On One Year Anniversary of VT, Many Move On But Remember
description: By Can Tran April 16, 2008 April 16, 2008, marks the one year anniversary of the Virginia Tech massacre as Korean student Cho Seung-hui in a fit of madness and depression went on a shooting rampage as he took the lives of thirty-two students and teachers on the Virginia Tech campus, before turning the gun on himself. This day would forever be engraved as a moment of darkness in the history of twenty-first century American let alone for Virginia Tech. While a year has pasted with many working hard to move away from the dark incident, there are those that are still coping. Many have lost friends and family members in the Virginia Tech shooting. Bryan Cloyd lost his daughter Austin, in the VT shooting. "I won't be able to walk my daughter down the aisle at her wedding. I won't be able to bounce her children on my knee," Bryan Cloyd said. He added: "And I don't think it's helpful to dwell on that, because where that leads is just more sadness. I think what's helpful to do is to dwell on what can be. What can we do with what we have?" In the case of Cho, the one responsible for the shooting; there are no public memorials planned. In related news, eight months after the Virginia Tech shooting, 21-year-old Korean student Daniel Kim had taken his own life. His father, William Kim, said that the school was not taking the warning signs of suicide that serious. In the case of Daniel Kim, he fell into state of depression out of fear that he could be mistaken for Cho Seung-hui. The scars of the Virginia Tech shooting could extend towards South Korea, whose government had issued an apology for Cho's actions. On an interesting note, the one year anniversary of the Virginia Tech shooting comes on the same day as the Democratic debate in Pennsylvania between Democratic frontrunners Senator Hillary Clinton of New York and Senator Barack Obama of Illinois. On that note, the hot button topic could be gun ownership rights. In Pennsylvania, there are almost one-million licensed hunters. …
creator: Can Tran
date: 2008-04-19
contributor: Kacey Beddoes
language: eng

Cho's World was rooted in a Christian Tradition
description: In the Aug. 26 Roanoke Times, reporter Duncan Adams had a news story that succinctly wrapped up what we knew about Seung-Hui Cho at that point, before the Virginia Tech Independent Review Panel released its final report. The article, "There was something evil aiding him," answered some old questions and highlighted some that have yet to be answered. What really struck me, as a medievalist and researcher in the history of religion, was the section titled "Demon spirits" and specifically the comments of Pastor Dong Cheol Lee from One Mind Church in Cho's hometown of Woodbridge. Cho and his family didn't attend that church, but the pastor felt compelled to reach out to Cho on the recommendation of a neighbor. Lee believes Cho was basically a good person but that he was possessed by the devil or some sort of "demonic spirit" when he murdered all those people. This raises a significant point, one thus far generally overlooked in the reporting about the events of April 16 -- the role of religion in motivating Cho to do what he did. I suggested this in a June 6 commentary, "Cho's violent crusade ripped from the Middle Ages." Look again through this and the rest of the coverage of Cho's manifesto. Look how often he evoked God/Jesus. And look again at these new snippets: the Bible as Literature class that he felt so "content" in, his contact with a particular type of Christianity during his upbringing, how he told the literature professor, Nikki Giovanni, she was going to hell. Reporter Adams may have been more right than he knew when he ended his story with: "During one session, Giovanni described having once eaten turtle soup. Students shared experiences of consuming other unusual animal fare. Cho's poem the next week lashed Giovanni and the class. 'He told us we were going to hell,' said [fellow student Tara] Marciniak-McGuire. During Cho's short, tortured life, he knew that territory well." Cho's mental illness made him live in a world of his own creation, but that world…
creator: Matthew Gabriele
date: 2008-01-08
contributor: Matthew Gabriele
language: eng

Cho's Violent Crusade Ripped from the Middle Ages
description: As a medieval historian, one rarely feels that his expertise can shed some light on a current debate. But I teach at Virginia Tech. Now that the semester is over and there is time to reflect, I have been struck by how "medieval" the events of this past April seem -- both Seung-Hui Cho's violence and our collective revulsion to it. In the snippets of Cho's "manifesto" that have been released to the public, there is rhetoric of (likely imagined) persecution of the innocent, violent defense of the helpless, and Cho's perception of himself as a martyr by appropriating explicitly Christian imagery -- Jesus himself, the cross, and even the torments the saints endured for their faith (burning like St. Polycarp, suffocating like St. Cecilia and beheading like St. Denis, etc.). Even Cho's oft-repeated statement that "Jesus loves crucifying me" reinforces the idea of martyrdom, suggesting, as countless biographies of the saints have, that God triumphs through the martyr's sacrifice. Taken alone, these statements might be interesting from a purely academic standpoint. Unfortunately, we all know what followed Cho's statements. So, it's this combination of language and action that's most "medieval," since the essential elements of Cho's manifesto mirror Pope Urban II's speech at Clermont (in modern France) in 1095 that launched the First Crusade. From what we can reconstruct of that speech, Urban first railed against the sins of his listeners. But then, when the hellfires beckoned, Urban offered them a way out -- a path to heaven. Go to Jerusalem. Reclaim the land where Jesus was crucified and where he would return in triumph. This land rightfully belongs to us, Urban continued, so emulate the suffering of Christ and "take up [your] cross daily and follow me" (Luke 9:23). Defend your fellow Christians who suffer under (an imagined) oppression by God's enemies. Become a "soldier of Christ" and destroy "the enemy." God would reward you with martyrdom if you died. Jesus. The cross.…
creator: Matthew Gabriele
date: 2008-01-08
contributor: Matthew Gabriele
language: eng

Luto en el país por matanza en Virginia
description: Identifican al agresor como un estudiante de Corea del Sur. Publicado por Diario la Raza 04-18-2007 Washington, D.C. — La policía de EE.UU. identificó como el autor de la matanza en la universidad virginia tech al estudiante surcoreano Cho Seung Hui, de 23 años, un joven descrito como "solitario" y cuyos escritos habían suscitado preocupación entre sus profesores. Hasta el momento se desconocen los motivos que llevaron a Cho, quien vivía en EU desde los 8 años y estudiaba filología inglesa, a matar a 32 personas, entre profesores y estudiantes —al menos dos latinoamericanos— y suicidarse. Una de sus profesoras recordaba ayer a la prensa el tono perturbador de algunos de sus ejercicios literarios, hasta el punto de que sus instructores le aconsejaron recibir ayuda psicológica. Según el diario Chicago Tribune, el asesino dejó una nota en su habitación en la que clamaba contra los "niños ricos", "la decadencia" y los "embusteros charlatanes" en el campus y asegura: "Me obligaste a hacerlo". Al parecer, según la cadena CNN, Cho compró una pistola Glock el mes pasado en una tienda de Roanoke, una ciudad vecina, y pagó por ella 571 dólares con un cheque. La matanza se produjo en dos fases: en un primer tiroteo murieron dos personas, un hombre y una mujer, en una residencia de estudiantes; y el segundo, en el que murió el resto, tuvo lugar dos horas más tarde, en las aulas de la Facultad de Ingeniería. Las autoridades han confirmado que las armas empleadas en la matanza fueron al menos dos pistolas y que una de ellas se usó en los dos tiroteos. "La evidencia no nos ha conducido a decir categóricamente que el mismo autor estuvo implicado en los dos tiroteos", pero "es ciertamente razonable suponer que Cho fue el autor en los dos incidentes", indicó el superintendente de la Policía de Virginia, Steven Flaherty. Entre los fallecidos se encuentran profesores y estudiantes. La lista completa no se ha dado a conocer pero sí han salido a la luz los …
creator: La Raza Newspaper
date: 2007-08-14
contributor: Elva Orozco
rights: Jorge Mederos Executive Editor La Raza Chicago Inc. jorge.mederos@laraza.com August 13, 2007
language: spa

The killer of room 2121
description: It was 7am on Monday. Another week was starting at Virginia Tech. Then the first shots rang out. Within hours, 32 people lay dead and America was left trying to make sense of the carnage. Paul Harris reports from Blacksburg. Sunday April 22, 2007 The Observer A group of Amish men, all in black, shuffled towards the chapel at one end of the enormous sports field that dominates the centre of Virginia Tech's campus. They had come to pay their respects after a tragedy they knew all too well. It was only last year that a killer struck their community, shooting dead five young girls in a tiny Amish school. Now they had driven many long hours from their Pennsylvania farms to southern Virginia, to offer solace to another American community devastated by a mass killing. They spoke in hushed tones to the Reverend Kelly Sisson, one of the pastors of Glade Church in Blacksburg. Then they entered the comforting dark interior to pray and to mourn the dead of Virginia Tech. 'They understand what has happened to us in a way few others do,' Sisson said. Everyone is trying to understand what happened at Blacksburg last week. Impromptu memorials have sprung up on the sports field, covering the grass in flickering candles, pictures of the dead, and flowers. Students, friends and family have written messages, sad, desperate, noble. They speak of loss and love. They vow to remember lives brutally cut short on what should have been just another Monday morning. But, although there was nothing ordinary about last Monday, there was a dreadful familiarity to it. Cho Seung-hui's bloody rampage cost the lives of 32 of his fellow students and staff. It was the worst mass shooting in American history, but far from the only one. There is almost a ritual to such attacks: the fleeing students, the wailing sirens, the mourning survivors, the suicide of the gunman - Cho shot himself in the face. Columbine, the Amish school, Virginia Tech, all are now names that haunt the popular imagination. Yet no on…
creator: Paul Harris
date: 2007-08-13
contributor: Adriana Seagle
rights: In consideration of the fee of GBP 0.00 ("the Fee") Guardian News & Media Limited ("GNM") grants the Licensee the right to: publish on its website for 10 years. Contact info: Eve Thompson; permissions.syndication@guardian.co.uk
language: eng

Cho is no emblem of America
description: Leader Sunday April 22, 2007 The Observer Julia Pryde is not a household name. She was a 23-year-old graduate biology student who wanted to encourage recycling at the cafeteria at Virginia Tech University. Her face is not as universally known as that of Cho Seung-hui, the man who shot her and 31 others on campus last week. Cho secured his status as an icon of infamy by taking time, amid the massacre, to send a video manifesto to a TV network. Cho wanted not only to terrorise his fellow students, but to stare the world in the face, or rather, to force the world to look him in the eye. NBC has been criticised for showing the footage. Although there was a legitimate public interest in airing the material - it helped explain the dark motivation of the killer - the decision to run it on a constant loop within hours of the killings was clearly not taken with any consideration of sensitivity to survivors or victims' relatives. NBC apologised and toned down their coverage. But in the modern media age, Cho's broadcast would always have found a worldwide audience. He would still, one way or another, have forced everyone to hear his awful message: it is you who are responsible for this, not me. That is not true, of course. Cho was a psychopath, determined to kill. It may be the case that his determination was expedited by easy access to guns. But that is a feature of American society and American politics with its own strange logic, immune to comment by outsiders. The image of Cho striking murderous poses crosses all cultures. It is the face of modern, media-literate terror. That is not a fair emblem of modern American society. A truer symbol is found in the packed classrooms and lecture theatres of Virginia Tech, filled, just days after the massacre, with students who were determined to get on with their education - a triumph of youthful optimism over deadly nihilism. Pickleme April 22, 2007 8:16 AM Tragic though this all is , one has had a media onslaught day after relentles…
creator: Staff of The Observer
date: 2007-08-10
contributor: Adriana Seagle
rights: In consideration of the fee of GBP 0.00 ("the Fee") Guardian News & Media Limited ("GNM") grants the Licensee the right to: publish on its website for 10 years. Contact info:Eve Thompson-permissions.syndication@guardian.co.uk
language: eng

Mother prayed as son brooded in silence
description: Jonathan Watts in Goyang Friday April 20, 2007 The Guardian The brooding silence of Cho Seung-hui was so impenetrable it disturbed his family even when he was growing up in South Korea, relatives of the Virginia killer told the Guardian yesterday. His grandfather feared that at the age of eight he might be mute; the boy's great aunt worried that he had mental problems. And his mother, Kim Hyang-im, spent much of her time in church praying for him to snap out of his unhealthy taciturnity. "She was heartbroken," said his mother's aunt, Kim Yang-soon. "After they moved to America, she hoped his silences would ease as he grew older. But in fact they got worse." The poor family had a difficult start. Cho's mother was forced into an arranged marriage with a man 10 years her senior - Cho Sung-tae, who came from a poor family in the south but had worked in Saudi Arabia for 10 years on construction sites and oilfields. Hyang-im was from a well-educated family of North Korean landowners who had fled during the Korean war. "She didn't want to marry, but she gave in," said Yang-soon. No one in the family recalls any violent behaviour from Cho that might have hinted at later carnage. But they were unnerved by his sullenness. "My grandson was shy even as a little boy and he would never run to me like my other grandchildren," his maternal grandfather, Kim Hyong-shik, told the Hankyoreh Daily. "I thought he might be deaf and dumb." Schoolmates told local media they remembered Cho as quiet. But the father doted on his children. "He would have done anything for them," the grandfather said. "But now this has happened. It's as if everything they've done, the reason for their whole existence has been for nothing." The family moved to the US in 1992. During their eight-year wait for a visa, they fell short of money, selling their second-hand shop and home to make ends meet. They had visited Hyang-im's family before they left, an occasion that was only the second time the grandparents had…
creator: Adriana Seagle
date: 2007-08-10
contributor: Adriana Seagle
rights: In consideration of the fee of GBP 0.00 ("the Fee") Guardian News & Media Limited ("GNM") grants the Licensee the right to: publish on its website for 10 years. Contact info: Eve Thompson; permissions.syndication@guardian.co.uk
language: eng

Ponderation over shock from US campus shooting rampage
description: UPDATED: 17:04, April 19, 2007 A total of 33 people, including the gunman Seung-Hui Cho, 23, were killed Monday at Virginia Tech University in the deadiest shooting rampage in modern US history. The whole of the United States is stunned and shocked, and so is the entire world. At the time when people, full of sympathy, are plunged themselves in an extreme sorrow and grief, they cannot but naturally ask such a question: Why it (the shooting rampage) has been again occurred in the U.S., and again in on the campus? In fact, this is not beyond people's expectations, as it is neither the first tragedy, nor the last, because there are two reasons involved: First, the Second Amendment to the US Constitution specifies that the American people are endowered with the "right to keep and bear arms", which cannot be encroached upon. So the sale and purchase of firearms are legal in the United States according to law. Consequently, a large number of American families possess guns. Approximately 200 million guns are owned privately in the U.S., which has a population of 300 million, note relevant statistics released by the US Department of Justice. It has been reported that Seung-Hui Cho, the gunman on the Virginia campus killings, bought his first gun, a 9mm handgun, on March 13 at Roanoke, Va. Gun store, and he timed the purchase of his two firearms to be far enough apart that he would not run afoul of the "one gun a month" law. Why does the United States still not amend its Constitution to ban the use of firearms after a frequent occurrence of mass killings with guns? Almost every shooting rampage is followed by a nationwide debate on whether or not the possession of firearms should be banned. But bills for banning the ownership of guns will not be passed in Congress in the end. This, however, has something to do with the influential and powerful National Rifle Association of America, or NRA. Having a membership of some 3 million that includes arms dealers, rich hunters and fir…
creator: Li Xuejiang
date: 2007-07-18
contributor: Na Mi
language: eng

Can't stick it on Korea
description: By Zhang Xin [ 2007-04-24 15:42 ] Last week, in the immediate aftermath of the Virginia Tech shootings, some people apparently tried to stick it on Korea, or China, or Asia in general, all on the strength of such weak arguments that Cho Seung-Hui was an immigrant from Korea, that he was sometimes (mis)taken as Chinese, or that he's Asian-looking. I read somewhere that a Korean retorted, quite correctly, that Cho left South Korea at the age of eight and spent most of his formative years in the States so they can't possibly stick it on Korea. Cho, who killed 33 people including himself on Virginia Tech campus on Monday, April 16, 2007, was 23. Likewise, you can't stick it on China. At least once Cho was mistaken as Chinese. "In high school, Cho Seung-Hui almost never opened his mouth. When he finally did, his classmates laughed, pointed at him and said: 'Go back to China.'" (Va. Tech shooter a 'textbook killer', Associated Press, April 19, 2007). Nor can you pin it on Asia. After all, almost all East Asians look the same to the less discerning American eye. Whom do we stick it onto, then? If I have to assign blame, I will stick it first on Cho, obviously, then on gun control or the lacks thereof in America, then on pop culture and on society at large. I, for one, believe it is not as far-fetched to blame it on society at large than on a specific target such as Korea. Society at large, you see, both yonder across the oceans and here in this country looks too much up to what is called success but has too little respect for and tolerance of what is considered to be failure. I mean, only by contrast do we tell success from failure. So theoretically for society as a whole, these two are equally important - we should therefore reserve a degree of respect for those who fail, who come up short but also run. School bullies, for example, pick on practically anyone who's not regarded as "one of us". You may get glared at, jeered and sneered at for one of these perfectly harmless…
creator: Zhang Xin
date: 2007-07-18
contributor: Na Mi
language: eng

Blacksburg Baptist Church
description: The Blacksburg Baptist Church posted 32 flags on South Main in remembrance of the 32 victims. In addition, the Church did not want to neglect Cho and his family. Photo Courtesy of Chad Newswander
creator: Chad Newswander
date: 2007-06-29
contributor: Chad Newswander
rights: Permission: Chad Newswander chadn@vt.edu
language: eng

More Notes for Cho
description: Cho's Hokie stone is littered with notes. Original source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kevincupp/470150253/in/photostream/ Photo Courtesy of Kevin Cupp
creator: Kevin Cupp
date: 2007-06-07
contributor: Chad Newswander
rights: Permission: Photo Courtesy of Kevin Cupp http://www.flickr.com/photos/kevincupp/470150253/in/photostream/
language: eng

Police identify Norris Hall shooter as Va. Tech student
description: Cho attended Northern Va. high school, peers describe him as 'loner' Maria Tchijov and Thomas Madrecki, Cavalier Daily Senior Writers BLACKSBURG, Va. -- Police identified Cho Seung-Hui, a 23-year-old Virginia Tech student, as the gunman responsible for killing 30 victims Monday in Virginia Tech's Norris Hall. Some who knew him described Cho as "a complete loner" and the author of "disturbing" and "excessively violent" plays. Cho was found dead among the carnage that spanned four rooms and a nearby stairwell in Norris Hall. Cho, a native of South Korea, was linked to the murder weapon through a fingerprint contained in immigration documents. Ballistics tests confirmed that one of the two guns found at Norris Hall was also used at the shooting that took place two hours earlier in West Ambler Johnston dormitory. While police said it is likely that the two shootings are related, the investigation is ongoing. An ongoing investigation Cho was an English major at the university from Centreville, Va. Peers from Cho's middle school in Centreville said he was quiet, shy and withdrawn. "He was made fun of a lot by everybody," said Samuel Linton, a homeroom classmate of Cho's during seventh and eighth grade. "He was a complete loner, he never said a word ... he had no interaction with teachers -- he just stared like he wasn't paying attention." David Gearheart, who also attended middle school with Cho, said he talked to Cho once or twice, but that talking to him was just that -- talking to somebody rather than with somebody. "He had a lot of crazy writings in his notebook and stuff, how he hated Americans," Gearheart said. Linton said Cho was once reported to the principal for writing down the names of people he was supposedly planning to kill. "It was like a hit list," Linton said. "They found one in his locker." Linton said people "constantly" talked about how Cho might be the type of person that would one day attempt to kill someone. Officials at a press conference yesterday…
creator: Maria Tchijov and Thomas Madrecki
publisher: The Cavalier Daily
date: 2007-07-31
contributor: Sara Hood
rights: Meggie Bonner <meggiebonner@gmail.com>
language: eng

On the Forbidden Subject of Culture
description: April 19, 2007 UPDATE: Thanks for the various thoughtful comments, thoughtful commenters - I'm sure you know who you are. First off, I do acknowledge that I was a little snarky and "aha!" in the initial reaction to things, and I agree that it just puts people in a bad mood. But, I could have easily erased what I said, and not because I think it was wrong to have the thought, but because it distracted so much from the majority of the stuff I was really trying to say. Yet, I would somehow feel it dishonest to do so, and the reason I write is to organize my thoughts and logic for people to see; I just wish people in general, and not just over the past few days, could read this blog as one man's thoughts in motion, as opposed my final thoughts on matters. I have strong opinions, but those thoughts wend and weave according to other good opinions. That said, I also know I write a lot. Loooong posts. Opinionated posts. Wordy posts. And that's off-putting as well. I know that, but it would take me forever to get this stuff out if I had to condense it down, distill it, make it simpler. And since the vast majority of blogs out there write in short form, I don't feel like I'm adding to a trend in need of reversal - on the contrary, I wish there were more thoughtful people who tried to think carefully, put in the time to express their opinions fully, and really engage with difficult subjects. So I think that perhaps the blogosphere is better off with a few wordy fools who try to think aloud and in the sense of intellectual full-contact sports. As for race, I think the media is talking about it pretty minimally, as I assumed they would. And looking at this from primarily an American perspective. I'm inevitably looking at this from a Korean perspective, because it is here in Korea that I sit, live, and work. It's here that I have worked with a lot of kids who look just like Cho in background, culture, and personality. I thought that I'd be one of the few people talking not about …
creator: Michael Hurt
date: 2007-06-21
contributor: Brent Jesiek
rights: Michael Hurt (kuraeji@gmail.com)
language: eng

In the Mind of a Murderer
description: Justify it as you like, I cannot think of Cho Seung-Hui as anything other than a murderer. A lot has already been said about the subject, so apart from the links to his plays here[link], I won't be saying much. The content of his plays being sophomoric aside (in all honesty my high school freshmen have written richer and deeper material than this), I don't think the content of his plays immediately says that he "fits the profile of a school shooter." As a previous entry said, there is no such thing as a profile; each situation is born of unique circumstances mingling with the unique turmoil in each unique individual. However, it is a definite warning sign of a person being disturbed, coupled with his general attitudes and way of pushing others away. Help was offered, but he refused it and did what he wanted to do anyway. One can't help but feel powerless when confronted with a person like this. The other school shootings we had in the past were perpetrated by children who I think could have been talked to—just that insufficient attention was given to their behavior. However, this guy was already an adult—like many other instances of adults going on a rampage, they have already made up their minds and will no longer respond to reason. This is why it is imperative that schools should take events like this seriously. Sure, they are aberrations, but this implies that somewhere, something went wrong. The most immediate problem seems to be security, of course. Students will not be able to bring firearms (or poison, as in the case of Gelyn Fabro) if the security weren't so lax. Guards search bags, yes, but do they know what they're searching for? Of course, there's also the whole issue with of how the person is treated. The school can only do so much—personal and parental problems are already beyond the reach of guidance counselors—but still, the school can provide the student with an environment where he or she can express his or her frustrations in a harmless way…
creator: J. R. R. Flores
date: 2007-06-20
contributor: Brent Jesiek
rights: Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License
language: eng

Confessions of a Would-Be School Shooter
description: By now the subject of Virginia Tech has been much publicized and probably hackneyed. We talk about lax gun control laws, wasted lives, disturbed young men and how we wish things like these would never happen again. In my previous entry[link], I talked about how problematic Cho Seung-Hui is and the difficulty with which we tend to see the minds of these people. We always talk about things like these happening to someone else. However, as Bill Watterson once said in his great comic strip series Calvin & Hobbes, "We are all someone else to someone else." And so instead of talking about Cho from a distance and saying how crazy he was, I'd like to talk about how I was probably just like him. As I read through TIME's articles on the VTech massacre, I began reflecting on my own past and how disturbingly close I came to becoming a school shooter. In real life, I'm a very quiet person—meaning I don't speak much. If I have something to say and feel it's absolutely necessary, I have a very loud voice. Most of the time, though, I prefer to keep to myself and do not really talk. This habit caused one of my co-teachers to remark "You know, if one of us is going to become a psychopath, it would be Joey." Of course, I'd just laugh and shrug off the remark. It was only today that I realized how close I was to this. In one of my earlier posts I talked about how I was so maligned by my classmates in grade school. I really hated them; there were times I'd think about seeing their corpses hanging from a large weeping willow tree on campus. Seriously. I think this started after my parents' marriage was annulled, but I don't blame it entirely on them (and I presently harbor no bitterness toward them in this matter). There were a lot of events that led to certain, er, emotional imbalances I had in the past, I myself am not really sure how they add up to one another. Regardless, I was a young boy who was full of hate and I can very clearly remember that at one point I really thought about…
creator: J. R. R. Flores
date: 2007-06-20
contributor: Melisa Rivera
rights: Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License
language: eng

No Shortage of Manliness
description: April 23, 2007 Filed under: Feminism, Minnesota Monitor, Virginia Tech — Jeff Fecke @ 12:21 pm It is human nature to try to figure out why bad things happen. Long ago, we blamed natural disasters on the capriciousness of the gods. The flood was caused by Poseidon's wrath, the storm by Thor's fury. Gifts were given to the gods, sacrifices of fruit, of animals, even of people, in order to placate them and turn their anger into love for their human charges. Today most of us (Pat Robertson excepted) reject the notion that bad things happen because of an angry and vengeful God. And yet, when tragedy strikes, we still seek to find the pattern underlying the madness, our ultimate failing that led to our punishment by...well, we're never quite sure, but we're sure we're being punished. After Cho Seung-hui opened fire on his classmates in Blacksburg, Va., it was only natural for us to ask why. The primary answer — that he was a deeply troubled, possibly schizophrenic and certainly psychotic man who was operating outside the bounds of normal society — is unsatisfying and seems to beg more questions than it answers. And so some writers have seized on an explanation that has a mythic history as rich and powerful as any blameworthy figure in human lore: It's the women's fault. Not all women, of course, but specifically feminists. These horrid people have, we are told, upset the natural order. They have made women more like men, causing them to demand for themselves the same privileges and prerogatives that men alone have traditionally enjoyed. At the same time, they have demanded that men stop behaving like louts, thus feminizing them, making them more female, robbing them of their manly virtue. National Review columnist John Derbyshire started the drumbeat by arguing that all of the students should have been armed, the better to kill the shooter. But that wasn't his main point. "Setting aside the ludicrous campus ban on licensed conceals," he wrote, "why didn't anyone rus…
creator: Jeff Fecke
date: 2007-06-19
contributor: Brent Jesiek
rights: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States
language: eng

Cho's Stone
description: Cho Seung-Hui's Hokie Stone memorial on the drillfield. Photo taken Thursday, June 14. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0.
creator: Brent Jesiek
date: 2007-06-17
contributor: Brent Jesiek
rights: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0
language: eng

reflections on virginia tech - 2 months later
description: Beauty and Depravity | eugene cho's blog [eugenecho.com] weeks have now passed. perhaps, it's become an afterthought for many. personally, a day hasn't gone by without some thoughts of the virginia tech tragedy. the tragedy exposed a great deal - it exposed what we all already know: we live in a broken and fallen word. it was never meant to be like this. i say that not for it to be an easy exit or answer but to illuminate the deep nature of jesus' redemptive live, death, and resurrection. it also exposed the reality that "race matters" and that race is something the human collective will never fully understand, grasp, and elevate. in addition, i was exposed. one poorly written post attracted about 16,000 hits in a span of two days. it wasn't the kind of notoriety i was hoping for but this blog became one of the most visited wordpress blogs during that span. local papers called [eventually had a chance to write a guest column for the seattle pi]. churchgoers called. friends around the country emailed. and like many, i found myself glued to the TV until i had to just pull the plug. because of the high traffic through the blog, i received my share of some interesting emails - those that were thought provoking and those that were downright scary. i sort of freaked out because of some of the emails which prompted me to go through the blog and delete all pics of the family and kids. it also exposed my depravity. this was a snapshot of the progression of some of my thoughts: "wow, how could this have happened? what a tragedy. i must pray for these folks." "what? they think an asian man did it? that's impossible. asians don't do stuff like that. but just in case, i hope it's not a korean person." s#@t. it is a korean person. why do the news keep insisting he's a foreigner?!? there's going to be backlash. do i send my kids to school today? as i shared in the message i taught at my church the sunday after the shootings, amidst many things, the incident exposed my self-centere…
creator: Eugene Cho
date: 2007-06-16
contributor: Brent Jesiek
rights: Eugene Cho (eugene@seattlequest.org)
language: eng

seattle PI guest column on the tragedy of virginia tech
description: Beauty and Depravity | eugene cho's blog [eugenecho.com] Here's the guest column I had the privilege of writing for the Seattle Post Intelligencer [published for Tuesday, April 24, 2007]. I've also included some other reads I have personally found very moving and insightful. I was limited by time and a word count, but hoped that this 'guest column' would be a source of healing, deeper understanding, and blessing to many. I wish I did a better job, [and given them my own title], and spoken from a larger Asian perspective. One clarification I want to make - while I and other Koreans/Asians grieve and feel pain and 'shame' over Seung Hui Cho, we are not the victims in this tragedy. My hope was to convey that no matter who or what we are, we are all connected to one another - not just because of our ethnic identity but our larger human collective and narrative. Because of the invitation to address the larger Washington readership, I chose not to be preachy. Much of this editorial comes from some initial thoughts shared in a blog entry from last week entitled, 'Making Sense of the Senseless.' Worthwhile Relevant Reads: Cho Family Statement [Sun Kyung Cho], Guilt, Shame,and Corporate Identity [elderj], To Blame is Human [James Choung], A Lesson in Your Apology [Philadelphia Enquire Editorial], One of Our Own [Bo Lim], Nikki Giovanni Convocation Address [N. Giovanni], Making Sense of the Senseless Comment [rk], Va Tech Victims Pics & Stories [NY Times], and Silence of a Murderer's Mother [Diana Bass]. If you have a lot of time and are bored, here's the mp3 of the sermon [57.12] I shared last Sunday at Quest Church. I preached from 2 Corinthians 5:17-21, Isaiah 1:17, and Matthew 5:9 entitled, 'Love Wins.' Yes, it is very long but I also have to stay true to my preaching nickname: 'Fiddy.' Here's the direct link to the Seattle PI column: Like everyone else — here (Seattle), there (Virginia), West (United States), East (Korea) and everywhere (the larger world), I have been …
creator: Eugene Cho
date: 2007-06-16
contributor: Brent Jesiek
rights: Eugene Cho (eugene@seattlequest.org)
language: eng

making sense of virginia tech
description: Beauty and Depravity | eugene cho's blog [eugenecho.com] Like everyone else - here [Seattle], there [Virginia], West [United States, East [Korea], and everywhere, I am trying to make sense of something that is simply - senselesss. Personally, the emotions have been even more convoluted because I am Korean-American. I am a Korean immigrant [immigrated at the age of 6] and understand the immigrant experience; I am a Korean-American Immigrant Male [who even shares the same last name - 'C-H-O' - as the gunman]. I am a Christian pastor involved in the institution of Religion that Seung Hui Cho criticized and expressed disappointment. For these reasons, many have asked, called, IM'd, and emailed asking me to share some of my thoughts - as a person, a Christian, an immigrant, a pastor, but especially as a Korean-American man. I'm sharing some thoughts [some which are still in vomitaceous process] in hopes that we can dialogue here - that it may serve as part of the healing and redemptive process. Monday night was an incredibly eerie day for me. After watching the news with incredulity and horror, I posted a blog entry about the tragedy in Virginia Tech. About 9pm [PST], I began to literally have over hundred people instantaneously get to my blog in a span of two hours. Search Views | seung cho blog 18, cho virginia tech myspace 17, virginia tech shooting cho 17, cho 15, cho virginia tech 15, virginia tech cho 13, cho virginia 9, virginia tech student shooter Cho 9, virginia shooter cho myspace 8, Sung Cho Blacksburg 7, virginia tech blog cho 7, blog virginia tech 2, cho seung virginia tech shooting 2, Cho, Korean, Blacksburg 2CHO, virginia shooting korean 2, Virginia Tech Myspace Cho 2, Cho myspace virginia tech 2, Cho Seung virginia tech 2, virginia tech cho shooting 2, Myspace Cho Virginia Tech 2, "Cho" Blacksburg 2, viginia tech cho korea shooting 2, "Cho" virginia tech korea myspace 2, cho virginia tech shoot 2, korean virginia tech cho 2, pastoral health 2, quest euge…
creator: Eugene Cho
date: 2007-06-16
contributor: Brent Jesiek
rights: Eugene Cho (eugene@seattlequest.org)
language: eng