VT Hokies
description: All eight placards sent by UVA Students in support of Virginia Tech now displayed in Squires Student Center Original source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/killfile/499326674/in/set-72157600298230023/ Photo Courtesy of Chris Thomas
creator: Chris Thomas
date: 2007-06-08
contributor: Chad Newswander
rights: Permission: Chris Thomas http://www.flickr.com/photos/killfile/499326674/in/set-72157600298230023/
language: eng

Love, UVA
description: One of eight large placards sent by UVA Students in support of Virginia Tech. Original source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/killfile/499375257/in/set-72157600298230023/ Photo Courtesy of Chris Thomas
creator: Chris Thomas
date: 2007-06-08
contributor: Chad Newswander
rights: Permission: Chris Thomas http://www.flickr.com/photos/killfile/499375257/in/set-72157600298230023/
language: eng

Focsanenii au fost la mormintarea eroului din America
description: De, Silvia Vrinceanu Nichita | 21.04.2007 Focsaneanul Zvi Ben Dov, emigrat in Israel in urma cu jumatate de secol, ne-a transmis ieri amanunte despre funeraliile profesorului Liviu Librescu Liviu Librescu, profesorul care si-a salvat studentii din fata unei ploi de gloante sacrificindu-si propria viata in amfiteatrul Universitatii Tehnice din Virginia, a fost condus ieri pe ultimul drum, in Israel, tara in care locuiesc si cei doi fii ai sai. La funeralii au fost prezenti si citiva focsaneni israelieni, care au copilarit cu profesorul Liviu Librescu in perioada celui de-al doilea razboi mondial, cind au fost nevoiti sa indure ostilitatea dusa pina la extrem fata de populatia de origine evreiasca. "Am participat impreuna cu prietenul meu focsanean Jack Gheber la mormintarea lui Liviu. Au fost sute si sute de oameni, rude, prieteni, profesori de la universitate, plus o delegatie special venita din Romania, in frunte cu ambasadorul Romaniei in Israel, pentru a inmina familiei ordinul national «Steaua Romaniei» in grad de mare cruce, oferit post-mortem de presedintele Traian Basescu pentru eroismul de care a dat dovada. Impreuna cu Jack, ne-am dus la Marilena, sotia lui Liviu, si ea tot din Focsani, si am consolat-o. Eu i-am inminat «Ziarul de Vrancea», care a sosit in Israel in urma cu doua zile, adus de prietenul nostru Nicu Stoinescu. I-am transmis condoleante de la grupul vostru din Focsani", ne-a transmis ieri, prin e-mail, Zvi Ben Dov, liderul focsanenilor din Israel, directorul general al organizatiei A.M.I.R. Acesta si-a ebraizat numele dupa ce a emigrat, in Focsani fiind cunoscut sub numele de Puiu Zilberman. De precizat ca Zvi Ben Dov si Jack Gheber au fost colegi cu Liviu Librescu la Focsani, inainte de a emigra in Israel. "Mama lui Jack a fost directoarea scolii evreiesti de fete din Focsani, unde a studiat si Marilena, sotia lui Liviu. L-a recunoscut si pe Jack si pe mine imediat. La funeralii am intilnit si alti prieteni focsaneni, pe dr. Fritz Scwartz…
creator: Silvia Vrinceanu Nichita
date: 2007-06-08
contributor: Adriana Seagle
rights: Silvia Vrinceanu Nichita (silvia@ziaruldevrancea.ro)
language: ron

Liviu Librescu, profesorul de eroism
description: Un roman admirat in toata lumea Liviu Librescu, profesorul de eroism A supravietuit Holocaustului si comunismului, dar l-a ucis un student. Presa internationala scrie pe larg despre profesorul israelian de origine romana Liviu Librescu, care a murit salvandu-si studentii in timpul masacrului din campusul Universitatii Tehnice din Virginia. Profesor de peste 20 de ani in SUA, Librescu a murit in timp ce bloca usa de acces in sala de curs, pentru ca studentii sa poata fugi de atacator. Universitatea Politehnica Bucuresti (UPB) a declarat marti - zi de doliu in memoria profesorului Liviu Librescu, fost absolvent al Facultatii de Inginerie Aerospatiala. · Universitatile din SUA - in stare de alerta. Ieri s-a inregistrat inca o amenintare · Studentii de la Virginia - reporteri care au filmat cu telefoanele · Atacatorul de la Virginia Tech - un student de origine sud-coreeana · America sub soc: masacru intr-un campus universitar Moartea lui Librescu si a colegului sau, Profesorul Kevin Granata, a fost anuntata prima data pe site-ul oficial al institutiei. Articolul postat in versiunea engleza a HotNews.ro, despre moartea lui Liviu Librescu, a fost preluat pe blogurile Claremont Institute for the Study of Statemanship and Political Philosphy. Un material dedicat de Associated Press lui Liviu Librescu a fost preluat de sute de publicatii din intreaga lume. Articolul povesteste cum familia lui Librescu a primit e-mailuri de consolare de la studentii acestuia, care au povestit despre modul cum s-a jertfit pentru studenti. CNN, The Times, The New York Times si Haaretz se numara printre multele publicatii si televiziuni care au relatat pe larg despre cum i-a aparat Librescu pe studenti cu pretul propriei sale vieti. Pe site-ul oficial al Universitatii Tehnice din Virginia, a fost anuntat decesul a doi dintre dascalii universitatii: Profesor Liviu Librescu si Profesor Kevin Granata, morti pe data de 16 aprilie 2007, in timp ce isi tineau cursurile in cladirea Norris Hall de …
creator: C.Marin
date: 2007-06-08
contributor: Adriana Seagle
language: ron

https://april16archive.org/items/show/449
description: Moment de comemorare a studentilor de la universitatea Alexandru Ioan Cuza, Iasi pentru studentii de la Virginia Tech - vineri, 20 aprilie 2007 Moment of commemoration from the students and faculty of Alexandru Ioan Cuza University, Iasi, Romania for Virginia Tech- Friday, April 20th, 2007. -- Sursa Originala: http://www.uaic.ro/uaic/bin/view/Photos/RememberVirginiaTech
creator: Universitatea Alexandru Ioan Cuza
date: 2007-06-08
contributor: Adriana Seagle
rights: Laura Copcea (promovare@uaic.ro)
language: ron

Blacksburg
description: Published by Dave April 18th, 2007 This past weekend was the middle weekend of April. That's the time universities put on dog-and-pony shows for students who have been admitted, to help them make up their minds. My daughter has been admitted to several universities, and she managed to narrow it down to James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia, and Virginia Tech. Somewhat at the last minute, she decided she needed to see both campuses to make her final decision. So on Saturday she and my wife drove down to Blacksburg from our suburban DC home, about a four-hour trip. They stayed near Blacksburg and then spent Sunday in Tech's pre-orientation sessions. Monday they had moved up Interstate 81 to JMU, but my daughter had pretty much decided that Tech was the place she wanted to attend. Standing on the campus Sunday, looking around, she began to see herself as a student there. As I was walking back from the cafeteria in my high school on Monday, one of the Spanish teachers had his classroom TV on. There was a map of Virginia with the town of Blacksburg highlighted. I saw a graphic indicating "21 dead, 21 injured." It didn't take long for the news of the massacre to filter through, as well as the instruction from our administration that we were to keep TV sets off and not talk about the news in class. Many students from our area attend Virginia Tech. It is one of the more competitive universities in the Virginia system. Hokie loyalty is more intense than that of alumni of other places. Hokie pain is now intense. To see Virginia Tech on the front page of all the world's newspapers because of a rampage that wiped out 33 young lives is deeply disturbing. My daughter will probably still attend Tech next year. She realizes that Tech is the place she saw on Sunday, not the crazy-man-land it became on Monday. But it will always be unsettling to walk the campus where the worst shooting massacre in American history took place. -- Original Source: http://davesmidlife.com/2…
creator: Dave Shepherd
date: 2007-06-08
contributor: Brent Jesiek
rights: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5
language: eng

Blacksburg, violence, and America
description: Published by Dave April 25th, 2007 I have been on the sidelines of quite a number of handgun deaths in my life. Thank God, I haven't really been in the crossfire, nor has any member of my family. But gun violence has come close enough to me to be very unsettling. In the late 1980s, when I was a graduate student in German at Vanderbilt, a German exchange student, Thomas Weser, was gunned down in a parking lot on campus in the very early morning hours. The murder seemed to be a robbery gone wrong. It became a murder because the mugger had a handgun. On Christmas Eve 1991, I was living in the Belmont Heights section of Nashville, a cozy suburban neighborhood near several university campuses. My kids were very young. We got along well with our neighbors. There were families all around us. Diagonally across the street from us lived two brothers. They got into an argument in the middle of the night after much alcohol had been drunk. One brother fetched a loaded handgun and killed the other. Without the loaded handgun in the house, this argument would probably have remained a drunken fistfight, maybe a stabbing. In February of 1997, our family accompanied my wife on a weekend trip to New York City. My wife had to attend an arts conference, and I was left to explore the city with the kids. On Sunday afternoon we wanted to go to the observation deck of the Empire State Building, but we weren't sure whether we should wait until Mom got finished with her afternoon meeting. We decided that I would go ahead and take the kids up to the top while Barbara was in her session. After we returned home to Northern Virginia, we learned that a man had opened fire with a handgun on the Empire State Building's observation deck later that afternoon. Seven people were shot; one was killed, in addition to the gunman, who committed suicide. If we had waited for Barbara, we might well have been there to experience the shooting firsthand. Republican Mayor Rudolph Giuliani blamed weak gun laws for…
creator: Dave Shepherd
date: 2007-06-08
contributor: Brent Jesiek
rights: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5
language: eng

https://april16archive.org/items/show/454
description: Moment de comemorare a studentilor de la universitatea Alexandru Ioan Cuza, Iasi pentru studentii de la Virginia Tech - vineri, 20 aprilie 2007 Moment of commemoration from the students and faculty of Alexandru Ioan Cuza University, Iasi, Romania for Virginia Tech- Friday, April 20th, 2007. -- Sursa Originala: http://www.uaic.ro/uaic/bin/view/Photos/RememberVirginiaTech
creator: Laura Copcea
date: 2007-06-08
contributor: Adriana Seagle
rights: Laura Copcea (promovare@uaic.ro)
language: ron

Virginia Tech Redux: Did the Old Media Lose it in Blacksburg?
description: April 18th, 2007 As the words continue to flow along with the tears after the deaths at Virginia Tech, one important observation rises above the ruins: the incident represented a triumph for what the pundits term the New Media over the Old. The keys to this triumph lie in the strengths of the New Media: its immediacy, diversity, and ability to speak personally. The immediacy of the New Media put them far ahead of the Old Media even as the crisis unfolded. The on-campus emails that first informed many students that something terrible had happened became like pebbles dropped in a pond, rippling out into the ether. New Media such as Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and search engines became the preferred sources for people desperate to find out what happened. Probably the most dramatic illustration of this was the group of students who fled to the library and then frantically searched the Internet to find out what was happening. A decade ago they might have turned on the radio or television. Even the Old Media had to acknowledge the role the New Media played for the students at Virginia Tech. CBS ran a story "Students Turn To Web In Time Of Tragedy" whose sub head read, "How the Internet Helped Va. Tech Students Cope with Shooting Massacre." The Los Angeles Times reported about University of Southern California sophomore Charlotte Korchak who instead of using a cellphone to check on friends at Virginia Tech, immediately went to Facebook. "I was able to immediately find out who was OK," she said. "Without Facebook, I have no idea how I would have found that out." As for the news on campus, the Old Media struggled to catch up. National Public Radio even published a desperate-sounding plea on their web site for witnesses of the tragedy to please contact them so they could line up interviews. In short, in the first few hours after the shootings the Old Media became just like the rest of us, searching the web for information and answers. Later National Public Radio would gloat, it…
creator: Ralph Brauer
date: 2007-06-08
contributor: Brent Jesiek
rights: Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported
language: eng

In Memoriam: Virginia Tech, April 16, 2007
description: April 16th, 2007 As one who worked with school districts across the country, I know the issue of school shootings is every school official's nightmare. The apparent random nature of all the shootings only makes the nightmare more fearful, for after dozens of workshops at countless conventions, the only thing anyone can say for sure is that they do not know where the awful sounds of gunfire will next echo down the hallways and in the classrooms. But no one I knew or any of the workshops ever talked about the possibility of the equivalent of a Columbine occurring at a college. Every school district in the country has detailed policies in place if it ever happened to them. Their teachers, administrators and staff are trained in what to do and local law enforcement officials participate in the planning and the drills. Now that it has happened at a college they, too, will have to undergo similar training and create similar plans. Campuses will seem less safe, new rules and drills will need to be implemented and college officials and teachers will now understand the nightmares of their secondary colleagues. At the center of that nightmare lies a dark, bottomless pool. As with the Columbines of this country, people will stare into the pool seeking answers. Some will see reflections and try to generalize from them about the nature of the shooter and the victims, but the reflections they see will only be their own. Interest groups will look into the pool and see their causes, filling the talk shows with spokespersons who will say that if we had only done "x" the event would have never happened. Others will take a longer view trying to peer into the depths of the pool seeking confirmation of trends historical, social and psychological. They too will see only their own reflections. For those at the center of it all, the parents, relatives and friends of the victims and the shooter, those who witnessed it and lived, and those who somehow made a decision to not go to those place…
creator: Ralph Brauer
date: 2007-06-08
contributor: Brent Jesiek
rights: Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported
language: eng

https://april16archive.org/items/show/457
description: Moment de comemorare a studentilor de la universitatea Alexandru Ioan Cuza, Iasi pentru studentii de la Virginia Tech - vineri, 20 aprilie 2007 Moment of commemoration from the students and faculty of Alexandru Ioan Cuza University, Iasi, Romania for Virginia Tech- Friday, April 20th, 2007. -- Sursa Originala: http://www.uaic.ro/uaic/bin/view/Photos/RememberVirginiaTech
creator: Laura Copcea
date: 2007-06-08
contributor: Adriana Seagle
rights: Laura Copcea (promovare@uaic.ro)
language: ron

The Tangled Thicket of Cho seung-hui, Don Imus, YouTube and American Idol
description: April 21st, 2007 Cho seung-hui, the Rutgers University women's basketball team, the students and Virginia Tech all form a tangled thicket nourished by the American media, overgrown with too many words, too many pictures and too many answers to too many bad questions. We, the American people struggle to navigate this thicket, for during the last few weeks we have only become more confused as if we have lost our sense of direction. You can enter any of these words in a search engine and lose all hope of finding any rationality, any thread that will lead you out. Technorati lists 152,000 blog selections for Virginia Tech, 23,000 for Cho and 4,788 for the Rutgers' team. With new posts on all of these each day, there are enough words that it would take a person probably a year to read them all. And yet we all seek a way out of this thicket of information, a clear path, a why that puts the last few weeks all in perspective. That the media have become such a tangled thicket rather than a clear voice represents perhaps the only generalization we can draw from these events and an indication of what has happened to America's sources and ideas about information. During past tragedies-the Kennedy assassination, Jonestown, the space shuttle explosion-somehow the media brought us together and enabled us to not only have a common source of information but also a shared sense of perspective. Just the opposite has occurred over the last few weeks. Instead of coming together we have thousands of information sources; instead of a shared sense of perspective we have something resembling a cubist painting crafted by a random group each with their own paints, brushes and sense of reality. Trying to come together has become an exercise in frustration, disappointment and even anger. The equilibrium many have found may even be misleading, for it comes from linking with a group of like-minded people who share their own prejudices and views of the world. So instead of finding a way out of the…
creator: Ralph Brauer
date: 2007-06-08
contributor: Brent Jesiek
rights: Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported
language: eng

On Being A College Professor after the VT Massacre
description: Thursday, April 19, 2007 I had nightmares about the VT massacre last night. It was on a two day delay. I knew that eventually the horror of what had happened would start to eat away at me. In part, I think my dreams haunted me precisely because I didn't talk, or rather listen, to what students thought about this. I didn't check in to see if they were suffering, in shock, afraid . . . I had to think a lot about why I didn't, especially after the Provost sent us a thoughtful email encouraging us to do so. What it comes down to is that I didn't want to think about it. I didn't want to actually confront the horror of this event. I wasn't prepared for hearing any vitriol, anger or racist statements either (not that students would've made such statements, but I worried). I am scared and frightened by what happened, and in my selfishness, I didn't want to hear anything about it, or how it affected my students. I started to realize how frightened I was by the events yesterday while talking to my colleagues in the Philosophy lounge. I had been studying the faces of the dead at the NYTimes website. But, more importantly, I had been studying the faces of the dead professors. One of them, Jamie Bishop, looked like the sort of colleague I have here. He was young, married, and well-loved by his students. Don't get me wrong, I paused on pictures of young women and men, who could've been my own students, and found myself speechless over the loss. But, seeing the pictures of dead professors haunted me the most. And, it is precisely that which I dreamt: being hunted by a former student, being called to protect my class from an armed assailant. These are not tasks that one signs on for when he/she becomes a college professor. Kerry reminded me of a student we both had a few years ago, who I am convinced was schizophrenic. He was the right age and gender for the onset of schizophrenia. His papers were long, stream of consciousness writings full of references to disturbing sexuality. Th…
creator: Aspazia / Mad Melancholic Feminista Blog
date: 2007-06-09
contributor: Brent Jesiek
rights: Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License
language: eng

Bowing Down to Our Own Violence
description: Media Beat (4/19/07) By Norman Solomon Many days after the mass killings at Virginia Tech, grisly stories about the tragedy still dominated front pages and cable television. News of carnage on a vastly larger scale -- the war in Iraq -- ebbs and flows. The overall coverage of lethal violence, at home and far away, reflects the chronic evasions of the American media establishment. In the world of U.S. mainline journalism, the boilerplate legitimacy of official American violence overseas is a routine assumption. "The first task of the occupation remains the first task of government: to establish a monopoly on violence," George Will wrote on April 7, 2004, in the Washington Post. But three years later, his Newsweek column laments: "Vietnam produced an antiwar movement in America; Iraq has produced an antiwar America." Current polls and public discourse -- in spite of media inclinations to tamp down authentic anger at the war -- do reflect an "antiwar America" of sorts. So, why is the ghastly war effort continuing unabated? A big factor is the undue respect that's reserved for American warriors in American society. When a mentally unstable person goes on a shooting rampage in the United States, no one questions that such actions are intrinsically, fundamentally and absolutely wrong. The media condemnation is 100 percent. However -- even after four years of a U.S. war in Iraq that has been increasingly deplored by the American public -- the standard violence directed from the Pentagon does not undergo much critical scrutiny from American journalists. The president's war policies may come under withering media fire, but the daily activities of the U.S. armed forces are subjected to scant moral condemnation. Yet, under orders from the top, they routinely continue to inflict -- or serve as a catalyst for -- violence far more extensive than the shooting sprees that turned a placid Virginia campus into a slaughterhouse. News outlets in the United States combine the totally pr…
creator: Norman Solomon
date: 2007-06-09
contributor: Brent Jesiek
rights: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0
language: eng

Message on Safety and Security
description: (This message was distributed to all faculty, staff and students April 27, 2007.) In the days following the Virginia Tech tragedy, our solidarity with and sympathy for the faculty, staff, students and families affected by the loss of lives on April 16, 2007 remains front and centre in our minds. Openness and access are features that define us as a university, and we cherish those attributes greatly. At the same time we are conscious that these features make us vulnerable to the behaviour of troubled or violent people. Our overall approach to providing a safe environment is therefore guided by the desire to maintain and nurture openness while doing all we can to prepare for, prevent, and respond to crisis situations. The events of Friday April 20 were a good test of our overall philosophy and systems with respect to both safety and security. Shortly before 5 pm, a report was received of a male with a rifle in the vicinity of the bowl. Saskatoon Police Services (SPS) and Campus Safety responded, conducted a sweep of buildings in the vicinity, and declared the incident over at 7 pm. The next day SPS concluded, based on the report of another eyewitness, that the rifle was actually a bike seat and post and declared the incident a false alarm. This incident demonstrated strengths in our systems, including effective coordination with SPS. It also highlighted some areas for improvement, including our ability to communicate with the entire campus when necessary. There are many dimensions to our approach to safety. Our department of Campus Safety maintains a 24-hour watch over the campus, with a team of security staff on duty and a video-surveillance system. The U of S works closely and cooperatively with Saskatoon's emergency service organizations, engaging in joint training initiatives. There are a number of additional safety measures in place including safety alert notices, the Safewalk program, campus emergency phones, and counseling and health services for staff and stud…
creator: Peter MacKinnon and Richard Florizone
date: 2007-06-09
contributor: Brent Jesiek
rights: Creative Commons Attribution 2.5
language: eng

Campus mourns the lives that were lost
description: The university community gathered in remembrance of the violence at Virginia Polytechnical University in a candle vigil last Thursday. Faculty, staff and students from Hamline's various colleges were all present. Over 120 people were in attendance, including multiple university administrators. The vigil included members of the religious community including university chaplain Theresa Mason, Rabbi Esther Adler and Bishop Rosalyn Carol. Bishop Carol said her goal is a world where no "people are dying because we do not live and love each other." Carol also said that the community at the university needed to celebrate the fact "that we are truly brothers and sisters." Poems in Hebrew and English were read, as well as psalms from the Christian Bible, Torah and Qur'an. Communication professor Suda Ishida performed a traditional Buddhist ritual, asking all present to link arms with the person beside them as water was poured from a basin unto the base of a tree. Adler spoke of a Virginia Tech professor and Holocaust survivor Liviu Librescu, and questioned his destiny. "Was April 16 his appointed purpose or just a cruel irony?" she said. CLA Sophomore Emily Hager-Garman led the choir in a version of "Oh, Jerusalem" and a faculty member from the Graduate school sang parts of the African national anthem. President Linda Hanson was visibly moved by the display of student and staff solidarity. Many in attendance were moved to tears as the names of the departed were read aloud and a bell on loan from Hamline United Methodist Church was tolled as each name was said. In addition, the student who led the Tibetan Buddhist invocation invited the community to create Tibetan prayer flags which were to be hung up outside Bush Library. The Tibetan prayer flag is a piece of cloth with a message for the living and departed. Many of the messages included words of hope, forgiveness and mourning. The service ended as the clock tower on Old Main ominously tolled 5 p.m. Compiled by Chris Matter …
creator: Chris Matter / Oracle Student Newspaper Staff
date: 2007-06-09
contributor: Brent Jesiek
rights: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 1.0
language: eng

Thinking about Virginia Tech
description: I'd been thinking about starting this blog up again for a few weeks now. I didn't think I'd have something so tragic to write about. Probably it goes without saying that my thoughts and best wishes go out to the students, faculty, and staff at my alma mater, Virginia Tech, and especially to the families and friends of the victims. I was working from home today, heads down with all my external inputs (radio, TV, email, IRC, RSS feeds, etc.) turned off, so it wasn't until mid-afternoon that I became aware of what had happened. It has shaken me up, more than I would have expected it would. It's disconcerting to see a community that you've been part of suffer an event like this, especially when you see so many images on the news of places you're quite familiar with. When I was a student at Virginia Tech, I had friends who lived on the 4th floor Ambler-Johnston Hall, where the first shooting took place. I had classes in Norris Hall, where the second shooting occurred. I know these places. They were my places. It was my community. Even though I've been gone from Tech for a long time, it still hits close to home. Back in '88-'89 I was one of the editors of the Collegiate Times, Virginia Tech's student newspaper. I've thought a lot about the students working at the Collegiate Times today. What was the biggest story we dealt with back in '88-'89? I think a steroids scandal on one of the sports teams. Nothing to compare to what happened today. What a time it must be for those young, aspiring journalists. How difficult it must be to cover what will probably be the biggest story of your life when you are just twenty or twenty-one. Doubly difficult since it is the slaughter of your classmates that you have to cover. As young journalists they must feel a great deal of excitement at The Big Story . . . and, at the same time, a great deal of guilt and dread for being excited while their friends lay dead. I hope they sense the importance of their role of as the student voice of the …
creator: Greg Ritter
date: 2007-06-09
contributor: Brent Jesiek
rights: Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs-NonCommercial 1.0
language: eng

What May Come: Asian Americans and the Virginia Tech Shootings
description: By Tamara K. Nopper | 04.19.2007 April 17, 2007 Like many, I was glued to the television news yesterday, keeping updated about the horrific shootings at Virginia Tech University. I was trying to deal with my own disgust and sadness, especially since my professional life as a graduate student and college instructor is tied to universities. And then the other shoe dropped. I found out from a friend that the news channel she was watching had reported the shooter as Asian. It has now been reported, after much confusion, that the shooter is Cho Seung-Hui, a South Korean immigrant and Virginia Tech student. As an Asian American woman, I am keenly aware that Asians are about to become a popular media topic if not the victims of physical backlash. Rarely have we gotten as much attention in the past fifteen years, except, perhaps, during the 1992 Los Angeles Riots. Since then Asians are seldom seen in the media except when one of us wins a golfing match, Woody Allen has sex, or Angelina Jolie adopts a kid. I am not looking forward to the onslaught of media attention. If history truly does have clues about what will come, there may be several different ways we as Asian Americans will be talked about. One, we will watch white media pundits and perhaps even sociologists explain what they understand as an "Asian" way of being. They will talk about how Asian males presumably have fragile "egos" and therefore are culturally prone to engage in kamikaze style violence. These statements will be embedded with racist tropes about Japanese military fighters during WWII or the Viet Cong—the crazy, calculating, and hidden Asian man who will fight to the death over presumably nothing. In the process, the white media might actually ask Asian Americans our perspectives for a change. We will probably be expected to apologize in some way for the behavior of another Asian—something whites never have to collectively do when one of theirs engages in (mass) violence, which is often. And then s…
creator: Tamara K. Nopper
date: 2007-06-10
contributor: Brent Jesiek
rights: Free for non-commercial reuse, reprint, and rebroadcast, on the net and elsewhere.
language: eng

Virginia Tech, Imus and Curve Balls
description: [Philosophical Musing on Media Culture] By Carl Davidson 20 Apr 2007 The universe throws curve balls at us, now and then. It seems to want to wake us up, and teach us lessons in impermanence and interconnectedness. Take the killings at Virginia Tech. A strange, quiet young Korean man, Cho Seung-Hui, writer of tortured and violent plays and screeds, makes his own solipsistic martial arts-gangsta video of himself, and sends it to the media, in the course of slaughtering 32 people, then killing himself. The media sensationalizes it. MSNBC ratings go through the roof as its images are repeated, to millions and millions, then all the networks join in the frenzy. As expected, other troubled youth respond, in copy-cat fashion, often only with words, and scares shut down numerous classes across the country. At the same time, discussions of 'healing' get underway. Talk show commentators are having a time of it. I hear both liberal and conservatives alike carry on about 'looking in the face of evil' and trashing the notions of illness and therapy. Rush Limbaugh and one caller on his show go on about how the Korean youth is an 'America hater,' 'suicide bomber,' and simply evil. Retired FBI guys talk about 'training' students to be able to respond better, and hiring tougher 'security.' People debate police tactics, censorship and guns. Then a British paper goes to a tiny hut in Korea, and a reporter talks to the boy's grandparents, who say he was a bad kid and 'deserved to die' for his sins. But the grandparents also reveal the poverty of his parents as they immigrated to the U.S. Most important, they reveal their grandson was diagnosed early with autism, but the poverty all around prevented them from doing much about it, either in Korea or here. Autism is recently growing with unusual speed in the US. Parents, rich and poor, are desperate for help, since dealing with an autistic child is often beyond any couple, however well off. One radio personality, Don Imus, takes up their…
creator: Carl Davidson
date: 2007-06-10
contributor: Brent Jesiek
rights: Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication
language: eng

Virginia Tech: Laying The Blame
description: Karen Harper 22 Apr 2007 There will be a lot of blame dished out in the aftermath of the Virginia Tech massacre. But one element will be missing and that is the system itself. Capitalism and the society it nurtures will remain unscathed in the big business press. In the aftermath of another school shooting in the US, many will be asking why and some will be trying to lay blame. The shooter's parents will be blamed for how they raised him; the school will be blamed for how it dealt with his mental illness; and his schoolmates past and present will be blamed for how they teased and ostracized him. However, the blame will mostly not be laid where it appropriately belongs; on the head of capitalism and the social values that it has nourished. No individual can be looked at out of context of the larger society, and this young man and what he became cannot be understood without first looking at the society he came from. Unfortunately, the "angry loner" type that has done these sorts of shootings in the past is not the product of an isolated genetic mutation that happens unpredictably and that cannot be prevented. Such people are a real product of their environment and the direct result of capitalism's impact on personal development and mental health. This society promotes individuality, self-absorption, and competition over solidarity and collective struggle. Is it any surprise that some young people are so incapable of not only identifying with the group and its larger good, but also of even, in severe cases, forming any kind of meaningful relationship with another individual? These people after years of painful experiences can come to the conclusion that they are completely unloved and unlovable. Because we are social beings, this conclusion makes life difficult to continue. Capitalism is daily bombarding our self-esteem; we are never good enough under capitalism. There is always some drug to make us happier, some surgery to make us thinner, some car or house or job tha…
creator: Karen Harper
date: 2007-06-10
contributor: Brent Jesiek
rights: Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication
language: eng