- Top Features:
- War Room
- Glenn Greenwald
- Broadsheet
- Joan Walsh
- Camille Paglia
- Since You Asked
- Follow Salon:
Read other letters about this article
Did you read the emails? At 7:30 they knew the ex-con shot someone. At 8:03 VT administration sent out an "emergency advisory" email to the entire community. Shortly thereafter -- and well before 10 am -- they told commuters to turn back and told students that classes would not open as usual. At that point, anyone who didn't know something was going on was a bit dense.
So, yes, in August they had a face to look for. But so what? It requires a MORE thorough investigation if you DON'T know. In both cases, an armed murderer is on the loose, and officials knew he was on the loose. That would at least call for similar speed of notification of the community on April 16 as VT provided on Aug. 21.
People have argued that you can't logistically shut down a campus that big-- but you can. People have argued that security couldn't have acted far, far faster -- but they have before, in a remarkably similar case. People have argued that the police had detained the suspected killer -- but security knew they hadn't and proceeded on the assumption that the killer of Emily Hirschel was on the loose, not in some interrogation room.
Unless...unless you're telling me that security is so effing incompetent that unless the EXACT SAME situation happens they are incapable of taking steps to inform people? Basically, VT admin only knows what to do when someone is shot in August on the first day of classes by an ex-convict whose last name starts with "M", and in all other cases campus security can't put two and two together? They had two effing bomb threats.
God. Read the comments in the press from people at VT. People are mad. Parents are mad. Students feel betrayed. I haven't read a single quote from any student saying that they're glad they didn't know until 9:30, have you? It's sickening to see people defend the willful disinformation and incompetence here as "the best thing that could be done." It wasn't, and people died for it.
