Tragedy hits close to home
<b>Campus comes together to mourn victims of shooting</b>
By Cornelia Hall
Princetonian Staff Writer
Photo by Gabriela Aoun
Students gathered in Richardson Auditorium last night for a service in memory of the victims of Monday's shootings at Virginia Tech. With solemn faces, some stained with tears, they listened to musical performances, prayers and speeches.
Associate Dean of Religion Life Deborah Blanks took the podium first, addressing the assembled students with deliberate, heartfelt remarks. She emphasized the renewed interconnectedness of the student body, calling the Princeton community "united in heart, spirit and solidarity."
"We dare to affirm that there is strength in community," she said.
In addition to the sense of unity on Princeton's campus, Blanks spoke of its tie to all academic institutions. "When tragedy touches one life, its universal reach reminds us of the fragility and the vulnerability of all life," she noted. She closed her remarks with a prayer.
USG president Rob Biederman '08 also stressed the transcendence of the college experience, bringing the events at Virginia Tech closer to the Princeton campus. He spoke solemnly as the audience kept their gazes fixed on the podium.
"Every college campus should be a place apart; I imagine Princeton and Virginia Tech are no different in this regard," he told the gathering. "Here at Princeton, some casually refer to this as the Orange Bubble. At Virginia Tech yesterday, the bubble was ruptured, and we felt the shocks of that rupture here."
Monday's gunshots reverberated across the country, with President Bush seeking to console an appalled America and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) offering a moment of silence on the House floor.
"Those whose lives were taken did nothing to deserve their fate," Bush said at a memorial held at the Virginia Tech campus yesterday. "They were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Now they're gone, and they leave behind grieving families and grieving classmates and a grieving nation."
One reason why Princeton felt the repercussions of the tragedy, Biederman said, is the similarity of all students' campus experiences. "As college students, we can feel for their tragedy because we too know the sense of safety and security they felt that morning. We must give our thoughts and prayers to them because we are the same."
For some, the tragedy hit especially close to home. Misan Ikomi '08, from Leesburg, Va., said about a third of her high school class attends Virginia Tech. After Monday's violence, she contacted a close friend to check in on her and was assured of her safety. "She said it's been pure chaos, like being in a movie and not really understanding what's happened," Ikomi said.
Jeff Hall '08 has a brother who attends Virginia Tech. Hall reflected on the conversation he had after calling to make sure his brother was okay. "He didn't really talk about it too much," Hall said. "He was in a building nearby when it happened, and he saw people running out the door when it happened. I didn't really get much of a reaction from him."
"Even for those of us without friends or relatives in Blacksburg," Biederman said, "it's nearly impossible to feel unaffected by what has transpired," he said.
Students clapped sporadically during the service, seemingly unsure of the appropriate response to the speeches. Applause was subdued and brief.
The speakers also offered a sense of optimism, encouraging students to look toward the future in evaluating how they go about their daily lives.
President Tilghman was traveling and could not attend the service, but Vice President for Campus Life Janet Dickerson, Provost Christopher Eisgruber '83 and several officials from Public Safety were in attendance.
At an Episcopalian memorial service in the University Chapel earlier yesterday afternoon, Princeton community members remembered the victims of Monday's attacks while searching for higher meaning through religion.
"I would hope that this would be an opportunity to develop habits of prayer and ongoing awareness of the transient nature of life and what that means for us in terms of our relationships, with one another and with God," Rev. Stephen White, an Episcopal chaplain, said after the service.
Eisgruber offered similar advice at the memorial. "Take the time to honor and value your own life and the lives of the people around you," he said.
Biederman suggested the University community address the issue of personal safety not with increased security but with increased trust.
"We should work daily to deepen and strengthen the bonds that make the college experience so special," Biederman told the gathering. "We need to look out for each other."
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Original Source: <a href= http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2007/04/18/news/18128.shtml> Daily Princetonian - April 18, 2007</a>
Cornelia Hall
2007-06-22
Sara Hood
Kavita Saini <ksaini@Princeton.EDU>
eng
Prof. Newman: Self-image drove Va. Tech shooter
By Sam Fox Krauss
Princetonian Staff Writer
Students who kill their classmates are motivated by a desire to change their reputation, Wilson School professor Katherine Newman and politics professor Keith Whittington told about 50 students and community members last night at a talk on the Virginia Tech shootings.
Newman discussed the social experience of school shooters and the unpredictability of such tragedies, while Whittington related the killings at Virginia Tech to gun control regulation and discussed the potential for changes to concealed weapons permits.
<b>The sociology of school shootings</b>
Major American school shootings have mostly occurred in obscure rural neighborhoods, Newman said. She likened the school massacres in small towns to the "endemic" violence in big cities.
Newman went on to discuss Virginia Tech shooter Cho Seung-Hui in the context of three case studies she has done of school shootings since the 1999 shooting at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo.
"What all three of these boys were trying to do was changing their image in the eyes of their peers," Newman said.
In rural towns, the school is an easy place to make a violent statement, Newman said. She contrasted this with the situation in cities, where young men are more likely to commit violent crimes on the street.
Newman found that school gunmen in recent years have professed a desire to surpass the death toll of the Columbine shootings. The same mentality, she said, seems to be true for Cho.
Newman discussed several cases of school shootings, all committed by students much younger than Cho. She said that if the children been older, their mental diseases would have been more readily apparent.
"There isn't a single rampage incident that wasn't preceded by a string of signals," Newman said.
But the signals that future shooters send out are often ambiguous and under the radar of adults, which is why the signs are rarely reported, she said.
Classmates of the shooters often do not convey their suspicions to authority figures because they fear being labeled a "rat," Newman said.
She described the sense of community in small towns that can lead to reluctance to come forward with damaging information regarding a child. In one example, a neighbor saw a child killing cats in his backyard but did not tell the child's parents. The child went on to kill several students at his middle school.
Neighbors may also be suspicious of the motives of the people who come forward with information about their children.
Newman noted that the Virginia Tech shootings were different from other school shootings because classmates and professors did come forward with information, and Cho did receive treatment.
<b>School shootings and gun control</b>
Whittington discussed the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act of 1993, which requires federally licensed handgun dealers to run background checks on customers.
Cho went through a background check when he purchased a gun from a licensed dealer. Unfortunately, Cho was not in the federal background check system, though a Virginia judge had ruled him to be a danger to himself.
"[Cho] should have been included in the database, and [it] should have excluded him," Whittington said.
"[Gun control is] not a sufficiently high priority in the state or federal budget," Whittington said. He also noted many problems with background checks, including the high cost of constantly updating databases and difficulties in maintaining consistency across databases.
"It's unlikely to thrust forward a major movement ... for rethinking gun control more broadly," Whittington said. He does not foresee a major shift in gun control, but he predicts a debate about concealed weapons permits.
The argument for concealed weapons permits is that students may have been able to stop Cho during the shootings.
The lecture was organized as a response to the Virginia Tech shootings by the Office of the Dean of Undergraduate Students and the USG.
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Original Source: <a href= http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2007/04/24/news/18229.shtml> Daily Princetonian - April 24, 2007 </a>
Sam Fox Krauss
Daily Princetonian
2007-06-22
Sara Hood
Kavita Saini <ksaini@Princeton.EDU>
eng
A call for community
By Anonymous
The shooting at Virginia Tech serves as a tragic reminder of the importance of a strong campus community, one in which people know and look out for each other. In the wake of this event, it is important that we make sure that all students feel comfortable in our campus community. This opportunity should be seized to reflect on how to foster a greater sense of community, especially in upperclass dorms.
There seems to be a presumption that, once out of their residential colleges, upperclassmen are sufficiently acclimatized to college life. While colleges provide students with RCAs who organize study breaks and generally foster a sense of commnity within dorms, upperclassmen are left to their own devices. Though eating clubs provide some measure of support for upperclassmen, nothing exists to promote socialization in upperclass dorms or among the many students who do not choose to join clubs or remain in the residential colleges. Independent work, which puts increased pressure on upperclassmen and often requires them to spend significant time alone, means that community feeling outside of eating clubs often suffers. Some students go through an entire year without meeting all their neighbors.
Though social dynamics among students is, in the end, the result of our own behavior, there is room for the administration to provide a helping hand. While the University provides mental health services for those in need, having intermediaries step, similar to RCAs, would greatly stimulate social interactions in upperclass dorms and encourage students with psychological issues not to isolate themselves. This could easily be achieved by expanding the mission — and budget — of dormitory assistants, whose current responsibilities are focused on questions of maintenance and living conditions.
These measures are not intended to prevent tragic instances such as those at Virginia Tech. They would, however, encourage interaction in upperclass dorms and foster a greater sense of community. It would encourage people to meet and take an interest in their neighbors, reducing the risk that students who are depressed, or feel particularly lonely, slip through the cracks unnoticed. We share the pain of the Virginia Tech community and hope that from this tragedy, we can all realize the vital role of looking out for the wellbeing of our classmates.
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Original Source: <a href=http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2007/04/20/opinion/18175.shtml> Daily Princetonian - April 20, 2007</a>
Anonoymous
Daily Princetonian
2007-06-22
Sara Hood
Kavita Saini <ksaini@Princeton.EDU>
eng
The narrow reach of 'community'
By Uwe E. Reinhardt
Princetonian Columnist
Students gathered in Richardson Auditorium last night for a service in memory of the victims of Monday's shooting at Virginia Tech," reported The Daily Princetonian on April 18. A day earlier, President Tilghman stated that "my reaction was horror at the loss of so many innocent young lives," a sentiment echoed by President Bush when he remarked that "those whose lives were taken did nothing to deserve their fate. They leave behind grieving families and grieving classmates and a grieving nation." Congress openly prayed for the victims and their loves ones. Flags flew at half-mast across the nation.
It was good. Solidarity with stricken fellow human beings forges a group of people sharing a geography into a "community" or "nation." As Associate Dean of Religious Life Deborah Blanks put it so eloquently during the memorial: "We dare to affirm that there is strength in community."
It takes nothing away from the grief we share with Virginia Tech's community to let the mind wander from that tragedy to another one, the daily toll of fellow human beings grotesquely destroyed or maimed in Iraq, among them many American men and women just as young and innocent as those killed at Virginia Tech. As Keith Olbermann of MSNBC's "Countdown," standing out from the herd politically correct journalists, asked boldly on April 17: "In just the last 10 days, 32 American troops, many the same age as the Virginia Tech students, have died. While one may take issue with the comparison, one cannot ignore the similarities ... It seems fair to ask the question, if the violent deaths in Virginia send the nation into shock and expressions of concern and anxiety, why is not the continuous flow of blood in Iraq creating a similar reaction? Why isn't our flag permanently at half staff?"
Olbermann has a point. In just the two days following the shooting at Virginia Tech, close to 400 Iraqis were brutally blown to shreds and hundreds more seriously wounded, along with the usual daily toll of U.S. military personnel. Stories on their fate were pushed way down the list of reports on TV or in the daily press. Did Congress pray for them? Are these human beings part of Dean Blanks' "community"?
It appears that the daily slaughter of people in Iraq has become so routine now that reports on it must compete for America's attention with updates on Wall Street, sport scores and the Anna Nicole Smith story. On our campus, the indifference may be amplified by what USG president Rob Biederman '08 called at the memorial the "Orange Bubble," namely, the fact that "every college should be a place apart," presumably from the outside world. The tragedy at Virginia Tech seems to have penetrated that Bubble only because of what Biederman called "the similarity of all students' campus experiences."
Military service for one's country and the horrors of war are as far removed from the campus experience as one could imagine. To illustrate, in early October of 2005 I wrote to the then editor-in-chief of the Daily Princetonian: "I would like to make a suggestion that would add grace to the 'Prince.' Show every day, on the front page of the paper, the names of American troops who have been killed in Afghanistan and Iraq. The idea would be to remind young Princetonians, many of whom aspire to be future leaders, that there is a war going on and that they have contemporaries who are willing to stand tall for their country and to pay the ultimate price for it."
In a courteous email, the editor replied that she understood and agreed with my sentiment, but that "The Daily Princetonian has a defined scope as a newspaper: We cover events and people affiliated with the University Community." She pointed out that the national newspapers are to keep us abreast of other events. Alas, who among college students these days actually reads these dailies?
In fairness to the 'Prince,' not all dailies report on the blood cost of the war either. For example, I had earlier asked The Wall Street Journal, a major cheerleader for the invasion of Iraq, to honor on its front page the names of the fallen warriors. That request did not even warrant an answer, presumably because the Journal does not want to highlight that war has its costs.
As a member of the University community, I can well understand the comfort the stricken Virginia Tech community may find in Princeton's and the nation's vigils for them and the sentiment that begot the vigils. But as the parent of a Marine who narrowly escaped death on the battlefield in 2005 and may yet have to serve a fourth tour of duty (because too few career-minded inhabitants of the College Bubble are willing to take over from him), I also share the loneliness that all military families feel in a nation that seems preoccupied with things other than the human toll in Iraq.
<i>Uwe E. Reinhardt is the James Madison Professor of Political Economy and a professor in the Wilson School. He can be reached at reinhard@princeton.edu.</i>
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Original Source: <a href=http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2007/04/23/opinion/18202.shtml> Daily Princetonian - April 23, 2007</a>
Uwe E. Reinhardt
2007-06-22
Sara Hood
Kavita Saini <ksaini@Princeton.EDU>
eng
Would Public Safety be able to prevent a shooting?
By Owen Fletcher
Princetonian Staff Writer
About a week before last week's shootings at Virginia Tech, the University made the prescient purchase of a mass alert system to notify students of campus security crises.
The University's system, which messages students' cell phones or other portable devices, has not yet been fully implemented, but it signals a heightened concern about campus security that existed even before the shootings.
But the shootings have ignited a national debate on methods to prevent and effectively respond to crises and have led to questions about campus security procedures.
Some Virginia Tech students have criticized campus safety officials for their slow response to gunman Cho Seung-Hui's murder of two students. Campus police notified students by email about two hours after the incident, but by then, Cho had begun his second round of shooting, taking 30 more lives and his own.
Crises like last week's shooting are difficult to predict, Public Safety Deputy Director Charles Davall said. "You can never totally be prepared for something like this," he said. "It could happen anywhere."
At a Senate hearing yesterday on campus security, Public Safety Director Steven Healy recommended that more universities adopt "mass notification systems that are capable of reaching community members."
Getting students to provide their portable contact information for this system, however, could be difficult, Healy testified. "Even if you have a system that can reach a person's cell phone" or other portable device, he said, "they still have to be willing to give you those numbers."
Healy, who is also president of the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators, said there is room for nationwide improvement on campus security.
"[M]ost colleges and universities have plans" to respond to crises, he said, but "we're a long way from being able to say ... that all institutions know how those plans will play."
Since last week's shootings, Public Safety has begun a review of campus security plans. Davall said that the department tentatively has arranged for Mercer County officials to train its officers.
In the event of a crisis, Davall said, Public Safety would respond by securing the area and calling local armed police, since campus police do not carry weapons. They would then notify all University members by email. But one problem with this method is that "students have to be looking at [a computer] to get the email," he said.
Healy also advocated "community policing" in his testimony. As part of Public Safety's policy, officers are required to patrol campus by foot for at least two hours a day so that students and faculty feel comfortable approaching them, officer Jim Lanzi said.
The department's efforts to engage the community can make people more comfortable in reporting suspicious activity, Lanzi said, but they are also meant to educate the community since students sometimes have a "false sense of security" on campus.
While these initiatives would not directly prevent an event like the Virginia Tech shooting, Lanzi said, the atmospheric difference they make could help increase the efficacy of a response.
Princeton "is generally a safe area ... but [students] always need to be aware of their surroundings," Davall said.
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Original Source: <a href=http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2007/04/24/news/18230.shtml> Daily Princetonian - April 24, 2007</a>
Owen Fletcher
Daily Princetonian
2007-06-22
Sara Hood
Kavita Saini <ksaini@Princeton.EDU>
eng
Cho '04 calls campus friend
<b>Comments to Manna adviser offer first glimpse of Cho family reaction</b>
By Doug Eshleman
Princetonian Staff Writer
While family members of the Virginia Tech gunman have secluded themselves during the last three days to avoid media attention, his older sister, Sun-Kyung Cho '04, reached out to a close friend and spiritual adviser from her Princeton days yesterday, offering the first glimpse of how the shooter's closest relatives are reacting to Monday's killings.
At a discussion forum organized yesterday by the Korean American Students Association (KASA) to help students cope with the shootings, Manna Christian Fellowship director Rev. David Kim told the group that Cho — a member of Manna while at the University — called and talked to him over the phone yesterday morning.
Some of Cho's conversation with Kim focused on the guilt he said she's feeling in the aftermath of her brother's actions. Kim said that Cho apologized for any negative repercussions Koreans on campus may have experienced after Monday's shooting.
The 23-year-old Cho Seung-Hui — who shot himself after taking the lives of 32 people Monday on the Virginia Tech campus — immigrated to the United States in 1992 from South Korea, along with Sun-Kyung and their parents.
"When she called, one of the first things she did was she apologized because she felt so bad for the Koreans on campus," Kim said. Several Korean students and alumni have expressed anxiety regarding a possible nationwide backlash against their community following the Virginia shootings.
Kim added that in the next few days, Cho would release a public statement on behalf of her family, since her parents do not speak English. Cho has taken a leave of absence from her job with a State Department contractor, ABC News reported yesterday, and her parents left their Centreville, Va. house Monday before media members swarmed the location.
Cho could not be reached yesterday. She declined to comment when contacted on her cellphone Tuesday.
In an interview after the forum, Kim said that Cho is "doing okay and [that] she appreciates the support of the Manna community that she knows." He added that he wanted to respect Cho's privacy by restricting his public comments about her, emphasizing his desire not to "compromise [his] ability to support her as a friend."
Manna, a Christian undergraduate group, has historically had heavily Asian-American membership though its website emphasizes that it seeks diverse student involvement. Cho was involved with the group during her time at the University, but it remains unclear whether her affiliation with Manna reflected her family's religious beliefs or convictions she developed on her own.
Cho was an economics major who interned at the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok during the summer after her junior year. She also wrote briefly for The Daily Princetonian. Kim said he had known Cho when she was an undergraduate at the University and described her as "one of the sweetest people."
He also said that though her family was in great need of support, Cho told him that rumors and media reports that her parents had attempted suicide were untrue.
During the discussion last night, some Korean students said they could not help feeling somehow connected to Cho Seung-Hui. "I can't help feeling a relation to him," Jin-Hee Kim '07 said. "I feel connected to him even though there is no pressure from others." She explained that, like Cho Seung-Hui, she has two foreign-born Asian parents.
"We feel embarrassed because we associate him as one of our own," Jae Han '09 said.
Andrew Kim '10 said he felt differently about the situation. "I think the feelings that we have are a manifestation of what the media is putting into us," he said. He added that he believes the media tends to emphasize Cho's ethnicity unnecessarily. "I feel that it is important to not become part of that." But, he emphasized, as a Korean, he does not feel threatened or uncomfortable on campus.
Juyoung Chung '10 said he, too, hopes that the tragedy at Virginia Tech will not become too closely tied to the Korean ethnicity. "Even though Koreans can feel associated, I hope people recognize that this was an isolated event," he said.
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Original Source: <a href=http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2007/04/19/news/18166.shtml> Daily Princetonian - April 19, 2007</a>
Doug Eshleman
2007-06-22
Sara Hood
Kavita Saini <ksaini@Princeton.EDU>
eng
Finding meaning in tragedy
By Brandon McGinley
Princetonian Columnist
As the epigraph for "The Brothers Karamazov," Fyodor Dostoevsky presented John 12:24:
"Verily, verily, I say unto you, except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit."
At first glance, the verse is difficult to decipher due to the vexing translation. The novel that follows, however, allows for a better understanding of this significant statement, which is particularly powerful in this time of national mourning.
Faced with such senseless suffering, it is natural to recoil from any faith in divine harmony, for no amount of retribution, whether in this life or the next, can return the smiling faces of the lost to their friends and family. It is precisely at this moment, though, when that faith is being fired in the crucible of anger, grief and doubt, when it proves to be most comforting and, perhaps, most true.
One of the most profound truths presented by Dostoevsky in his last novel is often simply accepted in contemporary society, without exploring its ramifications: We are all connected. It is a statement short on words but long on meaning. In "The Brothers Karamazov," the reader is blessed with the omniscience to understand that the entire cast of characters is hurtling toward tragedy, while each individual within the plot, particularly the three brothers, do not conceive the ultimate consequences of their actions or inactions.
Though we strive, and rightfully so, for that connectedness in our lives — through friendships, community service, religious services, etc. — it is too often convenient to think of oneself as insulated from the rest of the community. At times of moral crisis, it is so much easier to disregard, either through true ignorance or active self-delusion, the propagation of ramifications throughout this tightly woven human network. When one decides to have sex without protection, proceed with an abortion procedure or take the life (or allow the taking of the life) of another human being, the consequences are never simply personal.
When we either temporarily overlook that connectedness or are so selfish that we ignore the implications for countless others of our own flawed decision-making, we commit a transgression against the entire human network and, if you wish, against the God who lovingly created each of us equally in his image. And so, in this manner, we can see the killer in Blacksburg, Va., often described as an outsider or loner, as someone who, feeling disconnected from the community by cultural issues or other mental strife, could claim no stake in the community and felt no moral obligation to it.
It is interesting, but ultimately unrewarding to examine in hindsight the psychology of the killer. What is most important to those affected by this tragedy is a fuller understanding of the meaning of their monumental loss. For if all of humanity is connected through this interwoven web, certainly the impact of death can be felt far beyond the individual.
This brings us to the Biblical verse which opened this column and to the powerful conclusion of "The Brothers Karamazov." A clearer translation of it is as follows: "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit." But what is the "fruit" that results from the tragic loss of innocent life?
In "The Brothers Karamazov," the answer is memories — fond remembrances of times spent together, of goodness, of love. Near the end of the plot, the young boy Ilyushechka, after several days of visits from his school friends, dies from a painful disease. After the funeral, the young monk Alyosha gathers the children together in the center of their somber Russian village.
He says to them, "You must know that there is nothing higher and stronger and more wholesome and good for life in the future than some good memory, especially a memory of childhood, of home." But how can we compare the death of a young character in a nineteenth century Russian novel to the loss of 32 innocent lives on the campus of Virginia Tech?
To use the old adage, no man is an island. Each lost individual leaves behind hundreds if not thousands of others who have been touched by his or her life, and now untimely death. And those thousands of souls have been blessed with millions of memories of goodness and love. Across this nation and this globe, the tragedy has affected millions more who have no personal attachment to Virginia Tech, but who cannot help but reexamine their own values and priorities in the face of such destruction and who cannot help but be encouraged about the state of the human condition after viewing the solidarity of the Virginia Tech community.
This is not to glorify death, but to grasp meaning from the flames of despair, for no man dies in vain.
As the book ends, the boys come together to say, "We will remember, we will remember!"
At the Cassell Coliseum on the campus of Virginia Tech, the students raised their voiced to the rafters and exclaimed, through the grief, the mourning and the sadness that "We are Virginia Tech!"
<i>Brandon McGinley is a freshman from Pittsburgh, Pa. He may be reached at bmcginle@princeton.edu. </i>
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Original Source: <a href=http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2007/04/19/opinion/18137.shtml> Daily Princetonian - April 19, 2007</a>
Brandon McGinley
2007-06-22
Sara Hood
Kavita Saini <ksaini@Princeton.EDU>
eng
Sister of Virginia gunman belongs to Class of 2004
By Michael Juel-Larsen
Princetonian Senior Writer
Though Monday's shootings at Virginia Tech had already cast a shadow over campus, the news yesterday morning that the gunman's older sister is a recent Princeton alumna brought the tragedy even closer to home.
Sun-Kyung Cho '04 was an economics major who interned at the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok during the summer before her senior year and wrote briefly for The Daily Princetonian. She now works as a "State Department contractor," The Washington Post reported yesterday, and was listed on Princeton's alumni directory as living in Centreville, Va., with her parents.
The shooter was identified early yesterday morning as 23-year-old Virginia Tech senior Cho Seung-Hui. Later in the morning, the Chicago Tribune's "The Swamp" blog reported that Cho had a sister who graduated from the University.
Sun-Kyung Cho's and Cho Seung-Hui's home addresses in Centreville, Va., are identical. Reached on her cell phone yesterday afternoon, Sun-Kyung declined to be interviewed for this article.
At Princeton, Cho wrote her senior thesis on "ethnic enclave[s] and wage earning" among Korean immigrants in California. Her thesis adviser, economics professor Orley Ashenfelter, could not be reached for comment yesterday.
In the past two days, intense national media scrutiny has been focused on the Cho family as the public struggles to understand the shootings.
University spokeswoman Cass Cliatt '96 said the Office of Communications had received inquiries from at least seven media organizations yesterday about whether the shooter's sister had gone to Princeton, including ABC, CNN, the Newark Star-Ledger and The Washington Post.
Cliatt said she could not disclose any information on Sun-Kyung Cho besides the fact that she had been a student, what she studied and when she graduated.
Cliatt added that she also received a call from an alumna who was unrelated to the shooter and whose last name was also Cho. "She was concerned that she was receiving a lot of calls" from reporters regarding the shootings, Cliatt said.
Marc Fisher '80, a columnist with The Washington Post who was at the Chos' Centreville townhouse yesterday along with dozens of other journalists, described the situation as a "puzzle with virtually blank pieces."
Close media scrutiny of the family's life was motivated, he said, by a "very human need to know and understand."
"Partly out of courtesy and partly out of the urge that people have to just find meaning, there's a rush to delve into the shooter's life," he said, "and usually we come up fairly empty in that pursuit, and the competitive juices get flowing, so you end up with a lot of scenes that are almost comical, such as having 50 reporters standing outside an empty townhouse."
The Chos had been escorted from their home before Fisher got to Centreville and have not spoken to the press.
Fisher said the media's close attention to the Cho family would likely continue for at least another week. "I think we're just at the very beginning of that process of trying to figure out who he was and the family story and how they got here and how he got to such an extreme point," he said.
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Original Source: <a href="http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2007/04/18/news/18129.shtml"> Daily Princetonian - April 18, 2007</a>
Michael Juel-Larsen
2007-06-22
Sara Hood
Kavita Saini <ksaini@Princeton.EDU>
eng
Korean students afraid of backlash on campus
By Ilya Blanter
Princetonian Senior Writer
After the gunman in Monday's Virginia Tech massacre was identified as being of Korean origin by several news networks, members of Princeton's Korean community voiced apprehension over potential national reactions to the news. But students and alumni had mixed opinions about on-campus repercussions.
"My parents ... are fairly concerned about other people trying to revenge their family's death or relative's death on Korean families," Jae Hammet '09, whose parents live in Virginia, said.
Hammet added that he is not worried about his classmates associating him with the Virginia Tech killer, however. "I think that Princeton students will understand that one person is not representative of the Korean community," he said, "and I think that most people here see that student as an outlier and not as a [typical] Korean person."
The 23-year-old Cho Seung-Hui — who shot himself after taking the lives of 32 people — immigrated to the United States in 1992 from a Seoul suburb, along with his parents and older sister. News outlets have reported that he dealt with personal mental issues, including depression, a penchant for isolating himself from peers and a fascination with gore that manifested itself in two bizarrely violent screenplays he wrote, which have since been posted online.
In contrast to Cho's struggles, his sister Sun-Kyung Cho '04 graduated from the University with a degree in economics. She now works for the State Department.
Princeton has a strong relationship with South Korea, with a consistently large contingent of students from the country matriculating at the University each year: The Princeton Facebook lists 20 students from Seoul alone. University trustee Y.S. Chi '83 is of Korean descent, and Un-Chan Chung GS '78 — a former president of Seoul National University — is widely thought to be considering a run for the country's presidency.
Despite these connections, John Lee '06, president of the Korean American Student Association (KASA) in 2005-06, said that he fears Monday's tragedy will taint some Princetonians' attitudes toward their Korean classmates.
"I would have liked to think that the Princeton community would be mature/intelligent enough to be an exception to this kind of racial antagonism," he said in an email, "but from what I have heard from my friends back in Princeton, it does not seem to be true."
Hyeon Keun Kim '10 echoed Lee's concerns, saying he has found "that in Princeton, Korean people are a little isolated ... I think some people might react harshly to Koreans [following the shooting]." So far, though, he personally has not experienced any negative repercussions, he said.
Many Korean students said they think the national media has inappropriately emphasized the shooter's Korean identity. For example, the Associated Press story identifying Cho as the killer noted his South Korean nationality in the article's first few words.
Cho, though a resident alien, had lived in the United States since the age of eight. "He's almost American," Jay Jiyong Kwak '09 said.
"I'm a little annoyed that the press has emphasized his Korean-ness," Youngho Ryu '07 said.
Many in the Korean community added that news coverage of the tragedy should not emphasize the race of the shooter. "I hope it doesn't become a racial issue because the truth of the matter is, 33 people died," said Grace Kim '07, who just stepped down as KASA president but specified that she no longer speaks for the organization. "The focus shouldn't be so much on the racial aspect but how to step back from the situation and how to prevent it from happening again and help people recuperate."
Students also said their parents have been the ones expressing anxiety, while they themselves remain relatively unfazed. "It's a little embarrassing, but a lot of Korean-American college students are fleeing the campuses because their parents are concerned about them," Kim said.
"My parents called me to see if I was okay, but I just kind of laughed at them because I don't think I'm a target for racial attacks," Kim said, noting that her parents' generation has had more direct experience with racial discrimination than she has.
To address possible concerns among students, KASA has planned a forum for its members and anyone in the Princeton community tomorrow afternoon, Julia Yoon '09, the organization's current president, said.
"We're deeply saddened and really shocked by this event," she added, "not just as Koreans, but as fellow college students."
— Princetonian senior writers Kate Carroll and Michael Juel-Larsen contributed reporting to this story.
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Original Source:<a href="http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2007/04/18/news/18133.shtml"> Daily Princetonian - April 18, 2007</a>
Ilya Blanter
Daily Princetonian
2007-06-22
Sara Hood
Kavita Saini <ksaini@Princeton.EDU>
eng
Virginia dean Benson '73 recalls tragedy
<b> Alumnus defends administrators' actions but says he understands complaints </b>
By Cornelia Hall
Princetonian Staff Writer
Richard Benson '73, dean of the Virginia Tech College of Engineering, has spent the last three days struggling to maintain composure while confronting his own grief over the deaths of his colleagues and students.
In his first media interview since Monday's shooting, Benson relived his emotions in the aftermath of the incident, praising the nation's sympathy and the cohesiveness of Virginia Tech's campus while reflecting on ways to move forward.
Benson was at a conference in Puerto Rico when the tragic violence unfolded Monday morning.
The gunman, Virginia Tech senior Cho Seung-Hui, shot two people in a dormitory before moving, around two hours later, to Norris Hall, a central building in the School of Engineering and home to Benson's office. Cho shot and killed 30 people in Norris Hall before taking his own life.
Benson, who majored in mechanical and aerospace engineering at Princeton, was attending an Engineering Deans Institute meeting over the weekend. He first heard about the shooting when he checked his email during a coffee break and read that there was a gunman loose on campus. It was only when he switched on the television at his hotel that he saw that the shooting had moved to Norris.
It was then that the reality of the situation hit home for Benson. "That's my building ... I walk through those doors every day," he said of Norris Hall. "It was just terrible to see that and not to be there."
Upon hearing the news, Benson first tried to call his staff members in Norris Hall. "I was unable to get anybody, anybody," he said. He immediately booked a flight home and waited through flight delays and a layover to arrive in Blacksburg after midnight. "I would've gotten in a car and driven home," he said.
His distance from his campus when the violence unfolded made the tragedy even more devastating, Benson said.
"Being away heightened my emotional reaction," he said, adding that he repeatedly thought about how it was "very likely that people that I cared for had died."
Though Benson's assistant, Linda Perkins, and his chief of staff, Ed Nelson, survived, he said he knew of people down the hall from his office and on a lower floor who had been killed. Of the five deceased faculty members, three taught at the Engineering School.
<i> Lessons from the massacre </i>
Benson said he did not blame the Virginia Tech administration for its widely reported delay in notifying the campus community of the first shooting. While some students and parents have accused the Virginia Tech administration of not doing enough to prevent the escalation of violence by alerting the student body of the danger, Benson said he disagrees.
"I understand grief, and I understand why somebody would be really angry," Benson added, emphasizing that he did not fault the students or their families in any way for criticizing the administration. "There's a human desire to blame somebody, [but] I worry that we're going to start blaming people who worked like crazy, who are grief-stricken, who didn't sleep that night."
Benson also stressed the extreme improbability that the shooter would strike a second time. "A two-site crime is extraordinarily rare," he said. "People were trying really hard to find the person who did it ... I do believe that the authorities were responding very quickly, very ably."
Yet the reverberations from the violence are likely to continue indefinitely. "You can always do better," Benson said of the University's response to the incident. "We've learned something in the last two days."
Administrators from other institutions have been contacting him to offer condolences and to ask the question, "How can we prevent this?" The incident has prompted concerns about campus safety across the nation.
Though Benson acknowledged the importance of developing preventive measures for academic communities everywhere, he said he knows that the next step for Virginia Tech is to deal with the emotional repercussions.
"The point is [that] we know that we need to provide a lot of counseling, and we're going to do that," he said. Department heads will convene today to address the issue of counseling services not only for students but for faculty, Benson said, adding that he hoped this would help them better support students emotionally.
"I want our faculty [to be] as insightful as they can possibly be," he said. "And frankly, they also need counseling."
The most affected faculty members are likely those who were in Norris Hall when the violence unfolded. Benson described the experiences of several of his colleagues while Cho was in the building. One professor, Liviu Librescu, barricaded the door of a classroom to allow his students to escape through the windows, Benson said in a widely distributed email. Librescu, a Holocaust survivor, was shot through the door.
"Heroes! Never forget their names!" Benson wrote.
<i>A campus transformed</i>
Norris Hall is forever changed, as the Virginia Tech community will always associate it with the horror that occurred there. Benson acknowledged that it is a place marked with emotion.
"Many of us aren't ready to walk into that building, not yet," he said. "There is an enormous job in Norris Hall to come to grips with the magnitude of the killing that went on there."
Until the end of the semester, only investigators will be allowed in the building.
Monday's events will also have academic ramifications, Benson said. While some classes will be relocated to other campus buildings, "some courses will just end."
One graduate course taught by civil and environmental engineering professor G.V. Loganathan will simply be eliminated, Benson said, since Cho shot the professor and the majority of students in the class.
Despite the shock, horror and grief overwhelming the Virginia Tech campus, Benson said he cannot help but be moved by the outpouring of emotion he has witnessed. "There's something very beautiful unfolding at Virginia Tech," he said, attributing the campus' unity to the spirit of compassion pervading the student body.
"I have been hearing over and over and over again, on the radio and on TV, how struck people are by that spirit, and I think it's absolutely true," he said. "All of these people wanted to let their pride come through."
Faculty members, too, provided sympathy, offering their offices to those displaced from Norris Hall.
His voice breaking, Benson expressed his pride and respect for the students. "Despite the horror, you take away something really uplifting," he said. "Boy, they are just banding together."
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Original Source: <a href="http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2007/04/18/news/18132.shtml">
Daily Princetonian - April 18, 2007</a>
Cornelia Hall
2007-06-22
Sara Hood
Kavita Saini <ksaini@Princeton.EDU>
eng