What would've been the right choice for Virginia Tech?

[saltinespike]

Many of you have heard about the shooting at Virginia Tech. If not, click here. I think the administration made the right choice by keeping kids in their classrooms. They basically had 3 choices:

1. Evacuation drill. Send all kids to the football field or something.
2. Send all kids home. Class dismissed.
3. Keep kids where they were and wait for further instructions.

They chose the third choice, and in my eyes, the best choice. There were 2 1/2 hours between rampages, but administration was clueless to whether he was still roaming the halls. The first choice would be stupid, because if he found them, he could have easily capped 50 more before everyone was out of sight. The second choice, in my mind, would also be a dumb one. If he realized that everyone was going home, he may have gone onto the streets, making him harder to find and able to kill more people. They should have waited in the classrooms and waited for confirmation that he was dead or apprehended by the police.

[Slevin57]

Bear in mind that University officials had no reason to believe that a domestic incident like this would turn into multiple murders.

They did not even consider it a possibility that the guy would stay on campus. In almost all cases the criminal flee's the scene of the crime.

However, this man had different intentions.

[saltinespike]

Quote by: Slevin57 Bear in mind that University officials had no reason to believe that a domestic incident like this would turn into multiple murders. They did not even consider it a possibility that the guy would stay on campus. In almost all cases the criminal flee's the scene of the crime. However, this man had different intentions.

How do you know his intentions?

Last news I heard was at 6:00 AM PST, so if there is something I am missing, fill me in?

[tinybear]

It's very unfair to judge the school's response with the benefit of hindsight. Had you been in the shoes of the school authorities, would you have done the same thing? I think you might well have.

[saltinespike]

Quote by: tinybear It's very unfair to judge the school's response with the benefit of hindsight. Had you been in the shoes of the school authorities, would you have done the same thing? I think you might well have.

Absolutely. Did you not understand that I said they made the right choice? Read the original message.

[Marilyn Monroe]

Well, I think that huge mistakes were made. There was a two hour gap between the first and second round of shootings.

You could hear the gunman shooting from someone's cell phone. When that started the cops should have rushed the place.

They should have blocked it off as good as they could. Noone leaving.

I'm not sure what the cops were doing, but something wasn't right that classes were still in session. All doors should have been locked.

If they had an idea where the shooter was they should have been trying to talk to him, also using smoke bombs, anything to make it easier for people to get on the floor, and not be seen. I don't really know what the cops were doing, but I saw a lot of them standing outside the building with guns drawn in some cases. That's not going to do much.:(

[Athena]

I am surprised they did not immediately close the campus, the dorms, and secure the area around the college as well. That is what we do when the police are looking for someone near a school in my little area if the world.

I figure when someone does a seriously major anti-social deed, that someone isn't right in the head, and I feel compansion for this person. When someone like this is walking around, it is prudent to secure the area and look for that someone.

Almost ignoring the murders in the dorms, is a bad sign. When there were less people in our communities, they felt more of a sense of community. When someone died everyone draped their front door in black. Today it is life as usual as though nothing happened:eek: There was a lot of talk about the campus sense of community, but I think they better take another look at that. Why did they continue as though nothing happened? How many people have to die before the community responds to the fact that someone has died?

Same goes with ignoring the troubled young man, before he completely lost it. Where was the sense of community considering one writing professor knew him and the rest didn't? When someone is like a bomb ready to explode, maybe everyone should know about it? (this is also an issue I have with volconvo, and a handful of moderates policing us, instead of us sharing values and acting together to maintain social values) When people can exist in our midst and be unknown, something is wrong. A whole campus ignored a distrubed young man, as did the people in the neighborhood where he was raised. Social isolation leads to trouble and nieghbors didn't even know the family. We have major social break down and we are ignoring our reality. We are self absorbed, not community minded. I would say the nice talk about the community of the university is coming from self absorbed people who don't know what community is, but enjoy their comfortable positions while being mindless of those on the outside. The unity does not exist, so individuals go off like random protons.

[Athena]

Quote by: tinybear It's very unfair to judge the school's response with the benefit of hindsight. Had you been in the shoes of the school authorities, would you have done the same thing? I think you might well have.

Tiny Bear, what was more important than acknowledging the death of a student? Why does it take a mass murder to close a school? Have we become callous about the death of another? Do we really care about each other?


Closing the school when a seriously distrubed person is in the area should not be hingsight. It should be foresight. This is like the mass murders in Iraq and paying attention only to our own soldiers who die. Why did so many having to die before the area was closed? We are not connected and we are not thinking things through. What is our priority? It isn't human life. Business as usual when someone dies is spiritually dead.

[saltinespike]

Quote by: Athena I am surprised they did not immediately close the campus, the dorms, and secure the area around the college as well. That is what we do when the police are looking for someone near a school in my little area if the world.

Agreed. Class should not have been resumed, be they should not have left, for that would've given a much bigger death count.

Quote by: Athena When someone like this is walking around, it is prudent to secure the area and look for that someone.

Agreed.

Quote by: Athena Same goes with ignoring the troubled young man, before he completely lost it. Where was the sense of community considering one writing professor knew him and the rest didn't? When someone is like a bomb ready to explode, maybe everyone should know about it? (this is also an issue I have with volconvo, and a handful of moderates policing us, instead of us sharing values and acting together to maintain social values) When people can exist in our midst and be unknown, something is wrong. A whole campus ignored a distrubed young man, as did the people in the neighborhood where he was raised. Social isolation leads to trouble and nieghbors didn't even know the family. We have major social break down and we are ignoring our reality. We are self absorbed, not community minded. I would say the nice talk about the community of the university is coming from self absorbed people who don't know what community is, but enjoy their comfortable positions while being mindless of those on the outside. The unity does not exist, so individuals go off like random protons.

True, but fellow students said that the man (kid, whatever) was a loner. He did not have anyone to realize that he was a bit tweaked in the head, except possibly a teacher, who deals with many students a day and does not exactly keep a social relationship with students like, say, a 15-person class would be. Unless he was really messed up in the head, I doubt there would be any signs in his writing (English major). Unity in the community may exist in your "little area in the world", but it is quite uncommon. People fall into their groups, just kinda blend their way into it. Possibly he was just shy. Who is anyone (other than those who witnessed it firsthand) to say that he was rejected whenever he tried to make friends? It is his responsibility to try to make friends, not the group of friends to miraculously pick him up.

[gw120]

When someone gets shot, domestically or otherwise, no classes for that day. Even if he had realized everyone was leaving, everyone would have been spread out, so he couldn't just shoot randomly, people wouldn't have been confined in 100 square feet. Besides, there was no way to know whether or not he was on campus, so why assume he left? It's not something you should assume based on percentages and ratios of how many OTHER people do it, murderers generally aren't right in the head, they don't make logical decisions, so don't base your response on logic.

PS: He shouldn't even have been a free citizen, he was deemed an immanent danger to himself and others by a judge, so he should have been locked up and receiving psychotherapy.

[Slevin57]

Quote by: saltinespike How do you know his intentions? Last news I heard was at 6:00 AM PST, so if there is something I am missing, fill me in?

Well, uh your missing the fact he killed 30 more people.

I can't help but think he killed 30 intentionally before shooting himself. A picture he included in the package to NBC had exactly thirty bullets in it.

[Athena]

Quote by: saltinespike Agreed. Class should not have been resumed, be they should not have left, for that would've given a much bigger death count. Agreed. True, but fellow students said that the man (kid, whatever) was a loner. He did not have anyone to realize that he was a bit tweaked in the head, except possibly a teacher, who deals with many students a day and does not exactly keep a social relationship with students like, say, a 15-person class would be. Unless he was really messed up in the head, I doubt there would be any signs in his writing (English major). Unity in the community may exist in your "little area in the world", but it is quite uncommon. People fall into their groups, just kinda blend their way into it. Possibly he was just shy. Who is anyone (other than those who witnessed it firsthand) to say that he was rejected whenever he tried to make friends? It is his responsibility to try to make friends, not the group of friends to miraculously pick him up.

Well, everyone may agree with you, but nobody likes the result. Actually he wrote something that alarmed a teacher and the teacher referred him to counseling. This is kind of like noticing there is smoke in the building, and doing nothing, compared to sharing this information with other professors, in this place that is suppose to have a good sense of community, and involving several people who might check things out. People might have said things to the terribled young man in hopes of getting a good reaction, and if not, alerting others to a serious problem. If people had paid attention the first shooting may have been the last one.

Where I live, there is a poor sense of community, and the next town is worse. I use to living in Springfield, and the shooting at Thurston High was the big news until Columbine. That high school had, and still has, a very serious social problem. The mayor would not send his children to the public school. Now if this school is not good for his children, maybe it isn't good for other people's children either.

But as I said, I think most people would agree with you, we just don't like the results of ignoring someone in trouble.

[saltinespike]

Quote by: Slevin57 Well, uh your missing the fact he killed 30 more people. I can't help but think he killed 30 intentionally before shooting himself. A picture he included in the package to NBC had exactly thirty bullets in it.

The original post was the day after... hah.

Quote by: Athena Well, everyone may agree with you, but nobody likes the result. Actually he wrote something that alarmed a teacher and the teacher referred him to counseling. This is kind of like noticing there is smoke in the building, and doing nothing, compared to sharing this information with other professors, in this place that is suppose to have a good sense of community, and involving several people who might check things out. People might have said things to the terribled young man in hopes of getting a good reaction, and if not, alerting others to a serious problem. If people had paid attention the first shooting may have been the last one.

It is none of the other professors' business. I would expand on this, but I am at a loss for words at the moment. It is not the teacher's job to make sure he's in counselling either. Your smoke in the building analogy is not valid, because I am sure that administrators and police knew. So it would be more like calling the fire department and them not responding. Also, a fire is not out to kill people, that's not it's intention. Fires don't really have intentions. Maybe the people who light them, but not the fire itself. Evacuating the building when a fire is present would be reasonable, but evacuating the building while a shooting rampage is going on, not so smart. If they evacuated during the break, who's to say the gunman wouldn't have started his rampage earlier, where he could get a higher body count, an even bigger massacre than what happened already.

[saltinespike]

Quote by: gw120 When someone gets shot, domestically or otherwise, no classes for that day. Even if he had realized everyone was leaving, everyone would have been spread out, so he couldn't just shoot randomly, people wouldn't have been confined in 100 square feet. Besides, there was no way to know whether or not he was on campus, so why assume he left? It's not something you should assume based on percentages and ratios of how many OTHER people do it, murderers generally aren't right in the head, they don't make logical decisions, so don't base your response on logic. PS: He shouldn't even have been a free citizen, he was deemed an immanent danger to himself and others by a judge, so he should have been locked up and receiving psychotherapy.

Why risk it? "Well, there's a 50-50 chance that the shooter is still on campus, so let's dismiss the students." There would probably be a better chance that he was off-campus, but you propose that we don't base our answers on logic, so...

I agree with you that classes should not have been resumed, but there should have been a full-blown lockdown.

If class was dismissed and students filled the halls, they would certainly be confined to a small space, and it is extremely foolish to think otherwise.

Since you would like to base our opinions off of what generally happens with murderers, do you disagree that most mass murders happened when a bunch of people were in one general area? Crowding the halls, parking lot, and dorms would be a dream come true for the true psychopath.

Even if he was not a psychopath, why take a chance? Locking down the school would certainly be the safest thing to do.

P.S. He killed himself. So how would he appear in front of a judge? How would he go to jail? And how would he recieve psychotherapy?

[brien]

The authorities had 2 hours to secure the campus after the initial shooting and they had no shooter. The policy should have been no one allowed in and everyone searched who was to exit the buildings on campus. Those who exited should have been escorted to a safe and secure area. The authorities are remis in securing every building on that campus and this is why the perp wasn't caught when he returned to finish his grisly task. Draw your own conclusions.

[ZNFYRH]

First of all... the campus consists of roughly 30,000 people, 100 buildings, and 2,600 acres. It would just take 2 hours to lock all the doors.

Second... the 2 hour gap is between the time of the 911 call and the start of the second set of shootings.

In responding to a 911 call, first authorities have to arrive. Then they close off the area. Then they investigate the scene and try to get statements from witnesses.

When was the last time you say many people up and about at 7:30 on a college campus? They are either asleep or already in class. All witness reports were aural, not visual.

An immediate lockdown is ill-advised because you could be locking the killer in a building with students. An evacuation is ill-advised because you just gave the killer a way to blend in.

The honest answer in this situation is that nothing was done wrong. Based on law, procedure, and the killer's own disposition, there was no way to legally prevent this from happening.

[brien]

This post has been deleted by Brien because it was 100% wrong. My apologies.

[ZNFYRH]

Quote by: brien So, if I recall, in another thread, it was you, amoung others, that would deny the student the right to protect themselves.

Bullshit.

I want you to paste exactly where I said that students should not have the right to protect themselves.

Go ahead and dig your hole if you are stupid enough to take this challenge. I promise you I will bury you in it if you're going in the direction I think you're going in.

Quote by: brien So you are saying the authorities couldn't protect the students.

The opposite of freedom is protection.

I'd speak more on it, but it would address the blatant lie you made later in your post.

This post was heavily edited as I included many statements regarding intelligence and honesty on your part. Think carefully before you respond, and if you respond, I want an exact quote.

[brien]

I want you to paste exactly where I said that students should not have the right to protect themselves

It wasn't you, my sincerest apologies. Sorry.

[ZNFYRH]

I'm a nice guy until someone twists my words or puts words in my mouth. I absolutely do not play that way.

But apology accepted.

The greater point, however, is that I do think the only true protection comes from what you are willing to provide for yourself.

I'm reminded of Batman Begins where Ra's Al Ghul taunts Bruce Wayne by telling him that his father failed to act.

In a country where people demand freedom, they fail to understand that those freedoms allow others the liberty to do harm. The right choice for V-Tech was exactly what they did. Another student in violation of the gun policy would have the capability to kill the shooter.

But capability also requires inclination.

As with any dispute about rights and self-protection, the capability isn't the issue. Someone with the proper inclination will always find a way.

And that goes for killing as well as protection.