Thoughts on the Virginia Tech Massacre

As most of you know, a gunman killed 32 students at Virginia Tech today, locking them inside a building and then systematically hunting them down in their barricaded classrooms.

The emotions that must be going through the survivors and the bereaved eludes me until I remember several frantic phone calls from my parents when I was in college. Those calls were regarding fears that wouldn't even approach what most parents of the Hokie students were feeling this morning, but it gave me a touchstone that I can use to gauge the depth of fear and remorse that these people are going through right now.

What I cannot understand is how trained police and administrators can fail to lock down a campus and cancel classes after a double murder takes place in one of their dorm rooms, and the gunman hasn't been caught. I find that unforgivable. The university president says that they had no indication that the murderer would rampage, and in fact had good reason to believe that he had left the campus. My response to that is "why the heck would you gamble lives on the best-case scenario, when cancelling classes and evacuating campus costs you so little?" His poor decision is even less forgivable in light of the fact that he had a similar situation just one year ago, and did the right thing in that situation!

The fact is, the campus police and the university administration not only had experience in a nearly identical situation, but had a year to make plans in case it would happen again! And it did! And they failed to do their utmost to protect the children in their care.

As the hours pass, we will learn more about the killer and the reasons for his rampage, but the parents of the survivors have many questions to ask of the administration for their mishandling of this situation. This wasn't preventable, but it could have been mitigated and many lives could have been saved.