Virginia Tech

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApOJH2S2QLQ

I found a little comfort in this song, it was performed after Katrina.  I just mailed off the deposit for my son's college freshman year in the suburbs, after agonizing and weighing all options.  I talked him out of the big city ivy league college...I found all the security there intimidating, someone was murdered there about 5 years ago and crime is up in the city.  I feel like an irrational fool.  Good day to turn off the news and listen to the blues.

May God help everyone associated with Virginia Tech find a way to get through this, it's the saddest of the saddest imaginable...

Lots of talk about this on Wis. Public Radio today, with no real answers.  More gun control? Tighter campus security? More profiling of possible personality types to do these things?  One guest, a Criminology professor,
said there really was not much the campus officials or law enforcment could have done any differently to prepare or prevent, especially with the size of the campus and the nature of the college class schedule.
I guess you have to somehow educate your kids to the dangers in today's world without scaring them silly at the same time.

My deepest sympathy goes out to the Virginia Tech community. My niece attends VT and my daughters have many friends that go there. Their lives have forever changed.

Getting inside the head of the dead killer will never happen or make any sense.  I'm tuned out to the news until more facts surface.  The hardest thing to understand is if 2 people were dead and they didn't know where the killer was...why no sooner communication? How could it be considered safe?  As hard as I am trying not to be judgmental in such a horrible circumstance, I can't figure the reasoning.  Huge campus, didn't want to cause pandemonium, difficult obstacles, how could they alert so many, but what about the ones there, the unknown...The unknown always makes me fill in the blanks.  2 dead on a college campus is serious enough for more action!

Less than a month ago, my public high school children experienced their first real lockdown.  The communication was horrible, causing way more anxiety than necessary.  My 14 year old called me on her cell phone to go to the school website, her teacher knew nothing but to lock the door and pull the shades.  My daughter even said, I hope it's not a shooter.  The website had a statement, evasive but comforting.  I thought it was drugs and knew it was serious because this was disturbing the sports schedule and the whole bus schedule after school.  I called my daughter back, comforted her and she texted her brother...I was actually happy when I paid my cell phone bill!

2 boys had a fist fight...led to the disciplinary office...backback search...drug paraphanalia, a list of supposed clients, a diagram of offices in the school and a list of weapons.  (one minor student, one 18 years old, one charged w/terroist threats) The minor w/the terror threats is back in school and riding the bus with my children who were instructed to treat him with respect.  (not going there, don't want to violate his rights)

5 days later an e-mail came about a new communication system, can go to 5 locations-phone, e-mail, cell-phone etc...they practiced...

About 5 days later, a top secret lockdown took place, not even the teachers knew, it was done with the county and a ton of people...they brought in the dog sniffers...all backpacks were to put in the locker...kids were escorted to lockers.  The parents got three phone calls, one when it started, one in the middle and one when it was over.  Communication was 100% better and the purpose was to enforce a zero tolerance.

Live and learn and sometimes like 9/11, you can't even imagine or forsee something in a total chaotic state.  But, please let me be wrong, wrong, wrong and be thinkng totally off the walls that anyone at VT was worried about bad publicity.  This is when the wild imagination is a curse, freshmen deposits are due in about 14 days and they had another shooting (not a student-security guard killed, I think) on their campus early in the school year.  I'm hopeful it had nothing to do with it and if if did, I almost hope on one ever knows for sure.  It's such a dreadful thought, I wish I never thought of it...I have to be really off.

I still cant believe this happened.  I am currently a college student and the thought of someone coming into a classroom and shooting is absolutely surreal.  I have some friends here who know people at Va Tech.  One in particular knows someone who lost a friend in the shooting.  This was a very sad day for this country and it will never be forgotten.  It will also be the source of many changes in the future.  Right now we need to support the victims and their families as much as possible and try to get everyone back to some sort of normalcy right now.  The debates about gun control etc. should happen later- but not right now, not just hours after a lone gunman killed 32 people, plus himself in the worst shooting rampage in this country's history.

I feel for every family that lost loved ones and I hope that they will somehow, someday get back to something resembling normalcy.  I can't even begin to imagine how tough it must be to lose someone so quickly from such a heinous act.  It's just terrible.  From what I've been reading, professors of Cho Seung-Hui had tried to help him.  He was obviously very troubled.  The scary part is that there are many people just like him who could, in the future, go off like this.  This just shows the importance of getting people help if they are troubled.  If people had made more of an attempt to help him and he was willing to listen and get help there would be 33 more people here today who could go on to do great things.  But we'll never know...

Scott