What could have been done to prevent to massacre at Virginia Tech?
By Arlen Parsa Filed: Thursday April 19th 2007, 9:05 AM In the wake of the tragedy at Virginia Tech on Monday, April 16, many asked how such a thing could have happened. It was the deadliest shooting spree in American history, and already there seems to have been several moments where the incident could have been avoided. The killer, Cho Seung-Hui, himself said in a manifesto mailed to NBC News "You had a hundred billion chances and ways to have avoided today." While there probably weren't "a hundred billion chances and ways" to have avoided the massacre that claimed the lives of 33 people including Cho, but there were several common sense things that could have been done. It's important to recognize that this horrific incident didn't happen just anywhere: the shootings happened in Virginia; a state known for having some of the most relaxed firearm regulations in the entire country. In fact, critics and safety advocates had complained for years that VA firearm regulations were wholly inadequate and substandard when compared with the rest of the country. Here are a few ideas that the Virginia state legislature ought to consider implementing. I'm not holding my breath since it's made up of staunch NRA types and has been controlled by Republicans for years. But tragedies like these force everyone to reconsider their ideologies. First, how about a law that says if you've been classified as mentally unstable and an imminent threat to yourself or others by doctors and a court- then you're not allowed to walk into a store and walk out with a gun and enough ammo to kill dozens of students? This might sound like a no-brainer, but there is currently no mechanism in place in Virginia to stop mentally unstable people from buying as many deadly weapons and ammunition as they like. In this case, the shooter Cho Seung-Hui was diagnosed with mental disorders, had been taken antidepressants and been checked into a mental hospital in 2005. But that didn't stop him from buying deadly weapons. He had also been referred to Virginia Tech's counseling service after he wrote disturbing violent plays about killing people. Through a loophole in the law, Cho wasn't added to a list of mentally-unstable people not allowed to purchase firearms even after the mental hospital episode because although all the doctors who examined him agreed that he was mentally unstable, he didn't formally get committed and left a short time afterwards. Next, how about a law that says that if you've been accused of stalking people, you don't get to walk into a store, point to a small, easily hidden powerful handgun behind the counter and get it along with 50 bullets to use for "self-defense" in a matter of minutes. Also, what about a law that requires background checks to be done for every firearm purchase in Virginia? Oh, you thought that sort of thing was already required? Nope. Turns out there's two other loopholes in the Virginia state law: one allows people who buy firearms at gun-shows to forgo the background check process entirely. The other loophole allowed Cho to forego a Virginia state background check on one of the weapons he purchased because he bought it from an out of state gun dealer over the internet and picked it up at a local pawn shop for a 30 buck fee. The out of state internet gun dealer was supposed to handle the background check, although it's hard to tell whether they did it or not. Here's another idea. How about a law that says if a gun dealer sells five weapons to murders who use those guns to kill people, then they're not allowed to sell any more guns? Call it the "five-strikes-and-you're-out rule." A gun dealer that Cho bought a glock and 50 bullets from had been responsible for selling similar weapons to at least five other murderers in the past. Did Cho hear about the dealer's reputation for being easy to get guns at? Another thing that's gotten criticism recently is Virginia Tech's reaction to the shootings, including their lack of prompt action to warn students. I won't join the group of rabid idiots blaming Administrators for deaths because I feel sorry for everybody involved at Virginia Tech. At the same time, I think in the future there could have been more done to warn students, especially since the whole incident happened over a span of several hours. Call this the "better safe than sorry" law. Require all educational institutions (from elementary up to college) to revamp their procedures on what to do if there's a school shooting or something like that. The government can pay for consultants to help poorer schools figure out a better plan, cost doesn't matter. But the plans have to include detailed procedures about how to warn students that an incident could be ongoing. At Virginia Tech, students and staff were sent a series of short, sometimes confusing emails updating them on the situation. That's okay, but what about people in classrooms who weren't their computers while the massacre was ongoing? If the school had used their indoor and outdoor PA system throughout the morning to provide updates, it is almost certain that more students and teachers would have been warned. True, they did turn it on after a couple of hours as the incident was ending, but it should have been used immediately and continuously. If educational institutions do not use every tool they have to warn students that a violent incident is occurring, a law should be put in place that would punish them. And although a punishment shouldn't really be needed, if heavy enough it would act as a motivation for schools to develop new warning abilities and actually use the ones that they already have. Better safe than sorry. Some people have suggested that SMS messages over cell phones could be used to warn students. That's an interesting high-tech possibility, but there are a few problems with it. For one, school safety experts say that ring-tones and all other types of audio phone sounds should be stifled when schools are in lock-down- for obvious reasons. If a student is hiding in a janitor's closet (purely hypothetical) and there's a gunman on the loose, the last thing that's needed is for them to get a text message and their phone to start playing some obnoxious ring-tone betraying their location. And I'm no expert. To me, this isn't a question of banning guns, and I think the conservatives who say the debate is between having guns and not having guns are rather disingenuous. This is a matter of common-sense pro-active safety regulations that make the country safer. And these types of changes (and all the ones we haven't thought of yet) can't just be implemented in Virginia- they have to be put in place nationwide. There's no excuse to have some places in the country safer because the laws in those places were designed better. We should have learned that in Columbine in '99, and I'll be damned if we don't learn it now. Once and for all. -- Original Source: http://www.thedailybackground.com/2007/04/19/what-could-have-been-done-to-prevent-to-massacre-at-virginia-tech Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 1.0
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By Keith Boykin, in politics Tuesday, April 17 2007, 10:24AM The news was gruesome and alarming. Reuters reported that at least 30 people were shot yesterday in a deadly gun rampage that rocked a city once known for its safety and scholarship. By now, you've heard about the story, and many of us have already stopped paying attention. But I'm not talking about the deadly school shooting in Virginia Monday morning. I'm talking about the deadly violence in Iraq that goes on everyday. While most of the world was understandably horrified by the campus shooting at Virginia Tech yesterday, almost no one paid attention to the 30 people who were shot and killed in Baghdad on the same day. The shock and horror of watching such dramatic violence in Virginia immediately resonated with Americans. But here's something else to ponder. What if it happened every day? What if we saw that kind of carnage in our communities every night on the evening news? It sounds far-fetched, but that's exactly the situation that faces many Iraqis almost every day of the year. If the shooting in Virginia tells us anything about human society, it should tell us that violence is far too common in the world. It's not just an American problem or an Iraqi problem, it is a global problem. What kind of world do we live in where young students have virtually unfettered access to sophisticated deadly weapons that can be used to kill their classmates and teachers? And how did we become desensitized to the tens of thousands of civilian casulaties in a war we're still fighting in Baghdad? I don't think it is possible to stop every murder or every killing that takes place in this country or abroad, but I do believe we have a responsibility to promote the conditions for peace. For all the talk about our Christian values in America, we are an extraordinarily violent society. The FBI reported 1.4 million violent crimes in the U.S. in 2005 and more than 16,000 murders. That's a drop from the record high figures in the early 1990s but it shows that we are still far too violent. Through elective wars, capital punishment, gang violence, and media depictions of violence, we demonstrate our collective societal preference for violence as a solution to our problems. I don't know what motivated the young student in Virginia to shoot up his classmates, and I don't know what motivates the suicide bombers in Iraq to blow up their neighbors. But I do know that we have a duty to promote peace in this country and abroad. Imagine the impact that could be made if America lead an international campaign for peace instead of a war on terror. Imagine the goodwill we could generate if we diverted some of the $500 billion we've spent on war in recent years so that we could build hospitals, schools, and housing throughout the undeveloped world. Imagine the difference it might make if our leaders dropped some of the macho rhetoric and talked about service, duty and community responsibility? I know there will be much discussion in the next few days about gun control and mental health counseling and legislation, and I welcome that conversation. But we should also ask ourselves about the world we've created and what each of us can do to make it better and more peaceful. The Virginia shooting was shocking, in part, because it was so unusual. Unlike the Iraqis, we're not accustomed to seeing such large-scale violence on a regular basis. Or, more precisely, we're not accustomed to seeing it here in the United States, because clearly we know it's happening in Iraq. But what if it happened here everyday? That might be the tragic catalyst that would finally inspire us to do something positive and constructive about the violence in our country and the rest of the world. It would be tempting to point to the shooter in Blacksburg and isolate him as the problem. But the problem and the solution don't lie outside of us. They answers are within. -- Original Source: keithboykin.com http://www.keithboykin.com/arch/2007/04/17/what_if_it_happ Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 1.0.
The violence on the campus at Virginia Tech draws attention to the emergency procedures and prevention tactics at the University Matt Dickey and Catherine Conkle, Cavalier Daily Associate Editors Days after students at Virginia Tech struggled to defend themselves in the face of the deadliest shooting spree in U.S. history, students at the University can't help but ask a simple, unanswerable question: what if it happened here? According to University officials, who say they are admittedly shaken by Monday's shootings, procedures are in place to deal with similar situations on Grounds. Yet administrators now take on the difficult task of reevaluating safety measures and finding ways to prevent an event like this from happening at the University. U.Va. responds in the aftermath In addition to helping Virginia Tech by offering security and psychological services to Virginia Tech, the University has also steps taken to ensure security on Grounds. "We have done several things in response to the Tech incident," said Susan Harris, assistant to the executive vice president and chief operating officer. "We yesterday increased the number of police officers patrolling ... Grounds and put police and security on high alert for anything suspicious." Although University administrators did consider canceling classes Monday, the administration decided that security concerns did not call for cancellation. "We did not see any increased security risk at U.Va. that would warrant [cancellation of classes] for security reasons," Harris said. Harris also said administrators felt that classes could provide and outlet for students to deal with emotional reactions to the shootings. "Being in class and discussing this with faculty members was a very effective way of dealing with and processing this kind of incident," she said. University spokesperson Carol Wood echoed this sentiment. "Class offers a safe environment where students could come together to talk if they needed," Wood said, adding that if they had canceled class, "students who needed to talk might be isolated." Vice President for Student Affairs Pat Lampkin said while classes will continue, the University will make accommodations for students affected by the tragedy. "We considered how to respond for our students' and community's well-being," Lampkin said. "We did decide to go on with class but to be liberal with those who have a direct connection or are tied closely with Virginia Tech." Emergency response plans As many students struggled to cope with the tragedy, many wondered how University administrators would have dealt with a similar incident on Grounds. Although he would not comment on specific emergency response preparations for possible emergency incidents, University Police Capt. Michael Coleman said the department is ready to respond to a variety of emergency incidents including everything from hurricanes to plane crashes. Coleman also said the University police's emergency response system is integrated with those of the City of Charlottesville and Albemarle County through the Incident Command System to provide for a coordinated response. "The Incident Command System is a management system that is being formulated by the U.S. government," Coleman said. "Those systems allow us to integrate with local departments ... to proceed with better coordination of activities." He added that the officers of the three departments have been trained in using the system and are familiar with it through its use at events at John Paul Jones Arena and football games. According to Coleman, the University police department will consider the events at Tech when reviewing the safety plans of the University. "We have a very good relationship with Virginia Tech and we also work with other colleges in the state," Coleman said. "When Virginia Tech has the time to provide the information then we will sit down and try to incorporate the lessons into our own plan. We will take all information and see if any of it is beneficial for the University of Virginia's safety plans." Harris said the event also will be carefully considered as administrators review emergency plans at the University. "There is no question that [with] this incident, just as with any other incident, we will try to learn from it and adjust our policies and procedures to try to improve them," Harris said. Coleman added that his department continuously reviews safety plans independent of the incident at Tech. "We evaluate and reevaluate all of our plans based on the experience of the University of Virginia, based on technological advances, and based on changes in the facilities ... and we do it based on the experiences of other locations," Coleman said. "Even without this particular incident at Tech, we are constantly involved in reviewing safety plans. Certainly we will continue to make those reviews. But it is a constant." Wood said the University is now considering a crisis management director whose job would be to work with the city and county to oversee the University's coordinated response procedure for emergency situations. Emergency warning systems In his speech to the University community at last night's vigil, Casteen stressed the importance of effective "instantaneous" warning systems in case of emergency. Wood echoed Casteen's message. "We want to use everything at your finger tips — anything you can to get in touch with students and faculty," she said. Current emergency warning systems at the University include e-mail, postings on the University homepage, telephone communication and radio and television announcements. "Over the past number of years, we've used the homepage as a place to alert students in a crisis," Wood said. "We're trying to train people that that's the place to go." Wood added that the top bar of the University home page would turn red in the event of a crisis. In case of a Web site crash, they have plans for an "alternative server for basic information." Although the University was already in the process of updating its warning system, the shooting at Virginia Tech has given the matter a renewed sense of urgency. Planned updates scheduled to be implemented by next fall include the ability to send emergency text messages to cell phones and personal digital assistants (PDAs) registered with the University. The desktops of University computers would also display emergency information. Harris said because of the incident at Virginia Tech, the University hopes to implement some improvements, such as text message alerts, before the fall. Wood said additional plans include a new pilot program to place large flat-screen monitors around the University in areas such as Newcomb Hall and recreational facilities. "We would get the message out on the flat-screens placed in high usage areas," Wood said. "The flat screens would normally be used for advertising or whatever that building or department wants, but the University would be able to override with an emergency message." Wood also cited a system recently acquired in collaboration with local government titled "reverse 911." "It gives us the ability to target and mass phone-mail people with information," Wood said. "We could tell students with voicemail 'Don't come to class — something has happened.'" Psychological support services In the event of a crisis, Counseling and Psychological Services at the University would play a major role in providing psychological assistance to students. CAPS Director Dr. Russ Federman described how the office would respond. -- Original Source:The Cavalier Daily - April 18, 2007
Virginia Tech tragedy causes campus safety issues to surface at AU By Bethany Kirby Assistant State & Local Editor One question has probably crossed every college student's mind in the last three days. What if it had happened to us? It's a valid question. Virginia Tech, which lies in the heart of the college town of Blacksburg, Va., is similar to Auburn in both size and spirit. Cho Seung-Hui, who was identified as the gunman in Monday's Virginia Tech massacre, took the lives of 32 of his fellow students before taking his own. It has sent universities across the country into a heightened state of awareness about their own preparedness for extreme incidents. "Auburn University has a comprehensive emergency response plan that is practiced frequently," said Christine Eick, director of risk management and safety. "The University has really put a lot of resources into our emergency management and planning," Eick said. "It is something we take very seriously." The University has periodic drills in training for emergency situations. Eick said this develops the communication between the University and the emergency response teams such as the FBI, the Auburn Police Division, the Opelika Police Department, the Lee County Sheriff's Office and the Alabama State Troopers. Eick said the drills include practice in a variety of possible scenarios, so the teams will have a good framework for any type of emergency. "We have actually planned and drilled on persons with weapons," Eick said. Although the most recent drill was different than the situation at Virginia Tech, Eick said it was actually conducted on a larger scale. "It's pretty hard to give out reassurances at this time, because it was a horrific event," Eick said. But she emphasized that for Auburn, emergency management and response is a priority. Capt. Tom Stofer of the Auburn Police Division said there is a school crisis plan for situations like this one in Auburn. "It just basically gives us our protocol to respond to any crisis on any campus," Stofer said. This includes the University, high schools, middle schools and elementary schools. "It covers all type of emergency situations, both natural and man-made," Stofer said. Stofer said it is hard to say exactly what would happen with an incident like this in Auburn. "Every situation is unique in and of itself," Stofer said. "Every situation would demand a response that's unique in and of itself." Stofer said that if another shooting happened tomorrow, it would be different than the one on Monday. "Every situation is different," Stofer said. "Hopefully those agencies that respond ... have the training and flexibility to make wise decisions. Time will tell what things could have been done better." Jamie Duff, a junior in human development and family studies, is from Williamsburg, Va., and many of her friends are students at Virginia Tech. "It's reality — those are my friends," Duff said. "I have a connection with them." Because she knows people closely involved, Duff said it is as real to her as if it had happened at Auburn. Duff said she can't help but compare Virginia Tech and Auburn University — the two schools are similar in size, and the town of Blacksburg is a small college town much like Auburn. "It has the same feeling," Duff said of the similar atmosphere among students at Virginia Tech. "People are questioning why, needing something to blame," Duff said. "People want to place blame on something. "And I think some people right now are looking more at the blaming than the feelings of the people involved. We don't need to turn that into anger yet." -- Original Source: Auburn Plainsman - April 18, 2007
What May Come: Asian Americans and the Virginia Tech Shootings
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 some of us might succumb to the Orientalist logic of the media by eagerly promoting Asian Americans as real Americans and therefore unlike Asians overseas who presumably engage in culturally reprehensible behavior. In other words, if we get to talk at all, Asian Americans will be expected to interpret, explain, and distance themselves from other Asians just to get airtime. Or perhaps the media will take the color-blind approach instead of a strictly eugenic one. The media might try to whitewash the situation and treat Cho as just another alienated middle-class suburban kid. In some ways this is already happening—hence the constant referrals to the proximity of the shootings to the 8th anniversary of the Columbine killings. The media will repeat over and over words from a letter that Cho left behind speaking of "rich kids," and "deceitful charlatans." They will ask what's going on in middle-class communities that encourage this type of violence. In the process they may never talk about the dirty little secret about middle-class assimilation: for non-whites, it does not always prevent racial alienation, rage, or depression. This may be surprising given that we are bombarded with constant images suggesting that racial harmony will exist once we are all middle-class. But for many of us who have achieved middle-class life, even if we may not openly admit it, alienation does not stop if you are not white. But the white media, being as tricky as it is, may probably talk about Cho in ways that reflect a combination of both traditional eugenic and colorblind approaches. They will emphasize Cho's ethnicity and economic background by wondering what would set off a hard-working, quiet, South Korean immigrant from a middle-class dry-cleaner- owning family. They will wonder why Cho would commit such acts of violence, which we expect from Middle Easterners and Muslims and those crazy Asians from overseas, but not from hard-working South Korean immigrants. They will promote Cho as "the model minority" who suddenly, for no reason, went crazy. Whereas eugenic approaches depicting Asians as crazy kamikazes or Viet Cong mercenaries emphasize Asian violence, the eugenic aspect of the model minority myth suggests that there is something about Asian Americans that makes them less prone to expressions of anger, rage, violence, or criminality. Indeed, we are not even seen as having legitimate reasons to have anger, let alone rage, hence the need to figure out what made this "quiet" student "snap." Given that the model minority myth is a white racist invention that elevates Asians over minority groups, Cho will be dissected as an anomaly among South Koreans who "are not prone" to violence—unlike Blacks who are racistly viewed as inherently violent or South Asians, Middle Easterners and Muslims who are viewed as potential terrorists. He will be talked about as acting "out of character" from the other "good South Koreans" who come here and quietly and dutifully work towards the American dream. Operating behind the scenes of course is a diplomatic relationship between the US and South Korea forged through bombs and military zones during the Korean War and expressed through the new free trade agreement negotiations between the countries. Indeed, even as South Korean diplomats express concern about racial backlash against Asians, they are quick to disown Cho in order to maintain the image of the respectable South Korean. Whatever happens, Cho will become whoever the white media wants him to be and for whatever political platform it and legislators want to push. In the process, Asian Americans will, like other non-whites, be picked apart, dissected, and theorized by whites. As such, this is no different than any other day for Asian Americans. Only this time an Asian face will be on every television screen, internet search engine, and newspaper. Tamara K. Nopper is an educator, writer, and activist living in Philadelphia. She is currently finishing her PhD program in sociology at Temple University and is a volunteer with the Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors, an anti-war and counter-military recruitment organization (http://www.objector.org). She can be reached at tnopper@yahoo.com e-mail:: tnopper@yahoo.com Homepage:: http://www.objector.org -- Original Source: Philadelphia Independent Media Center http://www.phillyimc.org/en/2007/04/38736.shtml Free for non-commercial reuse, reprint, and rebroadcast, on the net and elsewhere.
Free for non-commercial reuse, reprint, and rebroadcast, on the net and elsewhere.
As the days go on and we go on with them we recollect what we try in ways to forget that what happened was anger within one that killed a son with no battle won. A daughter that died that is remembered by parents that cried. A nation that sighed that realized it could happen anywhere as much as we try not to touch, the rationality of such a act that is now a fact. We can not understand what this man could not stand and thus many fell and this man's story was told by his bold actions of maddness in rage and broken out in a fury from his cage. Now we all must pray for those that our lost, and with each tear we feel the cost for a single man's fury being tossed over a day that will stay with us forever....As do the memories of those who look down from above at us below and echo their face..that we will never erase. We are all the same. Let love live. CMD.
By Dr. Thomas Parham In the wake of the tragic events that occurred at Virginia Tech University, many in our community will be forced to wrestle with and confront some tough questions and concerns. Our hearts and prayers go out to the victims and families, as well as the broader campus community. No amount of planning and preparation can ever truly prepare one for the events that unfolded on April 16, and yet our thoughts cannot resist the tendency to delve into spaces that invite critical reflection and analysis about our own vulnerability to such a tragedy within the borders of this campus. Times like these challenge our individual and collective sensibilities as we seek to desperately cling to notions of life that are far more predictable, less scary and less unsettling. Our designs for living and patterns for interpreting reality have been shaken by this single act of horrific proportion, which dislodges us from our comfortable spaces of intellectual, emotional, behavioral and even spiritual comfort. As people struggle to cope with this horrific tragedy, it is likely that some will experience a broad range of emotional reactions, including anxiety, confusion, depression, insecurity, anger, resentment, sadness, vulnerability and fear. Some may experience difficulty sleeping, eating or concentrating on their studies. These feelings are normal and reasonable, and consistent with what mental health professionals predict. Over time, these feelings will diminish for most people. We want each member of our community to know that we are here for you in ways that ensure, to the best of our ability, your safety, as well as address your emotional and psychological well-being in this time of extreme distress. In recalling the incidents of last week, I want to invite each of you to resist the temptation to espouse what could or should have been done. Hindsight is always 20/20, and none of us really knows what it was like in the moments surrounding the tragedy. What I do want to encourage and provide is an invitation to explore the implications of this tragedy for our own UC Irvine campus and the psychological resources that are available to assist us, should some incident darken our door. First, no one can predict with absolute certainty if or when such a tragedy might occur or when individuals, whether reacting to normal life stressors or challenged to cope with some level of mental illness, are likely to erupt. We have little, if any, control over these events that so impact our lives. Fortunately, incidents like Virginia Tech or Columbine are relatively infrequent and it is important to remind ourselves that order is much more frequent than disorder and tragedy, and our blessings in life far outweigh our trials and tribulations. What we do control is how we manage our own spaces, and how we access and/or refer individuals to the resources that can help them better cope with personal or life challenges, particularly in times of moderate or severe distress. The UCI campus is blessed with a full array of mental and physical health and wellness services. The Counseling Center provides a broad range of mental health treatment that can deliver individual and group counseling and therapy, walk-in and triage coverage, consultation, psycho-educational workshops and training, and crisis intervention. Our Student Health Mental Health Clinic, in addition to the psychological interventions listed below, also delivers psychiatric assessment, pharmacotherapy and consultation. Our campus also boasts a Health Education Center that provides important information on healthy lifestyle support that can be useful in managing or coping with a tragic circumstance. Please encourage students to take advantage of these services. If you experience any of these symptoms or would just like someone to talk to, we invite you to contact the Counseling Center at (949) 824-6457 or the Student Health Mental Health Clinic at (949) 824-1835. For staff or faculty, we invite you to contact the Faculty Staff Counseling Center at (949) 824-8355. Do not be reticent about discussing emergency planning and personal-safety scenarios with your family, roommates and friends. Determine how you will communicate and plan for how you will physically reconnect. Having these plans will provide a focus for stepping through tragic circumstances and help to lessen our concerns about the unknown. UCI's Environmental Health and Safety Web site can walk you through this type of planning. We also control how we interact with colleagues and friends, and our ability to leave those interactions having helped create a positive space where people feel comfortable, cared about and affirmed for having been with us. A smile, or an encouraging word, goes a long way toward making someone's day. In addition to the tone of the conversation, we also control the quality of the interaction. How many times a day, in our interactions with friends and colleagues, do we fail to engage people in more genuine and authentic conversations? People respond to our queries about how they are doing with canned, almost robotic answers that suggest they are "fine." And yet, behind many of their replies is a staff, faculty colleague or student friend whose smile masks a deeper pain or hurt, or maybe just a hint of discomfort. You can make a difference in their lives by simply slowing down the questioning enough to get an honest and legitimate answer. If they are experiencing any distress, please refer them to a professional for help and assistance. Central to our campus values articulated so well by Chancellor Michael Drake is the value of empathy. Let us use this occasion to empathize with the victims, families, students and colleagues in Virginia and pray that their healing will be swift. Let us also allow these circumstances to remind us to engage each person in this UCI campus community with a level of compassion and caring that illustrates their importance to our university family. Thomas A. Parham is the assistant vice chancellor of counseling and health services and the director of the Counseling Center.
By: Jason Javie Posted: 4/20/07 The Virginia Tech tragedy will continue to resonate for some time to come, and rightly so. Many questions surrounding last Monday's events are yet to be answered, and must be in order for the grieving victims and families to move on from the horror that was April 16th, 2007. To be fair, there has been no official statement concretely outlining the events of that fateful Monday morning, although what has been pieced together speaks to a rather shabbily-handled situation. Why was there a delay in the excess of two hours following the first incident before students were notified? Why had President Charles Stegler not declared a campus-wide emergency and locked the school down? Why were students in the classrooms at Norris Hall at 9:10 a.m. trying to make sense of a vague e-mail informing them of the shooting? The only precautionary measure taken by the campus security apparatus prior to 9 a.m. was to lock down the site of the first incident. Shortly after, an e-mail was sent advising the University community of the incident, recommending caution, and instructing them to contact police with any information. Less than one hour later, the gunman reemerged to massacre 30 people in a nearby classroom. One cannot help but ponder if, had more decisive initiatives been taken, many of the deaths and injuries could have been preventable. Freak tragedy, yes-unmanageable, no. As the president of Virginia Tech, Mr. Stegler is responsible for the safety of students during emergencies. In the words of Dr. Sharon Javie, former professor of Marketing at LaSalle University, "It is unconscionable that [Stegler] did not lock the campus down after the first two students were shot. You either apprehend the suspect, or you shut the campus down." I can't say I disagree. While impossible to predict the first shootings, Mr. Stegler has indicated that he thought the first killings were simply the result of a domestic dispute and that the gunman had fled campus. Even so, it's better to err on the side of safety. Mr. Stegler gambled with the safety and well-being of his students and lost miserably. Dr. William Dunkleberg, former Dean of the Fox School of Business at Temple University and professor of Economics, explained the sensitivity of the issue. "Your first response in such a situation is that it's personal and isolated. It is highly unlikely that what occurred is actually the beginning of a killing spree. You're faced with a dilemma." A dilemma, indeed, but if locking down the campus could ultimately save lives, I doubt many would complain. Also unnerving is the lack of mechanisms in place at schools to identify individuals like Cho Seung-Hui and get them help before they act out. Described as an introvert, Cho shocked his fellow students and English professor with disturbing and violent plays written for a class, now posted on aol.com. Issues of free speech and confidentiality would conflict with such systems, but shouldn't there be a point where the line is drawn? -- Original Source:The Miami Hurricane - April 20, 2007
by J Lee | April 19, 2007 When I was growing up in the 80s, it often seemed that the world was holding its breath, keeping its fingers crossed to prevent some sort of nuclear disaster. The apocalypse that I imagined then had to do with the world going up in a mushroom cloud, because of polarization along national and political lines. But this next generation's experiences (as E Wesp pointed out in his comment) have been punctuated by violence of a different type, enacted by one or a few individuals and relatively low technology. I want to pick up a few threads of conversation, starting with the comment by ms which addresses the idea of narrative and also points out that we have started this conversation with race. In our discussion and in many of the blog comments I have been reading on this side of the world, the use of the label "Korean" has been hotly debated, some arguing that the shooter's ethnicity may offer clues to his motivations, others charging that to invoke the term is racist. I am curious about how this label "Korean" gets deployed and what meaning it has. In other words, does it matter that he was Korean? What are the conditions under which someone's ethnicity becomes "visible" and how it gets worked into the stories we tell about why something happened, about who is responsible, and about our emotional relationships to the subject? In a basic way, the label "Korean" subverts the popular stereotype of the angry white middle class male shooter. It provides a potentially different kind of explanatory factor, complicating questions about Cho's mental health, his upbringing, ideas about the expression of masculine anger, etc. What I find interesting from our own discussion as well as other articles is how minorities have reacted. Personally, I heard "Korean," "parents own a dry-cleaning business," "sister at Princeton," and "Centreville, VA" and unconsciously began constructing my own narrative of Cho's life, filling in the blanks with my own experiences growing up not far from Centreville (in a similar kind of suburb) and the experiences of friends. Parents sacrifice themselves for their children's education, teaching their kids to value educational success above all other types and in doing so lower their own status in their children's eyes. Cultural divides open between the generations. The children don't quite fit into mainstream American life but have lost touch with and respect for their parents' culture. The alienation I imagine him to have felt confirms and strengthens my sense of my own alienation and my distance from what I see as the cultural center (however imaginary that notion of a cultural center may be). And on and on... In trying to understand his actions I construct for him an entirely fictitious reality which makes me feel (as he has become an extension of myself, my brothers, my sons, etc.) empathetic, invested, responsible, and guilty about the whole thing. I think there's a certain extent to which these incidents become cautionary tales to support our individual and cultural fears: video games inducing violence, fears about repressed male emotion, xenophobia, education without moral center, etc. We all explain the world in the terms we understand, I suppose. But, for the more difficult task... how does the label of "Korean" function on a cultural level, particularly here in Korea? This is a hard question to address, and I am a little hesitant to try to answer it, to (by virtue of having my little soapbox and being in Korea) seem like I have the answers. But, as E Hayot says (sorry to quote you here, E) "pontificating wildly about stuff you barely understand is what the internet is all about!" So here goes, my attempt to create context for you all out there. Kids, don't try this at home. Why the ownership of this man as Korean by those here in Korea? Why not the urge to dismiss him as Americanized, or as a deranged individual, why the urge to place him within the boundaries of the label "Korean"? I'll throw out three contexts here. Context 1: Koreans abroad (read: anyone with Korean blood), on the international stage, function in the popular imagination here in Korea in a way that Americans may find surprising. The average American probably doesn't know who Park Chan-ho, Hines Ward, Hwang Woo Suk, or Ban Ki-moon are, but they are important figures in the public imagination here, evidence of Korea's place in the global order, for better or for worse. I was in the bookstore a few months ago, shortly after Ban Ki-moon was named the new UN Secretary General, and there was already a biography of him written for children, using his life as an inspirational example of what kids could achieve. Where does this mentality come from? From a genre of history writing in which Korea is the passive victim of stronger foreign powers (China, Japan, the U.S.)? From some Park Chung-hee era idea of self-reliance? From some notion of the purity and homogeneity of Korean culture and language? From media which constantly rate Korea's performance in any number of arenas to other world powers? From the strength of the notion of blood? From a sense of social responsibility? Context 2: The educational system here is under a lot of fire for various reasons which I won't go into. Many parents feel they have no option but to send their kids abroad, often alone or with only one parent. There has been a lot of discussion recently on the various pressures these families and kids have to face at a young age. Cho came to the U.S. in elementary school, with both his parents. Any speculation about the pressures on him as a foreigner, on difficulties adapting to life in the U.S., and about the potential reasons for his mental breakdown and feelings of alienation are going to flow towards the grooves already cut by the larger social worry about educational pressures and the education diaspora. Context 3: I think the fear of reprisals against Koreans and Korean-Americans in the U.S. has to be read against the incidents of U.S. military personnel violence against Koreans in Korea. Every time a U.S. soldier is involved in an act of violence (rape, murder) there are protests and reprisals here (not widespread, from my experience, but I don't live near the army base). When an English teacher is caught using drugs or sexually assaulting a student, it is big news here, followed by calls for more regulation of foreign teachers. I think there's a kind of logic that is created by the way these cases have been treated here that would shape the expectation of what will happen to Koreans in the U.S. Thus Koreans may imagine, consciously or subconsciously, that Americans will similarly judge/ demand/protest against Koreans as Koreans do against Americans, if not in action then in belief and idea. When it comes down to it, we have to accept that something about Cho was an aberration, an anomaly; we have to talk about his mental health. Mental health itself is, I think, inseparable from environment and personal history, but the fact is that very few people ever do something this horrendous. But an act like this, like the boogeyman in the closet, has a way of heightening and illuminating our fears and discomforts. And, to go back to the question ms asked: What kind of story will we make him a part of? And how does the label "Korean" play into that story? -- Original Source: http://www.printculture.com/index.php?itemid=1365 Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0.
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0
When massacres are normal: guns and Virginia Tech
You are contributing your stories and/or files to The April 16 Archive, which is developing a permanent digital record of the events surrounding the tragedy on the Virginia Tech campus on April 16, 2007. Your participation in this project will allow future researchers, and people such as yourself, to gain a greater understanding of these events and the responses to them.
When tragedy is for sale, it isn’t tragic enough
Issue Date:Tuesday April 17, 2007 Section: Editorial Section Ry Rivard, City Editor By the end of the Monday it was obvious that the media had begun selling the day's horrors at Virginia Tech. No matter the gravity or magnitude of a tragedy, this country's commentators veer from events as they are, in and of themselves horrible, to a decontextualized, surreal account of things so they can be sold to and consumed by us. The shooting - the deadliest shooting in American history - quickly became, for some people, another chance to make various political points. It became, by the time Wolf Blitzer's show aired, a sort of tragic-porn, a way for the media to provoke rather than inform. Commentators tried to politicize it, politicians tried to comment on it, the news channels tried to heighten the drama with their usual parade of loud music and epic comparisons, "This is worse than ... " or "This is the biggest ... " Was what happened not enough in and of itself? Glenn Reynolds, law professor at University of Tennessee, quickly posted a 52-page paper on his popular Weblog arguing that the best way to prevent shootings like Monday's is to permit concealed handguns. It was the day's most academic approach to the event, but it was also one of the most callous. Written by two economists, the paper concluded that "the only policy factor to influence multiple victim public shootings is the passage of concealed handgun laws." Reynolds and several others who followed his lead took the deaths of 33 students to advance an agenda which, although done in an attempt to stop such events in the future, made them into a policy argument. Similarly, the Drudge Report, a conservative news site, dragged out a fourth-month old story from Roanoke Times about failed piece of legislation that would have permitted concealed handguns. It reported, "Virginia Tech spokesman Larry Hincker was happy to hear the bill was defeated. 'I'm sure the university community is appreciative of the General Assembly's actions because this will help parents, students, faculty and visitors feel safe on our campus.'" The point was: if students hadn't had to wait for the police to arrive, Monday's shootings would have been an incident and not a tragedy. The effect of their ill-made point was that gun control advocates were somehow responsible for the shooting. In response, the Huffington Post highlighted a story that the White House affirmed the "president believes that there is a right for people to bear arms." Their point: if only there had been a law against carrying weapons (and there is - VT's handbook doesn't permit guns on campus), this wouldn't have happened. The effect of that point was that somehow the Second Amendment or the Bush Administration was responsible for the shooting. The politicians, meanwhile, all took care to come out and say how horrible the events were. Perhaps they thought if they didn't grandstand on TV with their condolences, someone might mistake their silence for support? The news channels proved again that constant, breathless coverage undermines the fundamental tragedy, horror and fact of an event. CNN escalated its description of the shootings from "monumental" to a "rampage" to a "massacre," to a "bloodbath," as if their appellations signified anything but their desire to sell the story. By Monday evening, each station had begun saying as often as possible how tragic the obvious tragedy was, and how horrible the horror was - and at the same time they plugged their own brand: "Stay tuned to us for ... " For what? For whatever scarce news they could pry from any student on the VT campus they could pull aside and, occasionally, attempt to provoke into more tears with probing, useless questions. CNN kept mentioning their "I Reporters," which is their way of saying "people who sent us pictures from their cell phones." If the media's reaction Monday was a sign of the American psyche, we are a country that cannot understand an event outside of a political framework, and we are a country that cannot understand an event as it is. There were two terrible but - compared to the media's carnival barker commentary - honest accounts from Monday. The first was cell phone video footage taken outside the building of the shootings that captured the sounds of 27 shots being fired, presumably into somebody. It was replayed and replayed and, after a while, it became a selling point for CNN rather than a way to describe the day's events. The second account, reminiscent of Sept. 11, came from a student who told ABC News, "Everyone started panicking and jumping out the window." But there is nothing anyone can say that makes it make sense, so, from Lord Byron: And thou art dead, as young and fair As aught of mortal birth; And form so soft, and charms so rare, Too soon return'd to Earth! Though Earth receiv'd them in her bed, And o'er the spot the crowd may tread In carelessness or mirth, There is an eye which could not brook A moment on that grave to look. -- Original Source: The Daily Athenaeum http://www.da.wvu.edu/show_article.php?&story_id=27550
Sometimes I can be really eloquent. Giving a toast at a wedding, a briefing at work; I can really hit the post. I've been wanting to write about how I feel here for two days. But I haven't, stopped by disbelief, the taxes I couldn't bring myself to finish on Monday, and the belief that I wouldn't adequately be able to put together words to explain what Blacksburg and Tech have meant to me. That picture, http://farm1.static.flickr.com/5/6929893_3276db6dfb_m.jpg, is of a couple of my old room mates Jeff (in glasses) and Donnie tailgating at the Tech - USC game in August of 2004. I graduated from Virginia Tech in 1986, with a Bachelor of Arts in International Studies. 20 plus years later, we are still close friends. Probably closer than we were in school. We vacation together, are godparents to each others kids, and watch football obviously. Blacksburg is a special place. When you're there, you might not realize how special. It's beautiful, peaceful and even knows how to have a good time. I have idyllic (and therefore heavily filtered) memories of my time at school. I think that's why all of my old room mates and I are still such good friends. When you leave Blacksburg, you realize that the real world isn't so beatiful, isn't so peaceful, isn't so special. And you reach out and hold on to whatever can give you a little of that Blacksburg feeling again. After 20 years you'll still see most of the alumni I know dressed pretty much like the kids you've been watching on TV this week. Virginia Tech Sweatshirts and Hats are ubiguitous. Returning to Blacksburg, was to drink in that atmosphere, to rejuvenate the energy that the real world has sapped from you. Coming around the 460 bypass and seeing the mountains rise up beyond campus elated me. A burger at Mike's, a pitcher at Hokie House, a walk across campus returned me to the man of my youth. And now that bastard has let so much of the real world into Blacksburg, where it doesn't belong and isn't welcome. It's amazing the lasting ties that we have to Tech. One old college friend is an agronomy professor there now. I spent Monday morning exchanging emails with him as he was locked in his office. Today I can't help but think about all the students that I met at his tailgate last Fall. Jeff, I'm sure, knew Dr. Librescu. Three or four of the victims so far have been international studies majors. The statistical improbability of that I can't explain. I graduated in a class of 6,000 with only 12 other international studies majors. Soon the news vans will leave, hopefully the TV movie vans won't come right behind them, and we can all hope that the ugliness of the real world ebbs back out of town. God bless the victims, the heroes, the students, everyone. Ut Prosim. posted by Paulie @ 07:02 April 18, 2007 Permalink: http://paultrumble.blogspot.com/2007/04/where-do-we-go-now-sometimes-i-can-be.html
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 strapped to a body board, medical workers refused to give me pain medication because they needed my response. The doctor kept probing, moving my limbs, asking, "Does this hurt? Do you feel that?" The correct answer, the answer both he and I desperately wanted, was, "Yes. It hurts. I can feel it." Each sensation gave proof that my spinal cord had not been severed. Pain offered proof of life, of connection—a sign that my body remained whole. Love and Pain In grief, love and pain converge. Cho felt no grief as he gunned down your classmates because he felt no love for them. You feel grief because you did have a connection. Some of you had closer ties to the victims, but all of you belong to a body to which they too belonged. When that body suffers, you suffer. Remember that as you cope with the pain. Don't try to numb it. Instead, acknowledge it as a perception of life and of love. Medical students will tell you that in a deep wound, two kinds of tissue must heal: the connective tissue beneath the surface and the outer, protective layer of skin. If the protective tissue heals too quickly, the connective tissue will not heal properly, leading to complications later on. The reason this church and other ministries on campus offer counseling and hold services like this one is to help the deep, connective tissue heal. Only later will the protective layer of tissue grow back in the form of a scar. We gather here as Christians, and as such we aspire to follow a man who came from God 2,000 years ago. Read through the Gospels, and you'll find only one scene in which someone addresses Jesus directly as God: "My Lord and my God!" Do you know who said that? It was doubting Thomas, the disciple stuck in grief, the last holdout against believing the incredible news of the Resurrection. In a tender scene, Jesus appeared to Thomas in his newly transformed body, obliterating Thomas's doubts. What prompted that outburst of belief, however—"My Lord and my God!"—was the presence of Jesus' scars. "Feel my hands," Jesus told him. "Touch my side." In a flash of revelation, Thomas saw the wonder of Almighty God, the Lord of the universe, stooping to take on our pain. God doesn't exempt even himself from pain. God joined us and shared our human condition, including its great grief. Thomas recognized in that pattern the most foundational truth of the universe: that God is love. To love means to hurt, to grieve. Pain is a mark of life. The Jews, schooled in the Old Testament, had a saying: "Where Messiah is, there is no misery." After Jesus, you could change that saying to: "Where misery is, there is the Messiah." "Blessed are the poor," Jesus said, "and those who hunger and thirst, and those who mourn, and those who are persecuted." Jesus voluntarily embraced every one of these hurts. So where is God when it hurts? We know where God is because he came to earth and showed us his face. You need only follow Jesus around and note how he responded to the tragedies of his day: with compassion—which simply means "to suffer with"—and with comfort and healing. I would also like to answer the question why? Why this campus rather than Virginia Commonwealth or William and Mary? Why these 33 people? I cannot tell you, and I encourage you to resist anyone who offers a confident answer. God himself did not answer that question for Job, nor did Jesus answer why questions. We have hints, but no one knows the full answer. What we do know, with full confidence, is how God feels. We know how God looks on the campus of Virginia Tech right now because God gave us a face, a face that was streaked with tears. Where misery is, there is the Messiah. Not everyone will find that answer sufficient. When we hurt, sometimes we want revenge. We want a more decisive answer. Frederick Buechner said, "I am not the Almighty God, but if I were, maybe I would in mercy either heal the unutterable pain of the world or in mercy kick the world to pieces in its pain." God did neither. He sent Jesus. God joined our world in all its unutterable pain in order to set in motion a slower, less dramatic solution, one that involves us. One day a man said to me, "You wrote a book called Where Is God When It Hurts, right?" Yes. "Well, I don't have much time to read. Can you just answer that question for me in a sentence or two?" I thought for a second and said, "I guess I'd have to answer that with another question: 'Where is the church when it hurts?'" The eyes of the world are trained on this campus. You've seen satellite trucks parked around town, reporters prowling the grounds of your school. Last fall, I visited Amish country near the site of the Nickel Mines school shootings. As happened here, reporters from every major country swarmed the hills of Pennsylvania, looking for an angle. They came to report on evil and instead ended up reporting on the church. The Amish were not asking, "Where is God when it hurts?" They knew where God was. With their long history of persecution, the Amish weren't for a minute surprised by an outbreak of evil. They rallied together, embraced the killer's family, ministered to each other, and healed wounds by relying on a sense of community strengthened over centuries. Something similar has taken place here in Blacksburg. You have shown outrage against the evil deed, yes, but you've also shown sympathy and sadness for the family of the one who committed it. Cho, too, has a memorial on this campus. Life Matters The future lies ahead, and you're just awakening to the fact that you are an independent moral being. Until now, other people have been running your life. Your parents told you what to do and made decisions for you. Teachers ordered you around in grammar school, and the pattern continued in high school and even into college. You now inhabit a kind of halfway house on the way to adulthood, waiting for the real life of career and perhaps marriage and children to begin. What happened in Blacksburg on April 16 demonstrates beyond all doubt that your life—the decisions you make, the kind of person you are—matters now. There are 28 students and 5 faculty members who have no future in this world. That reality came starkly home to me nine weeks ago today when I was driving on a winding road in Colorado. Suddenly, I missed a curve and my Ford Explorer slipped off the pavement and started tumbling side to side at 60 miles per hour. An ambulance appeared, and I spent the next seven hours strapped to a body board, with duct tape across my head to keep it from moving. A cat scan showed that a vertebra high on my neck had been shattered, and sharp bone fragments were poking out next to a major artery. The hospital had a jet to fly me to Denver for emergency surgery. I had one arm free, with a cell phone and little battery time left. I spent those tense hours calling people close to me, knowing it might be the last time I would ever hear their voices. It was an odd sensation to lie there helpless, aware that though I was fully conscious, at any moment I could die. Samuel Johnson said when a man is about to be hanged, "it concentrates his mind wonderfully." When you're strapped to a body board after a serious accident, it concentrates the mind. When you survive a massacre at Virginia Tech, it concentrates the mind. I realized how much of my life focused on trivial things. During those seven hours, I didn't think about how many books I had sold or what kind of car I drove (it was being towed to a junkyard anyway). All that mattered boiled down to four questions. Whom do I love? Whom will I miss? What have I done with my life? And am I ready for what's next? Ever since that day, I've tried to live with those questions at the forefront. I would like to promise you a long, pain-free life, but I cannot. God has not promised us that. Rather, the Christian view of the world reduces everything to this formula: The world is good. The world has fallen. The world will be redeemed. Creation, the Fall, redemption—that's the Christian story in a nutshell. You know that the world is good. Look around you at the blaze of spring in the hills of Virginia. Look around you at the friends you love. Though overwhelmed with grief right now, you will learn to laugh again, to play again, to climb up mountains and kayak down rivers again, to love, to rear children. The world is good. You know, too, that the world has fallen. Here at Virginia Tech, you know that as acutely as anyone on this planet. I ask you also to trust that the world, your world, will be redeemed. This is not the world God wants or is satisfied with. God has promised a time when evil will be defeated, when events like the shootings at Nickel Mines and Columbine and Virginia Tech will come to an end. More, God has promised that even the scars we accumulate on this fallen planet will be redeemed, as Jesus demonstrated to Thomas. I once was part of a small group with a Christian leader whose name you would likely recognize. He went through a hard time as his adult children got into trouble, bringing him sleepless nights and expensive attorney fees. Worse, my friend was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. Nothing in his life seemed to work out. "I have no problem believing in a good God," he said to us one night. "My question is, 'What is God good for?'" We listened to his complaints and tried various responses, but he batted them all away. A few weeks later, I came across a little phrase by Dallas Willard: "For those who love God, nothing irredeemable can happen to you." I went back to my friend. "What about that?" I asked. "Is God good for that promise?" I would like to promise you an end to pain and grief, a guarantee that you will never again hurt as you hurt now. I cannot. I can, however, stand behind the promise that the apostle Paul made in Romans 8, that all things can be redeemed, can work together for your good. In another passage, Paul spells out some of the things he encountered, which included beatings, imprisonment, and shipwreck. As he looked back, he could see that somehow God had redeemed even those crisis events in his life. No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us," Paul concluded. "For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Rom. 8:37-39). God's love is the foundational truth of the universe. Clinging to Hope Trust a God who can redeem what now seems unredeemable. Ten days before the shootings on this campus, Christians around the world remembered the darkest day of human history, the day in which evil human beings violently rose up against God's Son and murdered the only truly innocent human being who has ever lived. We remember that day not as Dark Friday, Tragic Friday, or Disaster Friday—but rather as Good Friday. That awful day led to the salvation of the world and to Easter, an echo in advance of God's bright promise to make all things new. Honor the grief you feel. The pain is a way of honoring those who died, your friends and classmates and professors. It represents life and love. The pain will fade over time, but it will never fully disappear. Do not attempt healing alone. The real healing, of deep connective tissue, takes place in community. Where is God when it hurts? Where God's people are. Where misery is, there is the Messiah, and on this earth, the Messiah takes form in the shape of his church. That's what the body of Christ means. Finally, cling to the hope that nothing that happens, not even this terrible tragedy, is irredeemable. We serve a God who has vowed to make all things new. J. R. R. Tolkien once spoke of "joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief." You know well the poignancy of grief. As healing progresses, may you know, too, that joy, a foretaste of the world redeemed. Philip Yancey is a CT editor at large. Copyright © 2007 Christianity Today. -- Used by permission, Christianity Today 2007 Original Source: http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/june/14.55.html
Becky Custer, Editorial Coordinator (bcuster@christianitytoday.com)
A ceremony held on the first day of class after the tragedy in which one balloon is released for each victim. Original source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kevincupp/470150265/in/photostream/ Photo Courtesy of Kevin Cupp
Permission: Kevin Cupp http://www.flickr.com/photos/kevincupp/470150265/in/photostream/
Memorial stone of Nicole Regina White taken on 4/16/08. Photo by Brian Sewell. -- Original Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/briansewell/2419169347/in/set-72157604577382666/
Why I Participated in the One Day Blog Silence
I chose to participate in the One Day Blog Silence. There are much worse, but less publicized violence and prejudice daily, so I have spent the one day blog silence in honor of all victims of injustice around the world. The silence day was started to honor those who died at the Virginia Tech Massacre. Sadly, it has been the most controversial issue I have seen within the blogosphere. Why do we argue whether or not to participate? First of all, we all intend to honor those who were killed. Is it not possible to do so in our own ways, without having to argue what the best way is? I don't care in what way you do it, as long as you stand against injustice, I definitely agree with you. Further, some say that silence isn't the best way to honor the dead. First of all, what do you do at funerals? Your mourn, then you move on. Moreover, what action do you plan on taking? We can speak out; I've already posted about abolishing animosity. But further than that, we have little power to change much of the law, let alone drastically change other countries. So if you think of an alternative, that isn't too idealistic, I wish to take part. For the meantime do what you gotta do. In my case, I chose to share my thoughts and spend a day in silence. Man’s inability to live God’s words makes the Avatar’s teaching a mockery. Instead of practicing the compassion he taught, man has waged wars in his name. Instead of living the humility, purity, and truth of his words, man has given way to hatred, greed, and violence. Because man has been deaf to the principles and precepts laid down by God in the past, in this present Avataric form, I observe silence. - Silence Day Please understand my reasons for not speaking today. I am participating in the Day of Silence, a national youth movement protesting the silence faced by lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people and their allies in schools. My deliberate silence echoes that silence, which is caused by harassment, prejudice, and discrimination. I believe that ending the silence is the first step toward fighting these injustices. Think about the voices you are not hearing today. What are you going to do to end the silence? - Day of Silence Of course this is a hypocritical post. I am arguing that using Silence is not futile. But I am mainly doing this to defend why I personally chose to participate, and to explain why I don't think it is foolish. A secondary reason against the One Day Blog Silence is a claim that it is a scam. People do everything for money, much like what's happening to Relgion. However I don't think anyone would step that low to use the deaths of 30 students for personal gain. If there was someone, then there's really nothing we can do now. If this does turn out to be a scam, and that the website is redirected in the future, then whoever did this was incredibly stupid. People will know exactly where the links redirect to, and will most likely speak against that website. Just my thoughts. I don't want you to say that spending a day in silence was right. I would just like you to acknowledge that it wasn't wrong either. Do what you gotta do. I don't care in what way you do it, as long as you stand against injustice, I definitely agree with you. Posted by 2Perfect on 5/01/2007 12:10:00 AM -- Original Source: http://two-perfect.blogspot.com/2007/04/why-i-participated-in-one-day-blog.html Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 Canada.
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 Canada
EDITORIAL Published Apr 17, 2007 11:36 PM Yet another rampage has occurred at a school, this time leaving 33 people dead at Virginia Tech—the worst such incident ever at a U.S. college campus. The news media seem stunned and surprised, yet their coverage sounds so similar to the stories about Columbine eight years ago. They dwell on the personality of the young man the police say did the shooting, before killing himself. They talk about him being a "loner," depressed, perhaps angry at women. But aren't there lonely and depressed people all over the world? Many countries have high suicide rates. Why is it that here some become mass murderers? The U.S. is the world leader in seemingly random acts of violence by individuals. Why? President George W. Bush rushed to Virginia to speak at a large convocation the day after the killings and tried to set the tone for what could be said about them. "It's impossible to make sense of such violence and suffering," he said. Don't ask why, don't try to understand. It makes no sense. "Have faith" instead, was Bush's message. But there ARE reasons these things happen here, and they are pretty clear to the rest of the world. It's just in the United States that no one is supposed to talk about the reasons. What distinguishes this country from the rest of the world? It is neither the most affluent nor the poorest. It is neither the most secular nor the most religious. It is not the most culturally homogeneous nor is it the most diverse. But in one area, it stands virtually alone. It has the biggest arsenal of high-tech weaponry in the world, way surpassing every other country. It has military bases spread all over; most countries have no troops outside their borders. It is conducting two hot wars at the moment, in Iraq and Afghanistan, and has sent hundreds of thousands of troops abroad over the last few years. Every day, the public here is supposed to identify with soldiers who burst into homes in Baghdad, round up the people and take them away for "interrogation"—which everyone knows now can mean torture and indefinite detainment. It also sends heavily armed "special ops" on secret missions to countless other countries, like the ones who just facilitated the invasion and bombing of Somalia, or the ones who have been trying to stir up opposition in Iran. This is documented in the news media. The immense brutality of these colonial wars, as well as earlier ones, is praised from the White House on down as the best, the ONLY way to achieve what the political leaders and their influential, rich backers decide is necessary to protect their world empire. Do lots of people get killed? "Stuff happens," said former war secretary Donald Rumsfeld. "Collateral damage," says the Pentagon. At home, the U.S. has the highest rate of incarceration in the world. Over 2 million people are locked up in the prison system each year, most of them people of color. When commercial armed security guards are also taken into consideration, the U.S. has millions of employees who use guns and other coercive paraphernalia in their jobs. In the final analysis, the military and the police—the "armed bodies of men," as Marxists used to define them before women were added to their ranks—exist to perpetuate and protect this present unjust system of capitalist inequality, where a few can claim personal ownership over a vast economy built by the sweat and blood of hundreds of millions of workers. And the more divided, the more polarized the society becomes, the higher the level of coercion and violence. Assault weapons are now everywhere in this society, as are Tasers, handcuffs, clubs and tear gas. They most often start out in the hands of the police, the military and other agents of the state, and can then turn up anywhere. Violence is a big money maker in the mass culture. Television, films, pulp novels, Internet sites, video games—all dwell on "sociopaths" while glorifying the state's use of violence, often supplemented by a lone vigilante. By the time children reach their teens, they have already seen thousands of murders and killings on television. And these days even more suspense is added in countless programs that involve stalking and terror against women—and increasingly children. As the Duke rape case and so many "escort service" ads show, women of color are particularly subject to exploitation and have little recourse to any justice. And as the murders along the border show, immigrants of color are fair game for racist killers. The social soil of capitalism can alienate and enrage an unstable and miserable person who should be getting help but can't find it. If, as reports are saying, the young man accused of these killings was on anti-depressant medication, it is all the more evidence that, at a time when hospitals are closing and health care is unavailable for tens of millions, treating mental health problems requires more from society than just prescribing dubious chemicals. Many liberal commentators are taking this occasion to renew the demand for tougher gun laws. Yes, assault weapons are horrible, but so are bunker buster bombs, helicopters that fire thousands of rounds a minute, and the ultimate—nuclear weapons. Disarming the people is not the answer, especially when the capitalist state is armed to the teeth and uses brutality and coercion daily. The best antidote to these tragedies is to build a movement for profound social change, for replacing capitalism with socialism, so that people's energies can be directed at solving the great problems depressing so much of humanity today, whether they be wars or global climate change or the loneliness of the dog-eat-dog society. -- Copyright 1995-2007 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved. Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011 Email: ww@workers.org Subscribe wwnews-subscribe@workersworld.net Support independent news http://www.workers.org/orders/donate.php -- Original Source: http://www.workers.org/2007/editorials/virginia-tech-0426/
Copyright 1995-2007 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.
A Statement from the International Action Center Yet another rampage has occurred at a school, this time leaving 33 people dead at Virginia Tech-the worst such incident ever at a U.S. college campus. The news media seem stunned and surprised, yet their coverage sounds so similar to the stories about Columbine eight years ago. They dwell on the personality of the young man the police say did the shooting, before killing himself. They talk about him being a "loner," depressed, perhaps angry at women. But aren't there lonely and depressed people all over the world? Many countries have high suicide rates. Why is it that here some become mass murderers? The U.S. is the world leader in seemingly random acts of violence by individuals. Why? President George W. Bush rushed to Virginia to speak at a large convocation the day after the killings and tried to set the tone for what could be said about them. "It's impossible to make sense of such violence and suffering," he said. Don't ask why, don't try to understand. It makes no sense. "Have faith" instead, was Bush's message. But there ARE reasons these things happen here, and they are pretty clear to the rest of the world. It's just in the United States that no one is supposed to talk about the reasons. What distinguishes this country from the rest of the world? It is neither the most affluent nor the poorest. It is neither the most secular nor the most religious. It is not the most culturally homogeneous nor is it the most diverse. But in one area, it stands virtually alone. It has the biggest arsenal of high-tech weaponry in the world, way surpassing every other country. It has military bases spread all over; most countries have no troops outside their borders. It is conducting two hot wars at the moment, in Iraq and Afghanistan, and has sent hundreds of thousands of troops abroad over the last few years. Every day, the public here is supposed to identify with soldiers who burst into homes in Baghdad, round up the people and take them away for "interrogation"-which everyone knows now can mean torture and indefinite detainment. It also sends heavily armed "special ops" on secret missions to countless other countries, like the ones who just facilitated the invasion and bombing of Somalia, or the ones who have been trying to stir up opposition in Iran. This is documented in the news media. The immense brutality of these colonial wars, as well as earlier ones, is praised from the White House on down as the best, the ONLY way to achieve what the political leaders and their influential, rich backers decide is necessary to protect their world empire. Do lots of people get killed? "Stuff happens," said former war secretary Donald Rumsfeld. "Collateral damage," says the Pentagon. At home, the U.S. has the highest rate of incarceration in the world. Over 2 million people are locked up in the prison system each year, most of them people of color. When commercial armed security guards are also taken into consideration, the U.S. has millions of employees who use guns and other coercive paraphernalia in their jobs. In the final analysis, the military and the police exist to perpetuate and protect this present unjust system of capitalist inequality, where a few can claim personal ownership over a vast economy built by the sweat and blood of hundreds of millions of workers. And the more divided, the more polarized the society becomes, the higher the level of coercion and violence. Assault weapons are now everywhere in this society, as are Tasers, handcuffs, clubs and tear gas. They most often start out in the hands of the police, the military and other agents of the state, and can then turn up anywhere. Violence is a big money maker in the mass culture. Television, films, pulp novels, Internet sites, video games-all dwell on "sociopaths" while glorifying the state's use of violence, often supplemented by a lone vigilante. By the time children reach their teens, they have already seen thousands of murders and killings on television. And these days even more suspense is added in countless programs that involve stalking and terror against women-and increasingly children. As the Duke rape case and so many "escort service" ads show, women of color are particularly subject to exploitation and have little recourse to any justice. And as the murders along the border show, immigrants of color are fair game for racist killers. The social soil of capitalism can alienate and enrage an unstable and miserable person who should be getting help but can't find it. If, as reports are saying, the young man accused of these killings was on anti-depressant medication, it is all the more evidence that, at a time when hospitals are closing and health care is unavailable for tens of millions, treating mental health problems requires more from society than just prescribing dubious chemicals. Many liberal commentators are taking this occasion to renew the demand for tougher gun laws. Yes, assault weapons are horrible, but so are bunker buster bombs, helicopters that fire thousands of rounds a minute, and the ultimate-nuclear weapons. Disarming the people is not the answer, especially when the government is armed to the teeth and uses brutality and coercion daily. The best antidote to these tragedies is to build a movement for profound social change, a movement directed at solving the great problems depressing so much of humanity today, whether they be wars or global climate change or the loneliness of the dog-eat-dog society. -- Original Source: http://www.iactucson.org/VirginiaTech.html Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License.
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5
Wide view of crowd, tent, and speakers' stage at the dedication ceremony for the intermediate memorial. The War Memorial, which was another popular spot for spectators, is on the far left. Photo taken August 19, 2007. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0.
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0
Wide View of Intermediate Memorial Construction
View of the drillfield, intermediate memorial construction, and Burruss Hall from the War Memorial. Photo taken July 6, 2007. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0.