UT Tower Sniper vs. VT Shooting

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primlantah

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I hear it over and over like a broken record that VT is scarred for ever and blah blah. The media makes it sound like people will never forget and move on. They make it sound like the campus will never recover and the student body will never be the same.

I am not old enough to remember the UT tower shooting but did attend UTexas and lived in Austin for 10 years. I can tell you that you rarely hear anything about Charles Whitman around here, especially on campus. UT is not scarred for eternity along with its student body. Its school as usual like anywhere else on earth.

My question is for those of you who remember the UT Tower shooting. Was the media all over it like they are with modern school shootings? Please contrast from your recollection. It just seems to me like the media and VT are over playing the incident. I dont mean to sound like its trivial, its not, but columbine moved on... UT moved on... New York city moved on.... VT will move on too. Has the media always drug the drama along to an artificial state?
 
The quick answer is that the media today is totally different than it was then. I watched the shooting on live TV, but remember there were only three networks then and they only did a half hour newscast at 6:30.
There was no cable, talk radio, internet.

I do recall the newspapers continuing coverage for quite a while but even that gradually died off. People didn't consider themselves victims back then. Instead of wringing their hands and whining they got deer rifles out of the car trunks and began to shoot back.
 
I recall that most...

The only time I've seen coverage of civilians returning fire.Probably the last time they did. Hasn't happened since in Texas, has it?
 
The difference is that when Charles Whitman decided to take innocent peoples lives, Americans were still allowed to defend themselves without being viewed as radicals.
 
Hey, primlantah. Maybe the esteemed mod Art Eatman will show up on this thread. He was on campus during the Texas Tower incident.

You might try using Search, I think he's posted on it here (maybe at TFL).
 
I think eventually VT will move on but there are a few things that will keep it fresh for awhile. You have the 24 hour news media that will replay the tragic events when anything related comes up especially if it's a slow news day, you will have the gun grabbers who will use it to explain the need for more gun laws ( although guns were banned on campus) , and you have people who love attention and the woa is me attempt for sympathy.


*disclaimer* there are many people tragically affected by this who have a legitimate reason to be scarred emotionally. I'm talking about people I've seen interviewed who still know talk about "the nightmares i have that i was killed" and it turns out that they were'nt on campus at the time or were thinking of going to that school next year type of BS. It demeans that actual people hurt by the event. It's the same type of stuff with 9-11. I watched the towers burn and saw the black cloud from my house. I was awoken many times by fighter jets circling the city and was actually was at WTC the night before about five hours before the first plane hit and did red cross work for a long time to help with the clean-up and know many lost or forever changed. For me to compare myself to what these people went through because my back was sore after loading trucks for a couple of days at shea stadium is disgusting and is the type of crap that results when you move away from the belief that we should buck up and know you ai'nt dead yet so it can't be that bad. So much for being a tough and independant people who can take on whatever can be served.
 
News coverage was pretty much limited to hourly update on the radio and a segment on the evening news at 6:30pm. Now days we have 24 hour news cycle beast that has to be fed. The other difference was back then we would experience an event than move on. Now days it is revisited for any number of other reasons, one of which is the 24 hour news cycle.
 
While it may not get discussed by the students or the school much, just about every single time I have a friend or relative come into town for the first time, when we drive by the tower they ask "is that the tower that the guy did the shooting from?"

I doubt any students these days are scarred by it, and I wasn't even alive when it happened, but I feel that it will always be discussed as a dark moment in Austin/ UT history.

It's a shame too. It's too nice of a tower for that to be the first thing everyone thinks about.
 
primlantah said:
My question is for those of you who remember the UT Tower shooting. Was the media all over it like they are with modern school shootings? Please contrast from your recollection. It just seems to me like the media and VT are over playing the incident.
Click to expand...
I remember it fairly clearly, although I was in high school (in California) at the time. I started college 4 years after graduating from high school. At first, I actually did attend night classes at UT for a semester in 1973 and nobody really seemed to talk or care about it much. I later went to Texas A&M - a MUCH better school. :D

Gig 'Em, Aggies!

The thing I recall most clearly at the time was that the reporting seemed to be more focused on the state of mind of the shooter, Charles Whitman, and the tactical issues facing the police and medical responders, than they were with the whole firearms issue. I recall the major networks' reporting being fairly straightforward, without any anygun hyperbole at all. They didn't even add any drama, as the actual event was pretty darn dramatic without any outside help.

At least that's my recollection.

Of course, if it had happened at A&M, we'd have just built a bonfire around the tower and burned him outta there...

:neener:
 
My question is for those of you who remember the UT Tower shooting. Was the media all over it like they are with modern school shootings? Please contrast from your recollection.
Click to expand...

The short answer is no.

Of course we didn't have 500 or more channels of hogwash on television back then. Now there are so many news channels that they are hard pressed to find enough stories to fill air time, so they manufacture them. This whole crap thing about the protests against guns at VT a year after the incident would have fallen on deaf ears of the press if they weren't hard pressed to find something of interest.

Anyone remember Danny Rolling. He killed his victims with a knife, but it's the same thing. The murders in Gainesville back in 1990 "shocked the world" and had students leaving town in droves. I remember it so well because we were about the only ones moving into town and they wanted our U-haul truck so badly that they gave us our deposit back without me having to sweep it out or fill the tank. They said just bring it in, it's already rented out. We had the only truck coming into town that week.

A year later young college girls were walking and jogging alone at night, and people were leaving their doors unlocked again. The only reason they still have that ridiculous memorial on the graffiti wall on 34th street is that one of the girls who was killed had a father who is a wealthy contractor and he bought and bullied the council into making a specific law to protect it form being painted over.

Virginia Tech will move on. It won't be long before you will be hard pressed to find anyone on campus who actually knows what those marker stones are for.
 
Wasn't UT the impetus for the Gun Control Act of 1968, along with the slayings of King and Kennedy?
 
To me there is a big difference in the shooters. Whitman wrote a letter to the effect saying he was mentally sick and couldn't control this impulse and wanted his brain autopsed after he was killed to see if anybody could figure what was wrong with him or be a lesson for others. Almost like he had a conscious and at least some sense of humanity left. Cho wanted revenge and glory and had no love for himself or anybody else. Just pure alienated rage. Both are mad but to me each fits his time frame.

If I recall correctly Whitman was taken out with a weapon supplied by a civilian or student.
 
"or were thinking of going to that school next year"

Applications are up.

"They make it sound like the campus will never recover and the student body will never be the same."

How could they "ever" be the same. Will NYC ever be the same after 9-11? Life goes on. Changed in ways, wiser maybe, stronger maybe, etc.

OTOH, last year's freshman class at Tech will be graduated and gone in a few years and there will be 30,000 students on campus who weren't there that day.

John
Class of '72

P.S. - Ever see Tech's super computer?
www.physorg.com/news77811470.html

VT-1_unretouched_1.jpg

"an 1100 Apple Xserve G5 cluster"

That's right, 1100 Apples.
 
The main difference between the UT shootings and the VT shootings was that as soon as thee UT students realized what was happening, they got out their own rifles and kept the gunman pinned down until the police could take him out. Every time Whitman raised his head, several students shot at it. He was so preoccupied that he did not see the police coming around the tower after him until it was too late.
 
I was in class in the Experimental Science Building when the shooting started. We saw guys with shotguns and rifles going up and down the street, but did not know what was happening.

When class was over, I started to go to my next class in another building, and folks at the door said to stay back, there is a guy shooting from the tower. I was skeptical, but then saw a bullet hit the building, so just moved back.

Everyone was concerned, but not pissing their pants.

My wife was at work downtown and had a view of the tower from her window. One of the other secretaries' husband came in bloody after helping pull people from the sidewalk. She could see more than I could.

The huge difference between then and now is that when it was over it was over. I missed a class during the shooting, but next day things were pretty much back to normal except that we couldn't go up in the tower any more. There were no "counsellors" or talk of PTSD or any of that kind of stuff. Classes were not cancelled and people did not go home.

There was no long-term hand-wringing.

And people did not blame guns or Marines or anything besides one Charles Whitman.

Some of the liberal media at the time fussed and fretted that the young cops who took him out shot him rather than trying to reason with him and bring him down alive so they could find some excuse for his behavior. I guess that will never change. Media want someone besides the criminal to blame.

I think the refusal to require people to take responsibility for their actions is the foundation of their animosity toward guns and citizen self-defense.

But fortunately, most Americans have far more sense than the media.
 
It's because 40 years ago, if someone started randomly shooting at people, the people being shot at would shoot back. Common sense has basically gone out the window. Case in point: I had a discussion in the dressing room recently about school shootings. Someone mentioned that they wouldn't be surprised if UT had another shooting. When I mentioned that it was preventable, someone chimed in, "oh, did you hear about those nutty people who want to legalize handguns on campuses?". It's the complete inability to connect 2 + 2. For some reason people think that all guns are bad. I understand the basis of their fears- lack of understanding- but I do not understand their lack of willingness to correct those misunderstandings.
 
I really believe the concept of personal responsibility is what keeps people from accepting the obvious fact that fighting back works.

We all understand that our name is on every bullet fired from our weapon - even if we didn't mean to fire it or if someone else fired it because we lost control. Personal responsibility is inherent in armed self defense. We know that we are responsible for the defense of ourselves and our families. And we expect others to act responsibly.

The whole "liberal" mindset is that someone or something else is always to blame precludes accepting responsibility. "He had a hard childhood so we should try to understand why he shot those people and help him to be a better gentler person" rather than "STOP. NOW."

Thus they blame guns or society or anything. And they also excuse themselves from taking responsibility for their own defense. It is the police that should do that for them.

It is easier and gets more sympathy to be a victim than a victor.

Thus in the recent home invasion in Bowling Green, the man who broke into the home and was shot was reported in the papers and TV as the victim. The only way they would have been sympathetic with the homeowner is if he had been hurt or killed and the criminal had escaped.

I wish we could change the way these folks thing, but I am not holding my breath.
 
My dad was on campus that day. Said he'd had some classes with Whitman and that he was a jerk and a bully. That was back int he good ol' days when guys went around with revolvers in their boot legs. My mom told me about being at home knowing Dad was at school and being worried about him getting shot because she knew he'd have been in a part of campus that would have been open shot from the tower.. Said she was listening to the radio and that it was fairly constant coverage by the local radio stations..

Anyways, I wasn't alive back then so I can't speak to the level of news coverage. But I do recall that access to the clock tower was tightly restricted, pretty much shut off up untill a couple of years ago. So as far as 'the campus' 'getting over it', one might argue that it took them the better part of 40 years to get over it fully.
 
There were a few jumpers from the tower also. And security was non-existent. One person at a small desk sometimes.

It was fun to just go up the tower whenever we wanted and look over campus and town.

I admit I have not kept up with whether they tried to ban guns from campus.

Administration and their lawyers kept the tower closed for a long time; but I don't think many of us who were there were all that traumatized.

An individual behaving badly was dealt with appropriately.
 
The thing that I remember most (I was ten and living on the east coast) was the pictures of people who had other people's blood on them from where they put themselves in the line of fire to pull victims to safety.

These days if something like this occurs most of the "victims" have been taught by the media and those asinine classes to duck and cover (mostly cover their own backsides). What ever happened to Americans having some backbone.

A few people at VT tried to throw chairs and close doors, but the only hero you hear anything about is the old Jewish professor who blocked his door with the only thing he had available (his own body) and kept the crazed gunman out of his classroom at the cost of his own life. That man is a hero, those who cowered and let that madman put a gun to their heads were sheep.

I know I'm going to get flamed for saying that, but it's the truth.

If you're life is in immediate danger you have two options, either fight to live, or give up and die. All too often these days the youth I see in this country are being taught from an early age to give up and die, not commit themselves entirely to their own self-preservation, much less to act with courage and help others to survive.

There have been some fundamental shifts in the attitudes of Americans, and I don't see this shift as a good thing.
 
No flames from me.

The media and others have been training people to be passive victims and to submit to force for decades. It is time to reverse that. Train women to fight back if attacked. Train men to stand up and defend themselves and those about them.

If an attacker gets submission and has his way, he is encouraged to attack more. If he gets the fight of his life, even if he wins he will think twice.

We cannot hope to always prevail, but it is better to die fighting than cowering.
 
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