SkippySanchez
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From Verum Serum.
(Mods: Please move this to a more appropriate thread if it shouldn't be here. -Thanks)
(Mods: Please move this to a more appropriate thread if it shouldn't be here. -Thanks)
"Four Years Later Va Tech President Steger Still Blaming Everyone but Himself"
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Read No Right to Remain Silent by Lucinda Roy. She was a faculty member who tried to deal with Cho before the incident and has an insightful take on the administration's actions after the incident.
Needless to say, the adminstration doesn't like her.
Needless to say, the adminstration doesn't like her.
smince
Member.
The VA Tech faculty had trouble with Cho before the shooting...
And Arizona authorities had problems with Laughner before his shooting...
Is it just me, or...
And Arizona authorities had problems with Laughner before his shooting...
Is it just me, or...
ErikO
Member
Sociopaths are tough to deal with from an administrative standpoint, it would seem.
Loughner was removed from his school after his behavior. Thus, they acted appropriately. However, as Roy pointed out in an article in the NYT, he then acted out in a public setting.
The issue for the gun community is the threshold for acting against gun ownership and purchases by an individual. Is is argued that Cho should have been reported and thus failed a NICS check. But some folks argue that there would be too many false positives with more stringent testing.
Simple mental testing cannot predict violence. Only past behavior of such and/or credible threats might work. Cho had crossed paths with the mental health system and might have made the NICS criteria for report but Virginia dropped the ball , it is argued.
Administrators don't want to be proactive against seemingly disturbed students as they fear lawsuits by such students. We have many such and to remove them all would be a legal nightmare and unfair to many.
The issue for the gun community is the threshold for acting against gun ownership and purchases by an individual. Is is argued that Cho should have been reported and thus failed a NICS check. But some folks argue that there would be too many false positives with more stringent testing.
Simple mental testing cannot predict violence. Only past behavior of such and/or credible threats might work. Cho had crossed paths with the mental health system and might have made the NICS criteria for report but Virginia dropped the ball , it is argued.
Administrators don't want to be proactive against seemingly disturbed students as they fear lawsuits by such students. We have many such and to remove them all would be a legal nightmare and unfair to many.
WardenWolf
member
Well, Cho wasn't necessarily a sociopath, but he definitely had very obvious mental problems (selective mutism being one of them). The major failure there was from his parents, who knew from a very young age that there was something majorly wrong with him but did nothing to get him help, then sent him off to college alone without a support network. Basically they didn't get him any help growing up and, once he turned 18 and no one else could force him to get help, let him go off alone.
As for Loughner, well, similar thing truthfully. The parents HAD to know there was something seriously mentally wrong with him, and HAD to know he was doing drugs. There's simply no avoiding that.
Both of these situations stem from the same core problem: serious parental neglect. Unfortunately there is no real way to hold them criminally accountable for the results of their neglect. In these cases, though, I truly agree with civil prosecution against the parents.
As for the Virginia Tech president, the warning should have gone out immediately. Their inaction probably caused a lot more fatalities.
rainbowbob
Member
As the parent of a seriously mentally ill adult child, I can tell you unequivocally that despite our desperate and unflagging attempts to get him treatment, we have been stymied by one road block after another in a system that ignores the pleas of loved ones and clear evidence based on past and current behaviors in favor of the civil rights of a dangerously ill individual. If you haven't walked in these shoes, you may want to reconsider your quick and easy jump to blaming the parents. I know better - and I've learned it in the most heart-breaking school imaginable.
Double Naught Spy
Sus Venator
Lots of people have "issues" and have trouble with the authorities that never do anything seriously wrong. Some people just are not properly adjusted to society for whatever reason, but are not necessarily dangerous to a point of causing problems. GEM brings up several good points.
As for Steger blaming everyone but himself, VT may have done wrong, but VT may have acted in a manner believed to be appropriate at the time. Was it enough? Apparently not. Was it within the policies at the time? Apparently so.
As noted at the time, it was fairly unique for Cho to kill people and then flee campus, only to return later to start the real rampage. At the time, there was no USDOE guidelines stipulating what must be done in what time frame, only that warnings must be timely. What is a timely warning for an event believed to be over?
The OP's link is to an opinion blog. A better source might be...
http://www.cnn.com/2011/CRIME/03/29/virginia.tech.fine/index.html
JohnBT
Member
"If you haven't walked in these shoes, you may want to reconsider your quick and easy jump to blaming the parents."
Absolutely correct. Schools also have their hands tied and there are not very many mental health resources due to the exceptionally high demand and the relative lack of funding.
The Tech administration believed what the cops said. They thought the first two killings were a domestic thing/love triangle and that the suspect had left campus (all 2600 acres of it.)
Let's play pretend with 20/20 hindsight: If they could have locked down the campus, IF, what were the chances of locking the killer up inside a building like a dorm. Pretty good.
John
Class of '72. I know those buildings well.
Absolutely correct. Schools also have their hands tied and there are not very many mental health resources due to the exceptionally high demand and the relative lack of funding.
The Tech administration believed what the cops said. They thought the first two killings were a domestic thing/love triangle and that the suspect had left campus (all 2600 acres of it.)
Let's play pretend with 20/20 hindsight: If they could have locked down the campus, IF, what were the chances of locking the killer up inside a building like a dorm. Pretty good.
John
Class of '72. I know those buildings well.
Double Naught Spy
Sus Venator
Yep, if they knew who they were after, they might have gotten Cho with the help of a lockdown, but at the time, they did not. Cho did spend the majority of the next couple of hours, apparently, in his dorm room in the next building. Nobody spotted Cho in his bloody clothing going into his dorm either.
Otherwise, he would have been locked up in a dorm for a while, he all clear given, classes resumed, and Cho would have still gone shooting.
Darkskeptic
Member
It seems to me that thinking to prevent every possible event in the world could result in a paranoia that may be worse than what we were tying to prevent in the first place. Background checks generally look for criminal things, but weapons of any sort can be had by the resourceful. If prevention fails, and the cure is illegal, what do you do then? Call the police so they get there after the event is over and done with I guess. Not every question has a good answer; making quick smart decisions in a situation is the best that can realistically be expected.
inclinebench
Member
A lockdown on the VA Tech campus is impossible. They implemented a lockdown the prior fall on the openening day of classes when a Guy named John Morva escaped custody and was thought to have fled to Tech campus. They tried a lockdown, and it was about as effective as watergun putting out a forest fire. That campus is huge, with many roads leading in and out. Thousands of students, faculty, and staff. My own wife was "locked down" on Virginia Tech campus when Morva was on the run, yet she was able to walk out to her car, and leave campus without a single person saying anything to her. She only chose to do so after she saw hundreds of others streaming out of campus. A lockdown would have been impossible after Cho, and they knew it.
JohnBT
Member
Remember the college protests after the 1970 U.S. invasion of Cambodia? Hundreds of Va Tech students occupied buildings and even burned a couple during the protests. The State Police were called in to patrol the campus and some of the buildings were ringed with Troopers. There must have been hundreds of them.
Even with just 11k or so students at the time, compared to the enrollment today, the State Police couldn't lock down a 2600-acre campus with a couple of hundred buildings.
Heck, they couldn't keep us out of the women's dorms on a normal day...
Even with just 11k or so students at the time, compared to the enrollment today, the State Police couldn't lock down a 2600-acre campus with a couple of hundred buildings.
Heck, they couldn't keep us out of the women's dorms on a normal day...
Owen Sparks
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Any time you deal with thousands of people there are going to be a few nuts who act oddly. The problem is that unless someone makes an actual threat through word or deed, not much can be done legally.
Owen Sparks
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When I went to school there was a student who was obviously nuts. He actually believed that he was from another planet and did all sorts of crazy things. Lots of people were afraid of him. He never actually committed a crime or threatened anyone so there was not anything the school could really do except watch him closely.
JohnBT
Member
VPI needs to change their web site...
"Virginia Tech's international population, including 2000 students representing more than 110 countries" and one distant planet.
"Virginia Tech's international population, including 2000 students representing more than 110 countries" and one distant planet.
ny32182
Member
Sometimes, it is nobody's fault but the nutjob's.
How many people here scream bloody murder (and often rightly so) at the mention of any sort of proactive reduction of civil rights, especially gun rights? A lot.
How many people here scream bloody murder (and often rightly so) at the mention of any sort of proactive reduction of civil rights, especially gun rights? A lot.
Well
Couldn't a determined individual shoot their way through any reasonable lockdown? This reminds me of how in reaction to the Columbine shootings many schools put up a metal detector guarded by a rent-a-cop or two with a nine millimeter. One would assume that someone determined to commit murder-suicide on a mass scale would be willing to risk a shootout with a guard.
I mean this kid was willing to gun down 32 people. He obviously wasn't afraid of the police or the death penalty. If a lone cop or security guard had been standing somewhere as part of a lockdown, it's hard to see what difference it would make. (since if a reasonable security force tried to lock down an entire campus, they'd basically have to put a lone guard or two at the entrance to every building)
Now, if 1 in every 100 of the students in the buildings that Lee entered had a concealed handgun, Lee would have been facing several student wielded firearms. He probably would not have gotten as far as he did.
The counterpoint is that regardless of what our guts and common sense tell us, in actual fact if you allow people to carry guns around all the time, you are making suicides and murders easier to commit. Most anti-gun statistics seem to show pretty overwhelmingly that when murders and suicides are easier to commit, they happen more often. It only takes one instant of blinding rage to pull out a handgun and pull the trigger...if you had to go home and get a gun, or had to try to kill someone with just your fists, the chance of it happening would be a lot lower.
Couldn't a determined individual shoot their way through any reasonable lockdown? This reminds me of how in reaction to the Columbine shootings many schools put up a metal detector guarded by a rent-a-cop or two with a nine millimeter. One would assume that someone determined to commit murder-suicide on a mass scale would be willing to risk a shootout with a guard.
I mean this kid was willing to gun down 32 people. He obviously wasn't afraid of the police or the death penalty. If a lone cop or security guard had been standing somewhere as part of a lockdown, it's hard to see what difference it would make. (since if a reasonable security force tried to lock down an entire campus, they'd basically have to put a lone guard or two at the entrance to every building)
Now, if 1 in every 100 of the students in the buildings that Lee entered had a concealed handgun, Lee would have been facing several student wielded firearms. He probably would not have gotten as far as he did.
The counterpoint is that regardless of what our guts and common sense tell us, in actual fact if you allow people to carry guns around all the time, you are making suicides and murders easier to commit. Most anti-gun statistics seem to show pretty overwhelmingly that when murders and suicides are easier to commit, they happen more often. It only takes one instant of blinding rage to pull out a handgun and pull the trigger...if you had to go home and get a gun, or had to try to kill someone with just your fists, the chance of it happening would be a lot lower.
Rodman30
Member
I work security at the local hospital and the amount of people we see for mental issues is high. We have very few staff to help them and sometimes the wait in the emergency room can be long sometimes as much as eight hours or more if we are full on our mental health unit then we have to find somewhere else for them and then sometimes thats hard because the other places are full as well. It then becomes a even longer waiting game for getting the patient help.
Pilgrim
Member
We have a teenage daughter who is finally in residential treatment after several thwarted attempts to get her placed there. Her view of the world, family, and social relationships is severely twisted, but she is clever and manipulative. After two sessions with a licensed clinical social worker, she convinced the social worker that I was the one who needed therapy.
It took a three month 'crime spree' of shoplifting, defrauding an innkeeper, disturbing the peace, and trespassing before the juvenile justice system took notice of her and decided she needed something. I had to stand up in court and tell the judge her mother and I no longer could control her.
It took another five months in two group homes before 'do good' social workers and probation officers finally listened to us and administered a full psychological examination to determine just what is wrong and what she needs.
Her current placement has a full time psychologist on the staff and he admits he has his hands full with our daughter. She is full of anger about being placed in several foster homes before coming to us at the age of nine. She is angry that she is adopted. She is angry the child protective services system split her from her younger brother before she came to live with us.
Of course, she can't take her anger out on child protective services, previous foster parents, etc., so she takes it out on her mother and me.
In this process from our home to residential treatment, which took over a year, we were plagued by teachers, social workers, probation officers, who continued to think that our daughter was a normal teenager with some personal problems and learning disabilities. They ignored what we had to say and looked at us like were entirely responsible for our daughter's condition.
Pilgrim
My sister was on campus when the shooting occurred. I know people personally who survived the shooting. None of the people I know personally have blamed Tech for the shooting. I think instead of the media searching for blame they should pay more attention to remembering the people that lost there lives. It was a awful think to happen to southwest Virgina and the families of the victims. Honestly I believe a school wide lock down would not have prevented the shooter from accomplishing what he had on his mind. If Tech was to lock down campus every time something was to happen campus would be in a state of constant lock down.
Owen Sparks
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As part of my job I go to the local court house on business regulrly. On days when court is in session they have one deputy at the door who runs the walk through metal detector. I can't help but think how easy it would be for a bad guy to draw a concealed pistol and pop this guy in the head on the way in if he was intent on shooting up the court house and did not plan to survive. School guards would be no more of a challenge for some nut case who accepted suiside as the cost of killing lots of people.
Murder is hard only if you plan on getting away with it.
Murder is hard only if you plan on getting away with it.
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mgregg85
Member
I think a lot of these complaints can be chalked up to "hindsight is always 20/20". Its easy to say that they should have done something but if they started booting out every student with some problems or stopping any person who shows any minute signs of mental illness from owning guns then we'd have hundreds of people on here complaining about the injustice of it all.
What it all boils down to is that living in a free society is a dangerous proposition and there likely isn't much we can do to make it better without seriously restricting individual liberties. I choose to accept those risks because i'd much rather die on my feet than live on my knees.
What it all boils down to is that living in a free society is a dangerous proposition and there likely isn't much we can do to make it better without seriously restricting individual liberties. I choose to accept those risks because i'd much rather die on my feet than live on my knees.
9MMare
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