school years: adulthood, education, dating, marriage, education, jobs, family. So it’s not only my biography that is interlaced with the town and the school, but my children’s as well. During the third week of my first semester teaching, after a lecture about the U.S.’s history of involvement in the domestic affairs of other nations, I walked back to my office and was stopped along the way by a friend who said only that “they hit the towers, they hit the buildings.” I had no idea what that meant. Sitting on the front porch of our building, the one facing the ROTC quad, on an amazingly crisp, clear, solid blue-sky day, someone else was the first to quote <i>Fargo</i>—“And it’s such a beautiful day,” she said, in disbelief. In such a placid town, nestled in the mountains of Virginia, we watched New York and the Pentagon burn. All of this, three months before our son was born. We had a lot of those “what kind of world…” conversations, all set against the backdrop of bucolic Blacksburg.
<a href="http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2004/8/12cohenphish.html">When we moved into Blacksburg for our last year of studies</a>, as a way to be closer to campus and friends and to live by foot more than car, we walked the mile from our house to downtown many times a week. Then we were true Blacksburg residents, with all the trappings, including first-name greetings at the coffee shop and that vegetarian restaurant and the credit union and the bookstore and the Greek restaurant and the farmer’s market. Our son pushed his toy John Deere lawnmower in front of him every time we walked downtown. He became “that adorable kid,” the one with the lawnmower in the red Keds. At the coffee shop, I recognized, though didn’t personally know, all the regulars. The one we called Stay-at-Home Dad always seemed odd, and my wife didn’t think he was really a father for the first year. (He was; we eventually saw his children.) Weird-Kid-Who-Should-Probably-Have-a-Job was always there too, usually playing backgammon with Stay-at-Home Dad. Unfriendly-Hippie Couple saw us every day for years, never once saying hello. Scowling peaceniks always confused me.
A year after we moved to Charlottesville in 2005 after all that time in Blacksburg, <a href="http://www.roanoke.com/news/roanoke/wb/79080">that weird kid at the coffee shop was arrested, then escaped from jail, killed two people, and caused a lockdown on the Virginia Tech campus on the very first day of the semester</a>. We watched the news from afar, absolutely stunned, completely silent that this was actually in, as the now-well-worn moniker has it, bucolic Blacksburg. College kids were being interviewed on CNN, terrified that this was their greeting to their new world.
I still work with colleagues from Blacksburg. I spoke to my doctoral adviser, himself in the history department at Tech, days before the massacre last week, and had heard there’d been bomb threats over the past month. That’s eerie. Because of my own biography there, I knew what others there were <i>already</i> going through before this happened—another adviser was dealing with her husband’s death last year; a classmate had a devastating miscarriage a little while back; another friend’s younger brother had unexpectedly died in February. And then, as I was leaving my second of three classes Monday afternoon, here at the University of Virginia, someone asked if I’d heard about Virginia Tech. Yes, I’m from there, I said, misunderstanding what she was asking me. I fast-walked to my office and saw all the news.
After I called my wife, hurriedly cancelled class, found my car to drive home, heard Noah Adams on the radio, scolded myself for being irritated by trivialities like CBS’s calling it Virginia Tech “University”—after that, I got home to find my family in the yard, the kids wanting to take a walk around the block. Though he hadn’t given it a second look for several years, my son grabbed his old toy lawnmower from the shed. Then my daughter got her baby stroller, and we walked around our peaceful violent American society.
-Published April 24, 2007
Benjamin Cohen is an assistant professor of science, technology, and society at the University of Virginia. He also helps out at the McSweeney's web site. <a href="mailto:benjaminrcohen@yahoo.com">You can email him here.</a>
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Archived with permission of the author. Original source: <a href="http://www.themorningnews.org/archives/personal_essays/blacksburg_and_biography.php">http://www.themorningnews.org/archives/personal_essays/blacksburg_and_biography.php</a>
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4.16.2007
Horror is the natural first reaction. It is hard to get beyond tumultuous emotions given the stories, scenes, and sheer numbers coming out of <a href="http://dorshorst08.blogspot.com/2007/04/shooting-at-virginia-tech.html">the massacre today at Virginia Tech</a>. The facebook has emerged from a period as a nascent form of disaster-response, as seen often enough with individual students deaths, to <a href="http://wisc.facebook.com/s.php?q=virginia%20tech&k=20010">a full-blown mechanism</a> for channeling overwhelming public grief.
But moving rapidly beyond initial reaction is of paramount importance. Thinking clearly about the response to the incident is essential. Even as <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8OHTPMG0&show_article=1">President Bush encouraged prayer today</a>, he should have done something even more important - encouraged preparation.
The grim <a href="http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,990949,00.html">prospect of copy-cat actions</a> should be a very real concern for colleges and students nationwide, especially given the magnitude of the massacre and its proximity to the anniversary of the Columbine shooting and Hitler's birthday, among other things. As with Columbine, the unavoidable deluge of media and informal attention paid to the perpetrator will no doubt serve as a regrettable temptation to some.
How can individual students possibly prepare? How will university administrations respond and prepare? These are questions that need to be moved swiftly to the front burner of public discussion.
As someone who recently departed campus and may soon be returning to that environment, I think students should demand a proactive response from administrators even as they insist on retaining the personal liberties critical to a meaningful academic environment. The report that Virginia Tech students and staff <a href="http://www.local6.com/news/12194456/detail.html">did not receive e-mail notification of the incident until 2 hours after the first shots were fired</a> is absolutely chilling.
Eerily, it seems nearly impossible to fully prevent events like the one at Virginia Tech from happening without repressing student life beyond recognition. But some measures, at least in the areas of communication, can be taken.
For starters, here are some possible proactive measures I can think of:
1. A sort of mobile phone-based Amber-type general Alert - Students could voluntarily sign up for a robocall (ironic, yes) alert to their cell phones that emergency services or the administration could send out upon receiving word of a campus shooting situation. The list would be used for no other purpose than such an alert. The same could be done with AIM addresses for a similar alert. Such a scheme would admittedly have the potential of having copycat problems of its own.
2. A specific pattern on tornado sirens or the lighthouse horn - <a href="http://hippieperspective.blogspot.com/2007/04/virginia-tech-shooting.html">As suggested in part by Erik Opsal on his blog</a>, this would stand to get a general message across quickly. A specific distinct pattern of sounds (if possible) for a shooting situation could be conveyed to the student populace beforehand.
3. Chancellor's Blog - The chancellor should have a simple blog as a central resource wall for students and staff to turn to to get the most comprehensive and official news in the event of a crisis.
Really, I am deeply saddened. The heinous actions of one domestic terrorist have ended the lives of 33 people - and stand to irreversibly alter the American higher educational experience for the worse. The lack of clear ways to prevent similar situations makes me almost physically ill. But forcing ourselves beyond the shock in short order is key.
Moving forward, students on campus need to walk the unenviable tightrope of being wary of both unhealthy paranoia and potential copy-cat actors.
I am thinking about a lot of friends out there on campuses. Sleeping in the dorms tonight will be tough. Going to class tomorrow will no doubt be difficult. So as you join facebook groups to grieve, join one - or start one - dedicated to putting forward pragmatic suggestions for dealing with the Virginia Tech incident in a concrete way on the UW campus and other campuses out there.
It's a crucial next step.
UPDATE: <a href="http://ntcoolfool.livejournal.com/">Liveblog of the days events</a> from Bryce, a Virginia Tech student. Via Technorati.
posted by Brad V at 5:42 PM
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Originally posted on April 16, 2007 by Brad Vogel on Letters in Bottles blog:
<a href="http://lettersinbottles.blogspot.com/2007/04/virginia-tech-massacre-crucial-next.html">http://lettersinbottles.blogspot.com/2007/04/virginia-tech-massacre-crucial-next.html</a>
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Submitted by boldfaith3 on Wed, 04/25/2007 - 11:29pm.
Let me start by saying I am a student at Virginia Tech on my way to a degree in mechanical engineering. I have not been on this site in a while due mainly to the events last week which I am sure most of you have heard about. In light of the tragedy we have been forced to undergo, I have a lot to say. Let me first start with my story.
On April 16, 2007 I slept through my 8am engineering lecture. This is something I try not to make a habit of, but with this class it has happened quite a few times. I woke up somewhere around 9:30 when my fiance called me and told me she was coming over. This was unusual since she normally has class at this time. That was when she told me that they had closed down all of the campus buildings. My first thought on this was that there was another bomb threat (We had two bomb threats in one of our buildings the week before). That was when she told me that there had been a shooting in West Ambler Johnston, a residential building where I lead a small group Bible study for Intervarsity Christian Fellowship. I was fairly shocked at this. I have heard about school shootings at colleges before but there is rarely ever a crime of that magnitude at Virginia Tech. We have had a small number of sexual assaults and one student was killed last year I believe, but it is rare enough that it still comes as a shock. Moving on, my fiance came over and we proceeded to check e-mails and the news to try to figure out what was going on. This is also when we called our parents to let them know we were safe (mine actually called me first). As we were talking to our parents, they asked about something that came on the news saying that there were some 22 students killed. This was entirely unbelievable and confusing. I could only think that my parents were looking at something wrong because there was no way that 22 students had been killed when I had originally heard that one student was shot in a residential building. All this time we had been recieving e-mails about lockdowns and telling us to stay where we were. During this confusion the number of sirens that screamed past my apartment brought a painstaking realization that this was real and all I could think of was something went really wrong. That's when other people started spreading news around and all the facts began to unravel. By the time we had our information all sorted out, we were horrified to realize that 33 students had been killed, 31 of them (including the shooter) during classes in Norris hall, an engineering building.
The first thing I want to say about this event is that it was deeply disturbing and I am still horrified that something like this has happened so close to home. My deepest sympathies go out to any of the families and friends of our hokie family who were involved in this tragic event. I have been praying for you all that God will show you his comfort and healing power through your grief. I did not know anyone involved personally though I have many friends who did and I know a few people who should have been involved. One of my roomates also slept through a class that morning after being up all night to do work. His class was in one of the rooms in Norris Hall that was attacked. One of my small group members who lives in WAJ lost her roomate. I have realized through this tragedy, the importance of those people around me and the relationships I have which so often suffer for the sake of homework assignments. I believe that many of us have felt the impact of this as we realize how many of our friends and teachers we forget to express our gratitude and appreciation for as we struggle to meet deadlines. If there is one thing I have learned from this it is that people will ALWAYS come first. In the week following this tragedy I have broken down in tears more times than I can remember. I think about the people around me that I could have lost and then I think about the pain that those people are going through who did lose their dear friends and family. The pain that I went through was difficult but I cannot begin to imagine the pain of friends and family. I can only offer again my deepest sympathies. If anyone should need someone to listen, please don't hesitate to do what you can to express your grief which I would not expect to be anything less than inexpressible.
All that being said, I will say this: <b>Virginia Tech will not be remembered for this tragedy. We are a community like no other I have ever experienced, and that is what we will be remembered for. We are hokies. We will not allow this school to become synonomous with tragedy and sorrow, but with coming together and rebuilding. I have never been more proud to be a hokie.</b> The support that has come together from this school has been incredible. Students coming together to embrace others that they don't even know in a simple gesture of understanding and common grief. We are grieving as a body and we are moving forward as a body. This is a community where teachers are encouraging students to grow and continue to move forward and to prove that we can get through this together. A community where students are encouraging teachers and giving them strength to keep going when many of them are simply unable to continue teaching. <b>This is a community that defines the very term community and says that we are here to help each other. I have never been more proud to be a hokie.</b>
Along these lines, we also fall behind President Steger. This is our President, a hokie. I have grown tired and disgusted at the attacks on how this situation was handled. Campus was locked down after the first shooting. Yes, campus was reopened. Under the shield of safety we have all learned to live at ease, with no fear of any kind of danger, let alone a danger of this magnitude. There are certainly more precautions taken at night with regards to walking alone or letting our friends walk home alone, but for the most part we have all felt entirely safe. It is a perfectly natural response then after being told that the shooting was a domestic issue to believe that there was no harm to any other students. The first shooting was initially believed to be caused by someone who was angry with their girlfriend. The decision to send students back to classes may not have been the most cautious decision, but it was certainly reasonable under the conditions and I find it highly unlikely that anyone else would have done differently. The terrible tragedy following could not have been forseen by anyone. That being said, there are arguments that Cho (the shooter) should have been taken out of school. He was a loner type of student who had been believed to have issues before with anger and also looked into for stalking a number of women. Let's start with this, He was taken out of his classes and taught one on one by his english professor who believed he had psychological issues. He was also sent to counselling which he did not continue to go to for very long. You can't force a 22 year old student to go to counselling. His writings were disturbing and somewhat violent but there was no apparant threat of danger to anyone other than himself. He had not told anyone, as far as we know, of any thoughts that could have indicated his later actions. This was certainly a troubled kid and the university did try to get help for him. It bothers me that people think now that their first thought was that it was him. Yes this may have been true, but looking back we can always make guesses as to who we think may have done something based on their personality. That doesn't mean that it is always true and doesn't mean that it could have been anticipated. Couselling and Corrective measures were taken and though they were obviously not enough, this could not have been forseen. <b>We want to lay off on the blame and have people realize that we are here for each other. This is our community and we will not allow it to be torn apart with blame and guilt.</b>
I will say once more that through this tragedy I have realized the importance of life and those people that share it with us. This was a tragic and horrifying event that hit entirely too close to home but unfortunately there are similar events that happen all over the world constantly. Just after this hit the news there were tickers showing hundreds killed by bombings in Iraq. We don't want this to be a juice story. We don't want our suffering to become exciting headlines. This is a terrible thing that we are grieving over and we offer each other all the help we can. We remember the things that have happened and come together to move forward. But we also want to remember the suffering and pain that is occuring accross the globe. As Americans, especially on the Virginia Tech campus, we don't expect tragedy of this magnitude, but many other places do and for that reason it is ignored. We no longer want to ignore that suffering that is constantly occuring around the world but to bring all of this tragedy into the light all at once so we can all move forward and bring this world to a better place where the media is no longer captivated by bloody headlines. We want to see the change in this world and see the inspiration of so many people who work to make that change.
<b>We are hokies. This is our community. We will not be defined as a headline but as a hopeline
If you would like to give money to support the families and the healing process of those here at Tech please visit this site to do so: http://www.vt.edu/tragedy/memorial_fund.php</b>
God bless you all and may His grace embrace us all giving us comfort and protection.
For these three remain: Faith, Hope and Love. But the greatest of these is Love.
1 Corinthians 13:13
Original Source:
<a href="http://www.progressiveu.org/022902-virginia-tech-in-light-of-tragedy">http://www.progressiveu.org/022902-virginia-tech-in-light-of-tragedy</a>
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Virginia Tech, In Light of Tragedy
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Monica Roberts
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Thursday, April 19, 2007
College is supposed to be an overall positive experience. You're finally getting to sort everything out in terms of what you want to do in life, where you're headed and learning and growing as a young adult while having some fun in the process.
For many peeps it's the first time you get to step out, live away from home and get your first taste of adulthood. It's the last time in your life when the only responsibilities you have are to get up, go to class and study your butt off unless you also have a job you're juggling to help pay your tuition.
I guess it's why I enjoy walking around on various college campuses when I do <a href="http://transgriot.blogspot.com/2007/01/sabre-child-running-wild.html">follow Dawn to various fencing tournaments</a>. It takes me back to my own college days in that respect. It's hard for me to imagine what it would have been like to have that peace of mind shattered by a gunman suddenly popping up in one of my classes, firing shots at me and my classmates, then to discover a day or so later that he was a classsmate that peeps had been seeing <a href="http://www.blackamericaweb.com/site.aspx/bawnews/vtshooter419">disturbing behavior patterns</a> about for two years leading up to that horrific incident.
Even the folks who weren't in those Norris Hall classrooms that morning are haunted by 'That could have been me' thoughts. I can only imagine what was going through people's minds as their buildings were on lockdown wondering if the incident was over of if their building was next on the shooter's target list.
What about the peeps who for some reason decided not to go to class that morning? I know they feel just as hurt as the gun shop owner who sold Cho the weapons he used.
How would I feel about that? How do you put that behind you and move on with llfe, if you ever do? It's also tough at that age to lose a classmate because up until you get past your college years and your ten-year high school reunion you have this false feeling of immortality. You walk around in your late teens and 20's with this attitude that you have plenty of time to accomplish the things you want to do or get your life together.
There are 32 people that have been tragically taken from us including Cho. But to the Virginia Tech students who may be reading this blog, life does go on. In 1966 The University of Texas suffered a similar <a href="http://www.crimelibrary.com/notorious_murders/mass/whitman/index_1.html">tragedy</a>. It took a while but people eventually forgot until Monday that a deadly shooting occurred on its campus. It brought back the flood of memories in Austin and on the UT campus of what Charles Whitman had done almost 41 years earlier.
It was interesting to read Nikki Giovanni's account of her 2005 encounter with Cho in <a href="http://transgriot.blogspot.com/2007/04/nikki-giovannis-encounter-with-cho.html">her writing class</a> she was teaching at Virginia Tech. I think what needs to happen in the wake of this tragedy is to strenghten the ability of college professors and administrators to compel folks with disturbing behavior patterns to undergo counseling once its verified.
Would that have prevented the shooting? That's a debatable question. As far as the <a href="http://news.bostonherald.com/international/asiaPacific/view.bg?articleid=195549">gun issue</a> I'm going to deal with that another time. In this post I want to continue focusing on the 32 people we lost, the folks at Virginia Tech and their families who are grieving and trying to make sense out of an irrational situation.
We will never know what types of contributions those fallen people would have made to our society and others around the world. We can only guess about that as we mourn them, memorialize them and sadly have to move on.
Posted by Monica Roberts at 1:39 AM
Originally posted on TransGriot blog:
<a href="http://transgriot.blogspot.com/2007/04/virginia-tech-tragedy.html">http://transgriot.blogspot.com/2007/04/virginia-tech-tragedy.html</a>
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By Aaron Mannes
While the Virginia Tech tragedy has spawned the predictable media frenzy, there has - so far - been an admirable lack of speculation about the killer, his motives, or what this event says about American society. Leftist philosopher Herbert Marcuse once observed, "Not every problem someone has with his girlfriend is necessarily due to the capitalist mode of production." Humans are complicated and there are dark places in the human soul that will emerge. Sometimes ideologies and causes will spark these evil inclinations. But they exist and have emerged in every time and place.
Knowing that tragedies are part of the human experience - whether from natural or man-made causes - it is essential to take proper steps to ameliorate their impact. Dwight Eisenhower once observed, "Plans are nothing; planning is everything." Predicting the exact shape of the next tragedy is rarely possible. But the processes of preparing for some kinds of disasters and attacks will help develop the systems and habits necessary to respond to whatever fate throws. Lives were saved on 9/11 because some WTC tenants had consistently practiced evacuation techniques in the wake of the 1993 bombing.
University Presidents are akin to mayors. Universities are attractive targets and favorable locations for a variety of adverse events (violent attacks, disease outbreaks, criminal activity, and mass disturbances.) Undoubtedly yesterday's tragedy will increase interest in disaster planning at universities. One factor that should become central to planning is the ubiquity of mobile communications technology. Students texted each other to stay abreast of events and of course, there is the now famous celphone video. Properly harnessed this technology could have been an invaluable resource - not only for informing the students and public about evolving events - but for helping authorities locate the injured and track the killer's movements.
This is the age of the network, and the ability of people to quickly form networks and exchange information is an integral part of disaster response and mitigation. In the wake of Katrina, evacuees formed online communities to support each other emotionally and also through practical measures. We have seen the bad guys (terrorists and criminals) and commercial interests make creative use of communications technology to organize internally and get their message out externally. There is no reason the good guys can't do the same.
April 17, 2007 11:08 AM
Original Source: Counterterrorism Blog
<a href="http://counterterrorismblog.org/2007/04/virginia_tech_tragedy_human_na.php">http://counterterrorismblog.org/2007/04/virginia_tech_tragedy_human_na.php</a>
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Virginia Tech Tragedy: Human Nature & Networks
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Brent Jesiek
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Eric Schnell
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2007-05-10
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An account of the resource
Posted Friday, April 20, 2007 by Eric Schnell on The Medium is the Message (Blog)
As the Virginia Tech tragedy unfolded students used a familiar the technology to keep connected with the events, friends, and families: Facebook.
Using laptops and wireless connections, students created new Facebook groups on the fly as the day unfolded. Thousands of people joined a group called "I'm ok at VT," which was used by students to announce that they were safe, ask for details about friends unaccounted for, and to report the names of victims. Other groups such as "VT Unite" were also created and thousands of people world wide not associated with VT joined them.
The use of this social networking site to publish and discover information and report personal experiences was a natural since it is what today's students use to gather online. Facebook provided immediate and quickly-updated information.
As I watched the quality of the footage released much it was obviously generated by camera phones. In my <a href="http://ericschnell.blogspot.com/2007/01/technology-trends-for-2007.html">Technology Trends for 2007</a> post I described the emergence of a concept called <a href="http://ericschnell.blogspot.com/2006/11/rock-concert-20-mobcasting.html">Mobcasting</a>, a phenomenon where event observers capture events on their video phones and podcast the footage on a blog. I described how the the resulting aggregation of content will lead to live event coverage by bloggers that is more in depth than can be captured by mainstream media. This tragedy demonstrated of power and potential of this concept.
Unfortunately, there was dubious information also being created. There has already been media debate about the accuracy of the information that was contained on these sites. Of course, traditional media outlets have processes they use to vet information before it is released. While this verification of information takes time it is not flawless (Dan Rather, Jayson Blair). The trade off is that is one wants to have information faster it may not be as dependable or reliable.
Still, I think there's a great potential for the ability to connect individuals that are there on-the-ground during events as they unfold and using blogs, RSS feeds, and Facebook as tool for publishing their personal experiences. While some can argue the result may not be as accurate as mainstream media, the coverage is significantly more complete.
Original Source:
<a href="http://ericschnell.blogspot.com/2007/04/student-use-of-technology-during.html">http://ericschnell.blogspot.com/2007/04/student-use-of-technology-during.html</a>
This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/">Creative Commons Attribution - NonCommercial - ShareAlike 2.5 License</a>.
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Student Use of Technology During Virginia Tech Tragedy
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