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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
but as some have pointed out in other posts, mass killings are a daily occurrence in Iraq. Many figureheads from countries are offering their condolences/sympathies and showing support. I know the BBC is devoting quite a bit of time to this story. My question is this: When approx. 30 civilians die each day in Iraq, why does that not warrant substantial press time or the outpouring of sympathy from other countries?
I am also not looking forward to any of the racist targeted attacks (e.g. 9/11) that will surely follow given the identification of the killer.
I am mystified by the university response. No lockdown? Our public schools go into lockdown mode even if there's a car theft in the vicinity. OK, maybe that's an exaggeration. But while at times I've thought our local schools have over-reacted to situations that turned out to be minor, I'm now definitely preferring over-reaction to under-reaction. Obviously, it's better to be safe than sorry.
I am further mystified -- as are others who've written here -- by the explanation that the university believed this was a mere, I suppose, "domestic" disturbance. Aren't these "domestic" disturbances the events that escalate into wider violence at workplaces, schools and other public spaces? Plenty of cops, co-corkers, neighbors and bystanders -- not just the original "domestic" targets -- have been killed or injured by perpetrators of "domestic" violence. That the response was muted because of the belief that this was a domestic situation is just dumbfounding. And, by the way, did university officials, after the first couple of killings, shrug off the shootings as no big deal because only a couple of people were dead?
In reply to "Because it never happens, you mean?":
You have identified three incidents out of the 100,000 or so domestic violence murders in the last 30 years - these are very rare events (and, yes, I know this wasn't a comprehensive list). It is not a good idea to base policy on very rare worse-case scenarios. Do you think that every domestic violence murder should be responded to as if it were a killing spree in progress? I ask again: what information did university leaders have to tell them that this was different than other murders that regularly happen in a community this size?
It seems as if some here are engaging in hindsight bias. Given the two hour delay between the shootings it was reasonable for the cops to think the shooter might have left and it was reasonable for VT to act on that by closing down the dorm, contacting the RAs to take action and notifying students of the event.
What some seem to be missing is the fact that the shooter was unknown or not identified. If you close down the entire campus, you have to search for an unknown shooter, who, is carrying concealed weapons, across an entire campus of several dozen? large buildings. If you evacuate, you have the students and everybody else in the mix with the shooter. It's very damned if you do/don't situation.
To compare this to a storm that you know is coming or an escaped convict you can readily ID is not accurate.
A public high school can go on lockdown because the schedule is the same, pretty much, for everyone. Nearly everyone is in their classrooms at the same time. (Speaking of which, when you say go on lockdown, do you mean make people stay in their classrooms? Because that obviously wouldn't have helped in this case.)
In a college setting, some people are in the library while others are sitting on the quad while others are eating while others are in class while others are in bed sleeping while others are arriving and still others don't even have class that day. For this reason, comparing VT to a small city makes more sense than comparing it to a high school.
What a difficult call for campus administrators and students. How do you prepare for the unthinkable? Unfortunately, even if campus administrators would have sent out e-mails or cell phone messages to students, the tragedy still would have unfolded. As the mother of a college student that attends a college with a campus about as large as Virginia Tech in upstate NY, my daughter's daily routine rarely starts with her checking her e-mails. And if she had scheduled classes, her cell phone would have been on pulse and ignored while she was in class. Her boyfriend on the other hand never answers his cell phone and rarely reads e-mails unless he anticipates something from one of his professors.
Unfortunately, the blame game will make its rounds when in fact it is literally impossible to prepare for and avoid an ambush attack. When the dust settles and the fear begins to ebb, the situation will be reviewed with clear eyes and the students of Virginia Tech will decide to move forwar while putting the past behind as they try to grieve silently out of the glare of the media lights.
Not a movie where all of the police officers are ex-special ops, or navy seals, or Army Rangers, or ex-FBI profilers who were unfairly fired from their jobs and now work campus security. Who would have looked at the earlier shooting and seen it as the obvious prelude to a mass murder by a psychopath. (See that blood splatter. He's going to kill students in a classroom! )
It's not a television show where one of the students was carrying a gun and not only had experience shooting at a target range, but real life experience, and could calmly shoot another person from a safe distance in the head.
It's not fiction, where evacuating 20-thousand students, without making them a target, in 2-hours, with a minimal security force, golf carts and probably a handful of cruisers, is easy.
In real life, people make mistakes. In real life, people can't plan for every forseeable event. Blaiming the school and the cops, who were maybe a little limited in their thinking and thought the situation was completely different than what it acutally was, for being human and not having the omnipotence of a Hollywood screenwriter is just unfair.
Even before the shooter's body is cold, everyone is pointing the finger at everyone else. It's the worst thing about this country. We should instead try to figure out how to make sure this doesn't happen again. But having said that, we won't win all of the time. Most likely, we'll fail. Because we don't control the world. Sorry to break it to all of you who think the school is to blaim for a crazed gunman, but bad shit happens. People die. They get murdered. It's been going on forever. Welcome to real life.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
