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| Students grieve last night at a candlelight vigil at Virginia Tech (Taylor Howard/DP) |
Monday’s shootings at Virginia Tech have prompted several pressing questions. What was the shooter’s background? What was his motive? Was there an accomplice?
While all of these questions indubitably require answers, what concerns me most is the Virginia Tech administration’s actions yesterday. To that end, I have one simple question: How could the University have responded the way it did?
Let’s review Monday’s chain of events. At 7:15 a.m., a gunman shot two students in West Ambler Johnston dorm. Police were called to the scene. Though the police didn’t apprehend the suspect, they believed he had possibly left the campus and even the state.
This assumption led to blatant idiocy on behalf of the administration — they didn’t send an e-mail warning students until 9:26 a.m.
Then, at 9:45 a.m., the second round of shootings began at Norris Hall, an engineering building. In total, the gunman shot 32 people, and then killed himself.
Tech’s administration defends its actions, saying it thought the shooting was a “self-contained case.” How could University officials have come to such a conclusion when they didn’t even have the suspect in custody? Why was an e-mail not sent at 7:16 a.m., warning students that a gunman was on the loose? At the very least, the administration should have evacuated the dorms or shut down campus.
Indeed, students were still in classes at 8 a.m. — after the initial shooting — and many students say that had no idea what was going on. They went to class, as usual, because no one had alerted them not to go.
Thankfully, Maureen Rush, Penn’s Vice President of Public Safety, has announced that Penn’s course of action would be to shut down if a similar situation occurred on campus. She also called for increased communication efforts to ensure the safety of Penn’s students and faculty in such a crisis.
Virginia Tech’s administration can defend itself all it wants — but the parents whose children died as a result of its inadequate response may not accept its excuses so readily.
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April 18th, 2007 at 1:51 pm
Actually, he shot dead 32 people. An additional 29, I think, were shot but survived, and several are still in the hospital.
April 18th, 2007 at 2:08 pm
You do realize that although we now know he shot those two people at 7:15 that does not mean the administration was aware at the second it had happened. It’s reasonable it took some time for police to arrive and assess the situation, which explains the time between the incident and the e-mail that was sent out. Only hindsight allows you to criticize the administration now, but at the time it was entirely logical to assume the homicide was an isolated incident and not a precursor to the massacre that happened. This post is just unfair and unnecessary posturing.
April 18th, 2007 at 3:29 pm
How were they supposed to know? It’s a college administration, not a military regiment.
April 18th, 2007 at 8:15 pm
“At the very least, the administration should have evacuated the dorms or shut down campus.” Virginia Tech’s campus isn’t the kind you can just shut down with a snap. The entire span covers roughly 2,600 acres. To put that in perspective, the entirety of Penn’s campus barely makes it to 260 acres. Couple that with the fact that there are 26,000+ students at VTech, and you have no grounds on which to compare a lock-down there with a lock-down at Penn. Of course Penn could/would shut down immediately. Our campus is extremely self-contained. Not even VT students are being this critical of their administration.
April 18th, 2007 at 9:26 pm
Clearly, there are differences between the technical capabilities of shutting down the two campuses. What I do question, however, is the seeming lack of a crisis plan that could be put into effect, especially when VA Tech had shut down its entire campus last summer when there were reports of an escaped convict in the area.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-08-21-campus-search_x.htm
April 18th, 2007 at 11:32 pm
Also, just so you know, the gunman did leave campus. He went into town and posted a letter to NBC news. So they were actually right… Probably best you get off your high horse now.