Stack's Stone
description: Ryan "Stack" Clark's Hokie Stone memorial on the drillfield. The victim memorials continue to evolve, with new items, tributes, and flowers being added all the time. Photo taken Thursday, June 14.
creator: Brent Jesiek
date: 2007-06-17
contributor: Brent Jesiek
rights: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0
language: eng

on the VT massacre
description: 17 April 2007 The talking heads keep talking about the "VT Massacre", not that it doesn't deserve attention, but this is too much attention. And VT is getting a bad wrap unfairly on one specific point: the notification of students on campus as to what was going on. The media seem obsessed with the 2-hour gap between the first shooting and the campus-wide email. They think the whole campus should have been told immediately. This is a short-sighted and impatient assumption, and is definitely not appropriate in a time like this when cooler heads should prevail. First, when the first shooting occurred, no one knew what the hell was going on! As with any incident like this, the police responded immediately, and their first priority was to figure out what happened. From what the VT police have said, they had reason to believe the shooter had left campus. So, what good would it have been to lock the campus down? And even if they had, how would that have stopped the assailant from coming back, as this may have only added police officers to the list of the dead. My point is VT authorities didn't notify anyone immediately because they didn't know what to tell them! In this age of information and 24-hour TV news, many have been spoiled into thinking they should have answers immediately, and that someone has failed them if they don't. Spoiled is definitely the best word for that outlook. Answers aren't always available right away, and rarely is the complete picture seen even days after an event like this, if ever. So, why are some in the media out to vilify the very people who were trying to protect the public and figure this whole thing out? I can see no reason other than lack of understanding and sensationalism, neither of which is an acceptable answer. --- On a different note about the incidents of yesterday: As a life member of Kappa Kappa Psi Honorary Band Fraternity, as was receiving updates on the status on members of our chapter at VT. All were accounted for by midday a…
creator: Matt Collins
date: 2007-06-17
contributor: Brent Jesiek
rights: Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License
language: eng

WCC leader backs calls for effective US firearms regulations
description: News Brief By staff writers 18 Apr 2007 World Council of Churches (WCC) general secretary the Rev Dr Samuel Kobia has expressed "deep sorrow" over "this new horror of random violence" that took place at Virginia Tech University on Monday 16 April 2007. To his prayers for the families and the wounded, he added international church concern for more effective regulation of firearms. "Churches around the world join churches and councils of churches in the US in sending sympathies to those who are suffering, and in upholding parishes in Virginia in their ministry during these difficult days", said Dr Kobia in a statement published yesterday. Dr Kobia affirmed that "In deference to those who have died and with concern for the future, we all must ask why such killings happen so easily. Why are these incidents repeated as if there are no remedies? "We are all Virginians in our sympathy, but many people around the world are also Virginians in their vulnerability to the misuse of unregulated guns", Kobia declared. "Wanton killings", "indiscriminate use of armed force" and "widespread availability of deadly weapons" are features of the Virginia tragedy but are also present daily in Darfur and in Iraq, he said. Dr Kobia called for "firm and appropriate controls" on the globalized trade in small arms. He notes, among other factors, that the "pro-gun position adopted by the US administration" has been "one of the major obstacles" to progress toward that goal. The World Council of Churches, which brings together Protestant, Orthodox, Anglican and indigenous churches across the globe, has a longstanding concern for combating violence. The Decade to Overcome Violence and build a culture of peace has brought together church and civic groups. It has included a 'peace to the city' initiative which included action on gun crime and domestic attacks. -- Original Source: Ekklesia http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/5069 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No…
creator: Ekklesia Staff Writers
date: 2007-06-17
contributor: Brent Jesiek
rights: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 England & Wales License
language: eng

Korean church leaders caution against backlash after US shootings
description: News Brief By staff writers 21 Apr 2007 Korean and American Korean church leaders are calling for "healing, reconciliation and peace" amid concerns that the Virginia Tech shootings by a South Korean native could lead to a backlash against Koreans. "I was really shocked to hear that this senseless crime was committed by a Korean-immigrated student," said Bishop Kyung-Ha Shin, president of the Council of Bishops of the Korean Methodist Church. In a letter from Seoul sent on 18 April 2007, Bishop Shin offered condolences to the bereaved families and the American people while hoping "there will be no undesirable negative feeling and attitude toward Koreans." Meanwhile, in the United States, more than 250 leaders of the National Association of Korean American United Methodist Churches were holding their annual meeting 16-19 April in Chicago when the shooting occurred. As word of the shooter's identity spread, the mostly clergy participants began receiving calls from their home churches asking for guidance. "The whole community was in shock and did not know how to respond, but we prayed for the victims and their family members and the school and the community," said the Rev Keihwan Ryoo, editor of United Methodists in Service, who was reporting on the gathering on behalf of the Korean-language magazine published by United Methodist Communications. Several pastors received reports that Korean American students had been bullied in their mostly white schools as the week progressed, Ryoo said. The caucus held a memorial service for the shooting victims and released a pastoral letter. "We pray that the violence that has needlessly taken innocent lives does not escalate nor happen again," said the Rev Hoon Kyoung Lee, chairman of the association. "Furthermore, we are especially concerned that the immigrant community and the children of minorities may become targeted by anti-racial backlash because of this incident. "We pray that all of our friends and neighbors will support the…
creator: Ekklesia Staff Writers
date: 2007-06-17
contributor: Brent Jesiek
rights: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 England & Wales License
language: eng

The Altar of the Gun
description: Note: I found writing this piece to be a way of channeling my own anger at the massacre this morning. But I recognize that anger is only one part of the grief process. Please join me in praying for the families and friends of those killed. American worships the gun. Today, 33 more were sacrificed on the altar of our devotion to the gun. Specifically to semi automatic handguns. There are already dozens of articles from disciples arguing that the massacre today at Virginia tech could have been avoided if some of the students had been carrying guns so they could shoot the killer before he killed them. We trust the gun more than we trust God. The brutal reality of our gun fetish is that selling guns and ammo is highly profitable. But it is not simply the fact that the market values short term earnings from gun sales more than the social, cultural, political and long term economic damage that gun violence does to our society. More importantly, the gun industry long ago learned to effectively invest their short term earnings into the social, political and cultural sphere. Their investments in the NRA, especially since 1977 years have returned 10 fold and the results are a culture in which gun ownership is intimately connected with the values of self-sufficiency, responsibility and security that so many Americans identify with. We'll call these frontier values. As much as we'd like to wish that the new Democratic congress would seize on this moment to pass some common sense gun laws, the reality is that many of the new members of Congress were partly by actively courting those with frontier values. Unless their constituency shows signs of disconnecting handguns from frontier values, any vote for limiting the sales of hand guns will be doomed. It may be that changing our gun culture requires looking at movements that have successfully challenged large corporations with large amounts of cultural capital. The anti-smoking movement comes to mind. The last 30 years have seen a …
creator: Tim Nafziger
date: 2007-06-17
contributor: Brent Jesiek
rights: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5
language: eng

Transnistria survivor Liviu Librescu killed in Virginia Tech massacre
description: During Tuesday's massacre at Virginia Tech, in the USA, a holocaust survivor with ties to Tiraspol was killed. Liviu Librescu had survived deportation from Romania to the killing fields of World War II's Transnistria. The territory was never part of Romania or of any independent Moldovan state. By Times staff, 18/Apr/2007 BLACKSBURG (Wires, Tiraspol Times) - Liviu Librescu, a Romanian-born Israeli professor, survived the killing fields of Transnistria as a teenager but fell to the bullet of a lone gunman in an American university campus Tuesday. The 76 year-old Holocaust survivor was shot and killed in the Virginia Tech massacre while holding off the gunman at his lecture hall entrance so his students could escape. Librescu was among the thirty-three people who were murdered in the Virginia Tech massacre on April 16, 2007. He was killed during a class in the Norris Hall Engineering Building by a student, Korean-born Cho Seung-hui, 23. At Virginia Tech, his recent position was Professor of Engineering Science and Mechanics. Librescu held the door of his classroom shut while Cho was attempting to enter it; although he was shot through the door, he was able to prevent the gunman from entering the classroom until his students had escaped through the windows. A hero to his students A number of Librescu's students have called him a hero because of his actions, with one student, Asael Arad, saying that all the professor's students "lived because of him". Librescu's son, Joe, said he had received e-mails from several students who said he had saved their lives and regarded him as a hero. His death came on Holocaust Remembrance Day in Israel. Liviu Librescu was born in 1930 to a Jewish family in the city of Ploieşti, Romania. During World War II, his native Romania joined forces with Nazi Germany and started an extermination campaign of Jews. His family was first interned in a labor camp in what the Romanians at the time called Transnistria and then transferred to the ghetto…
creator: The Tiraspol Times
date: 2007-06-18
contributor: Adriana Seagle
rights: Jason Cooper (jasoncooper@tiraspoltimes.com)
language: eng

We Remember and Honor
description: Wooden plaque remembering and honoring nine students from Political Science and International Studies. It is currently displayed on the fifth floor of Major Williams Hall. Photo taken Monday, June 18.
creator: Brent Jesiek
date: 2007-06-18
contributor: Brent Jesiek
language: eng

'Nightmare of Nightmares'
description: Virginia Tech's Korean Christians wrestle with the aftermath of a massacre. Deann Alford | posted 6/06/2007 08:02AM The alert that two students had been shot on campus blipped into Jong Nam Lee's e-mail inbox around 9:30 that fateful Monday morning, April 16, as the Virginia Tech research scientist was writing a paper. Months earlier, a gunman had been loose on campus, and within the past two weeks, there had been two bomb threats. Still, the warning prompted the soft-spoken engineer, who serves as an adviser to Virginia Tech's Korea Campus Crusade for Christ (KCCC), to check on his son, a student at the university. Josh Lee was safe. His morning class had been canceled. But within minutes, Lee's wife, Mi Oak, shared the unimaginable news with her husband. A suicidal gunman had killed 32 and injured 28 on campus before putting a gun to his own head. Quickly, Lee and dozens of other campus ministry leaders and their student leaders pulled out all the stops to respond. Ninety miles away in Lynchburg, David Chung, pastor of Blacksburg's Korean Baptist Church and a professor in Liberty University's Korean-language seminary, heard the news while on class break. Immediately, he canceled class, packed a bag, and made a beeline for Blacksburg. Korea Campus Crusade is based at Korean Baptist Church, a Korean-language congregation. Worship is held Sunday afternoons at the 155-year-old Blacksburg Baptist Church, across the street from the sprawling Virginia Tech campus. Nearly every congregation and on-campus ministry was hit in some way. "Cru"—as Campus Crusade for Christ is known at Virginia Tech—had four student fatalities. Baptist Collegiate Ministries lost one student. New Life Christian Fellowship, a student-oriented startup church, had two fatalities and ten student attenders injured. One graduate student affiliated with Korean Baptist took bullets in his hand and arm. One of Their Own—Lost in America The day after the slaughter, Korean American leaders realized t…
creator: Deann Alford
date: 2007-06-18
contributor: Brent Jesiek
rights: Becky Custer, Editorial Coordinator (bcuster@christianitytoday.com)
language: eng

A Gray Haze over Everything
description: Campus life after the tragedy at Virginia Tech. Philip Yancey | posted 6/06/2007 08:01AM "April is the cruellest month." When T. S. Eliot penned that opening line to "The Waste Land" in 1921, he had no idea how it would resound in modern America. Oklahoma City, Columbine High School, and Virginia Tech—our calendars mark all three within a span of five days, a week soaked in grief. "As a youth minister, you anticipate weddings, not funerals," said Matt Rogers of New Life Christian Fellowship (NLCF), a Christian community that meets in the Student Center at Virginia Tech. "We have no playbook for something like this." I spoke at NLCF two weeks after the tragedy, accompanied by the Ruegsegger family, whose daughter Kacey survived gunshot wounds at Columbine High School eight years ago. "Very few people know what you're going through," Kacey told the students gathered for the somber service. "We've been there." The news media portrayed yet another mass killing on a U.S. campus. What greeted the visitor, though, was an overwhelming display of national solidarity. Banners and posters hung in many school buildings, covered with tens of thousands of handwritten messages of support. And a cluster of spontaneous memorials appeared around campus. Each day, visitors filed past the mounds of mementoes—a baseball, a Starbucks cup, a teddy bear, a favorite novel—that gave individuality to the 33 who'd died. Spring arrived late in western Virginia. As April faded into May, redbud and wild dogwood trees dotted the surrounding hills. Tulips and daffodils set off the gray stone university buildings. "It's usually such a happy time," mused one student. "We pack our books and stereos and head home, some of us with diplomas. This year, a gray haze hangs over everything." Before departing, many students paid one last visit to Norris Hall, blocked off with a green fence and yellow police tape. Where they used to attend classes, state patrolmen now stood guard. Copyright © 2007 Chris…
creator: Philip Yancey
date: 2007-06-18
contributor: Brent Jesiek
rights: Becky Custer, Editorial Coordinator (bcuster@christianitytoday.com)
language: eng

Where Is God When It Hurts?
description: A sermon given on the Virginia Tech campus two weeks after the shootings. Philip Yancey | posted 6/06/2007 05:31PM We gather here still trying to make sense of what happened in Blacksburg, still trying to process the unprocessable. We come together in this place, as a Christian community, partly because we know of no better place to bring our questions and our grief and partly because we don't know where else to turn. As the apostle Peter once said to Jesus, at a moment of confusion and doubt, "Lord, to whom else can we go?" In considering how to begin today, I found myself following two different threads. The first thread is what I would like to say, the words I wish I could say. The second thread is the truth. I wish I could say that the pain you feel will disappear, vanish, never to return. I'm sure you've heard comments like these from parents and others: "Things will get better." "You'll get past this." "This too shall pass." Those who offer such comfort mean well, and it's true that what you feel now you will not always feel. Yet it's also true that what happened on April 16, 2007, will stay with you forever. You are a different person because of that day, because of one troubled young man's actions. I remember one year when three of my friends died. In my thirties then, I had little experience with death. In the midst of my grief, I came across these lines from George Herbert that gave me solace: "Grief melts away / Like snow in May / As if there were no such cold thing." I clung to that hope even as grief smothered me like an avalanche. Indeed, the grief did melt away, but like snow it also came back, in fierce and unexpected ways, triggered by a sound, a smell, some fragment of memory of my friends. So I cannot say what I want to say, that this too shall pass. Instead, I point to the pain you feel, and will continue to feel, as a sign of life and love. I'm wearing a neck brace because I broke my neck in an auto accident. For the first few hours as I lay str…
creator: Philip Yancey
date: 2007-06-18
contributor: Brent Jesiek
rights: Becky Custer, Editorial Coordinator (bcuster@christianitytoday.com)
language: eng

Asking Why
description: Christian fellowship helps survivors of the Virginia Tech shootings deal with larger issues. Deann Alford in Blacksburg, Virginia | posted 4/23/2007 09:50AM Four former Columbine students worshiped with Virginia Tech's New Life Christian Fellowship (NLCF) yesterday. It was the church's first Sunday worship gathering since the April 16 massacre that claimed 33 lives, including gunman Seung-Hui Cho. Christians were among the victims. Two NLCF members died, and 10 other victims were connected in some way to the church. Church leaders honored the dead, prayed for their families, and addressed why-and-how questions that went beyond forensics. The four Christians who as adolescents survived the massacre at Columbine High School almost eight years ago traveled to the southwestern Virginia campus to guide church leaders and minister to students processing grief, anger, and sorrow. Wendy Chinn, a counseling graduate student who leads NLCF's women's ministry, acknowledged that everyone is weary of the question, "How are you doing?" "Some lost someone extremely close. Others lost an acquaintance," Chinn said to the almost 400 people and network television cameras in the full auditorium. "Others still had a class in Norris, lived in A-J [West Ambler Johnston dormitory]. We remember where we were when it happened. We all grieve very differently. We're all going through it together. We know this is hard, know it's going to take time." Chris Backert, one of three NLCF pastors, referred to Mark 4, where Christ's disciples were caught in a boat during a storm. "We have all been through a storm. Why was it her? Why was it him? It could have been me." Backert noted that Jesus did not cause the storm. All the world's evil, he said, is sin that results when people choose to rebel against God. "When that tragedy strikes us, it also strikes God." Congregation members submitted written questions asking whether Monday's massacre was part of God's plan, what forgiveness of Cho would look lik…
creator: Deann Alford
date: 2007-06-18
contributor: Brent Jesiek
rights: Becky Custer, Editorial Coordinator (bcuster@christianitytoday.com)
language: eng

Peace in a World of Massacre
description: What Jesus calls us to when we're most frightened. Mark Galli | posted 4/17/2007 11:35AM When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you." After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you." —John 20:19-21 Hiding is an inescapable part of the human condition, and it started early: And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden (Gen. 3:8). In last Sunday's lectionary reading from the Gospels, we see a similar pattern. The disciples hide in a house behind locked doors, because they are afraid of the authorities who had just murdered their master. After Monday's horrific massacre in Virginia, most of us will want to go and do likewise. We'll want to hide from God, from others, and from ourselves. The massacre disturbs us not because it's unusual but because it reminds us of the many slaughters inflicted on innocents everyday across the globe. It is a frightening icon of our vulnerability and mortality. We are right to be afraid. The enlightened, scientific, rational ethos that pervades our culture hypnotizes us into believing that with every biomedical breakthrough and fresh psychological insight we are progressing as a species. That's a lie. Psychologists work mightily to shape relationships and convince us we really are "safe." But we're not safe. It's as simple as that. We're vulnerable. And we know it. And so we hide. * * * The man and woman hid themselves "among the trees in the garden." That pristine garden. A perfect garden. That spot "among the trees" must have been beautiful. The disciples hid themselves in a hou…
creator: Mark Galli
date: 2007-06-18
contributor: Brent Jesiek
rights: Becky Custer, Editorial Coordinator (bcuster@christianitytoday.com)
language: eng

Memorial Balloon Release
description: With both state and national flags flying at half-staff, the memorial balloons are released into the heavens.
creator: Lindsay Hughes
date: 2007-06-18
contributor: Lindsay Hughes
language: eng

Flags at Half Staff
description: These flags flew at half-staff in front of the Metropolition Art Museum in New York City the weekend after the shootings at Virginia Tech, showing national solidarity and support for the University.
creator: Lindsay Hughes
date: 2007-06-18
contributor: Lindsay Hughes
language: eng

very sad
description: I left Blacksburg close to three years ago after attending Virginia Tech for both undergraduate and graduate school. I never thought that my sleepy alma mater tucked in the Blue Ridge Mountains could be the site of such a horrific tragedy. My friends from VT have all expressed a desire to be in Blacksburg right now to take part in the grieving. We also agree that for now it is the place of the current students and faculty to deal with the loss within the local community. Since I couldn't be at the candlelight vigil tonight, this is my small display of solidarity. I'm thankful that my remaining friends in Blacksburg are safe. My thoughts go out to the current residents of Blacksburg and everyone that is involved personally in this senseless tragedy. Original source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/outcircuittheend/463434996/ Photo Courtesy of Alex Taylor
creator: Alex Taylor
date: 2007-06-18
contributor: Chad Newswander
rights: Permission: Alex Taylor http://www.flickr.com/photos/outcircuittheend/463434996/
language: eng

Virginia Tech: The Challenge of Instant Communication in a Crisis
description: Wednesday, April 18, 2007 I have been percolating some ideas about how to better integrate technology into a crisis plan I am currently working on. My work with the Red Cross over the years has sharpened my senses and I do have some idea of how to successfully communicate during a crisis. However, this week's events at Virginia Tech have given me some further ideas. I don't want to start getting clinical about this before I say that I am deeply moved by the tragedy this week. Having lived in Virginia for many years I feel close to the tragedy, and moreover, because we have a dear friend who is a professor in the engineering department in V-Tech. I heard from him Tuesday night and am grateful that both he and his freshman daughter are okay. That expressed, there are many lessons to start learning, especially as we prepare for the unexpected and communicating to large groups in crisis. There was a great story in the Wall Street Journal today that (registration req.) discussed the use of disseminating information via texting in a crisis. I have pulled some of the information about services from that article. My main takeaway from this event is the need for redundancy of communication. There need to be both high and low tech layers of communication to be most effective. First and foremost, an organization has to have a strategy to get in touch with all of the stakeholders and employees that need to be reached. A good start is a list of employee cell phones and home phone numbers that are ready to use in an emergency, as well as emergency contacts. Having a crisis communication plan is essential to get the most out of our communications, but here is an incomplete checklist of tactics to consider: High Tech Strategies Have a service set up to send instant text messaging (SMS), one such service is run by Omnilert and costs about $9,000 per year, another for schools is and opt in service run by Mobile Campus Set up redundancy in the servers to handle any increased load Set …
creator: Kami Huyse
date: 2007-06-19
contributor: Brent Jesiek
rights: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 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

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

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

Israeli VA Tech massacre victim laid to rest
description: Hundreds of mourners accompany Prof Librescu to his final resting place. 'After surviving the Holocaust and Nicolae Ceausescu's regime in Romania, he ended up being shot in Virginia,' friend says Ines Ehrlich Published: 04.20.07, 12:44 / Israel News Professor Liviu Librescu, who was murdered in the Virginia Tech shooting this week, was buried Friday morning at the Ra'anana cemetery. Hundreds of mourners accompanied Librescu to his final resting place. Among those who came to pay their respects was the head of Jewish Agency Zeev Bielski who was also the former Mayor of Ra'anana, the Romanian consulate general, friends, relatives and media from all over the world. Shmulik Moyal, a neighbor and friend of Professor Librescu for twenty years, spoke of how one can never know how life will turn out. "After the professor survived the Holocaust and Nicolae Ceausescu's regime in Romania, he ended up being shot in Virginia." "He died in the place he most loved; he stopped the killer with his own body so that students could live," Moyal said. 'Never gave up on his dream' Choked by tears, the professor's wife, Marlena, thanked her husband for the two sons he gave her, saying that she hoped he would look after them from above. The professor's two sons, Joe and Arieh, eulogized their father in Romanian, English and Hebrew, saying that their father had always taught them to be good people, but he never taught them how to become heroes. In his eulogy Bielski said that it seems that the way Librescu met his death reflects more than anything his personal life story. "As a Holocaust survivor he managed to rehabilitate his life, to raise a warm and loving family with his wife Marilena who had also been through the Holocaust," Bielski said. "He struggled to come to Israel, never giving up his dream of living a meaningful Jewish life; he realized his dream of coming to Israel in 1978 thanks to the personal intervention of Menachem Begin with Romania's leader at the time Ceausescu; he beca…
creator: Ynetnews
date: 2007-06-20
contributor: Adriana Seagle
rights: Efrat Yaari,Marketing Manager,Ynetnews (Efrat-ya@y-i.co.il)
language: eng