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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Rob, the guy was on the move and when was the last time you tried to tackle a guy who was shooting at you? Also, throw something at him? A book vs a Glock? I'll take the Glock.
But there were other stories of heroism:
"“Derek, who is my classmate, he was shot in the arm and it was just amazing to me that he was still up and leaning against the door,” Mr. Perkins said. “The guy tried to come back in and we were able to hold him off. “
Another student, Erin Sheehan, helped tend to the wounded in the class as her fellow students tried to hold the door closed. “He seemed very thorough about it,” she told CNN, referring to the way the gunman carried out the shooting.
At least 17 of the wounded were still in the hospital this morning. One of them was the girlfriend of a student, Paul Geiger, 21, who was at Montgomery Regional Hospital this morning to visit her.
“She was part of the German class that got hit,” he said of his girlfriend, who had been shot in the hand. “She helped barricade the door. For me, she is my hero.”
In hindsight, of course, we all wish the Virginia Tech did cancel classes and shut the university down before the second shooting. But I wonder if university officials' decision after the first shooting was really so incomprehensible.
I was at the University of Arizona in 2002, when a disgruntled student shot three professors at the College of Nursing. I work across campus, and the first information I got was that professors had been shot and the killer was still at large. As it turned out, the gunman had killed himself, but it was not until considerably later that police found his body. At the time, it seemed reasonable to keep the campus open--there was no reason to conclude one way or another to conclude that the shooter was on campus or in the city, no way to know whether people would be safer walking to cars and driving home or staying where they were. Why didn't Virginia Tech cancel classes? And...what? Tell students who lived on campus to stay in their dorms--when the shooting had been in a dorm?
My real concern here, though, is not public safety protocols after a shooting on a campus, an event that is still thankfully rare. It is all the other questions people are raising about campus security. Reporters on NBC last night were commenting with astonishment that they were able to just walk into dorms and classroom buildings. As they should be. My worst fear is that as a result of this incident, we will try to turn college and university campuses into the kinds of spaces that airports, government buildings, high schools, and wealthy neighborhoods have become--full of metal detectors, gates, and security officers. We all suffer when we lose public spaces where anyone and everyone can meet, mingle, and rub elbows. We lose a sense of the diversity of our communities, and we lose the spaces that make the open exchange of ideas possible.
The point about police not immediately alerting the campus -- because they thought this was a "domestic dispute" limited to the people involved or a murder suicide (and no, it wouldn't take long to realize there was no weapon) -- was that there was an armed MURDERER on the loose.
That's information I would have wanted to have, personally.
Their judgment about whether or not it was "domestic" or a "crime of passion" should not have prevented them from alerting students that two people had been shot dead on campus. Maybe some students might have decided to sit tight and not go to class. Most would have gone anyway but at least they would have known that they needed to be especially alert. Who knows? The point is that they should have been told, even if that is all the university could have done for them.
A simple announcement to the effect that there was an armed and dangerous individual, possibly still on campus, sent immediately, could have saved lives. It doesn't matter if the campus is large, or the security force is limited. Students and teachers should have had that information, they would have been extremely alert to any thing suspicious, and it could have made a difference.
Wouldn't you have been more careful that morning? Wouldn't you perhaps have heard the first shot and sprung into action? Instead people had to figure out what that noise was, and then decide if they were over-reacting, or if they would look foolish to run while there was still time, etc., etc.
I'm not saying that the administration is to blame for this awful act, or that it could have been prevented. I'm saying that some cops drew a conclusion about a "domestic dispute" and based on that information the administration decided to alert the campus much later than they should have. It doesn't mean I'm trying to appropriate this tragedy for the feminist cause.
I couldn't say it better myself. So I won't even try. Thank you for putting it so eloquently. Let the students make an informed decision -- give them the information, and do it immediately.
Can't believe people are defending the university on this. Two hours and the killer is on the loose?
It will be fascinating to watch the bitter fight the university will wage to win the spin wars on this. My gut feeling is that they probably won't prevail, but we'll see.
Also: I just lost all respect for Nikki Giovanni on this. She led a standing ovation for the university president. What a saddening spectacle of middle class conformity. And I just read her poem about this. It's crap. Can't she do better than lead a junior high style cheer about the school's mascot? You can't go through life with those kinds of second rate, naive values.
That's exactly the point: the police should not have kept the first shooting quiet for so long simply because they believed it to be a "domestic dispute." That's not an excuse.Because officials guessed the killings were a domestic dispute, they allowed hundreds of students to travel around campus even though an armed killer was loose.
Officials said in the press conference that they did not lockdown, evacuate, or alert the campus to the first two murders because they assumed (incorrectly, as it turns out) that it was a "domestic dispute." If the officials had simply treated the murders as TWO MURDERS until proven otherwise, would they have waited until 9:30 to tell people and noon to evacuate? I doubt it.
Re: logistics: Administrators had the capacity to shut down classes and evacuate the campus quickly --they did it last year when the convict was loose. They could have done it again -- they just chose not to.
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