Would you allow your child to attend Virginia Tech next fall?

barrons · April 19, 2007, 3:46pm

Roanoke has several major hospitals and is only 25 miles or so away. The main problem was high winds made chopper flights impossible; however most were dead from multiple wounds before they were even found.

hazmat · April 19, 2007, 3:58pm

Apparently reports say second weapon purchased online through a store in Wisconsin.

jmmom · April 19, 2007, 4:19pm

Thank you for that posting merblajam. I have copied it, as I believe - sadly - that there will come other times when I will want to see it again.

momofthree · April 19, 2007, 5:02pm

merblajam,

Thanks for bringing those wonderful words to this forum.

dnpwlee · April 19, 2007, 7:18pm

Cornell had a service today - here is the text which, as a parent, I received by email just now:

Dear Friends,

This afternoon witnessed a gathering of the Cornell community in Sage 
Chapel to honor the memories of the victims of Monday's tragedy at 
Virginia Tech. I would like to share with our entire Cornell family 
the program and the remarks of the three speakers: Dean W. Kent Fuchs 
of the College of Engineering, President David J. Skorton, and 
Provost Carolyn "Biddy" Martin.

A video of the service can be seen on the web at the Cornell 
University home page: <a href="http://www.cornell.edu">http://www.cornell.edu</a>

Tommy Bruce
Vice President for University Communications

THE PROGRAM

A Service of Remembrance and Reflection
for Victims of Virginia Technical Institute and State University Tragedy

Thursday, April 19, 2007
12:30 p.m.
Sage Chapel, Cornell University
Ithaca, New York

Prior to the service, the chimes of McGraw Tower rang thirty-three 
times in memory of each victim of the tragic shootings at Virginia 
Tech on Monday, April 16, 2007.

Prelude: Master Tallis's Testament
Herbery Howells (1892 - 1982)
Professor Annette Richards, University Organist

Welcome and Remembrance
W. Kent Fuchs
The Joseph Silbert Dean of Engineering
Father of Eric Fuchs, Virginia Tech, Class of 2008

Music: 'In Paradisum' from Requiem
Maurice Durufle (1902 - 1986)
Cornell University Glee Club and Chorus
Directed by Katherine Fitzgibbon

Message
David J. Skorton
President, Cornell University

Music: Panis Angelicus
Rev. Heewon Chun
Chaplain, Korean Church at Cornell University

Reflection
Carolyn "Biddy" Martin
Provost, Cornell University

A Time of Silence

Postlude: Fantasia in G Minor
J. S. Bach (1685 -1750)
Professor Annette Richards, University Organist

"We are strong enough to stand tall tearlessly. We are brave enough 
to bend to cry, and sad enough to know we must laugh again."
Nikki Giovanni
Virginia Tech University Distinguished Professor, Poet and Activist

REMARKS BY DEAN KENT W. FUCHS

Today the Cornell family joins with the Virginia Tech family in 
remembering the many students and faculty that unexpectedly and 
violently died this week.

Our grief at this loss is profound because we are a part of the same 
family of students, faculty, and staff. Like those at VT, Monday 
morning we were in class, taking exams, giving lectures, and sharing 
with Virginia Tech students and faculty in the hard work but great 
joy of learning and teaching.

Many in the Cornell family have very personal connections to VT. 
Some of you have studied, lived, and even have grown up in 
Blacksburg. A number of you have degrees from Virginia Tech. Others 
of us have colleagues, friends, sisters, brothers, daughters, and 
sons now at VT.

My first visit to VT four years ago was with my son, Eric. He was 
looking for a good engineering school, but one that wasn't too close 
to his parents at Cornell. On that first visit Eric and I were 
immensely impressed by the people of VT and the peaceful beauty of 
the campus.

With Eric now studying Engineering at VT, I have come to greatly 
appreciate the VT family. The students and faculty care greatly for 
each other and have an immense loyalty to their university.

I have also come to appreciate, through my son, what it means to have 
a Turkey as your school mascot, to have statues of a Turkey in town, 
and to call yourself a Hokie, which my son does with enormous pride. 
He loves the campus, his studies, and the people of that university.

The unspeakable tragedy of this Monday morning in Norris Hall and 
West Ambler Johnston Hall is particularly difficult to comprehend, 
because of its scale, because of its stark contrast to the peaceful 
beauty of VT's campus, and the love and care demonstrated by VT's 
students and faculty. The tragedy is also an enormous contrast to 
the common mission that we share in the joy of learning and teaching.

It will take many years before we will be able to see how the good 
resulting from this tragedy could possibly be greater than the pain 
of this week. Although I have not experienced the depth of loss now 
present at VT, I do pray that I will become a better person because 
of this week. I pray that I will value more greatly the enormous 
privilege of being at a university with students, staff, and 
colleagues. I pray that I will more dearly love the students, staff 
and faculty on this campus and will work more diligently to serve 
others.

I will close by reading a few words from my colleague, the Virignia 
Tech Engineering Dean, Richard Benson. I have been in his office on 
the 3rd floor of Norris Hall, the floor above where most of the 
deaths occurred. I was at a meeting with Dean Benson Monday morning 
in another city when he received the urgent message about the first 
shootings. Here is a part of what Dean Benson wrote to his 
Engineering students and faculty:

"My heart aches for the lives of the students lost. These bright 
young men and women were in the prime of life, planning for rich, 
fulfilling futures. They came to Virginia Tech to acquire an 
education; an education that would forever change their lives...

"The murdered faculty members had devoted their lives to scholarship 
and education. They so beautifully embodied Virginia Tech's motto of 
Ut Prosim - that I may serve.

"Virginia Tech is a noble place. It is a nobility born of our great 
Land Grant tradition, a nobility born of a place of learning. Young 
women and men - many of modest beginnings - come here to learn. We 
ask that they work hard - and they do

"While our loss is huge and our grief unbearable, the nobility of 
this great community of scholars is undiminished. Those of us that 
survive, and those that will come after will continue to dedicate 
themselves to teaching and learning. And we will never forget the 
friends that we lost. As long as there is a Virginia Tech they will 
be remembered. They are more than friends. They are family."

We are here as members of the Cornell family. But this week we are 
also members of the VT family. This week it is an honor and a 
privilege join with those at VT and to call ourselves Hokies.

REMARKS BY PRESIDENT DAVID J. SKORTON

We Are One

We are one; one community, one people, one planet.

We are here today to affirm that one-ness and to draw strength from 
each other, to find peace in each other, to care for each other and 
to share our love.

We are one.

We are here to bear witness to the passing of the 33 members of our 
family at Virginia Tech University who have met an untimely and 
terrible fate.

We are here for all of those who are gone, for all 33.

We are here for the 32 who have passed from the immediate to another 
place, not by their own choice.

We are also here for the 1 who has also passed.

We are one.

We are here to join arms and hearts with the families, friends and 
colleagues of all of these individuals.

We are here to join with our friends in the Korean and Korean-
American communities for we are all one family, most especially today 
we share the same sorrow and the same need for comfort and reassurance.

We are one.

We are here to recognize that there are many issues to discuss, many 
plans to be made, many disagreements to be settled, causes to be 
sought, remedies to be conceived -- but not today, not now. Now, we 
are here to comfort and be comforted, to remember.

We are one.

We are here to seek meaning, to make sense out of the senseless, to 
somehow find a way to move forward.

We are here to find courage, to find a way to still believe in 
tomorrow, a tomorrow without fear, a tomorrow that still has endless 
possibilities.

We are here to affirm the importance of openness on our campuses, the 
openness that permits us to be together in this way, in this place, 
at this time.

We are one.

We are together today to look both backward and forward, to look both 
within and without, to look at the person next to us and at 
ourselves, to find our bearings, our place.

We will stay together, we will go forward together, we will never 
forget our loss.

We are one.

REMARKS BY PROVOST CAROLYN "BIDDY" MARTIN

On Monday morning I was in my native Virginia at my mother's home 
when word began to break of the shootings at Virginia Tech. On the 
local Roanoke news, there were anchors who were graduates of Virginia 
Tech, and we received the news from people who knew and loved the 
campus. One of the many things that struck me in the coverage that 
day was the dignity of the students who were approached for 
interviews--their humility, their respect, their unwillingness to 
offer superficial commentary, and their resistance to easy analysis 
and the assigning of blame. In their responses to questions, they 
made a plea, sometimes implicitly, other times directly. What did 
they ask of the journalists and, also, of us? That we not reduce 
their university or their experience of it to this horror, this 
unspeakable tragedy, that Virginia Tech not be defined only by that 
spectacular phrase that we have heard so often since Monday-"the 
biggest massacre in U.S. history." In their efforts to defend 
against this stain, the students kept open a space of thought and 
reflection.

The media rushes, understandably, to cover the event, and the events 
become spectacle, compounding the effects of depersonalization as 
journalists and the public press for immediate and abbreviated 
responses and analyses. How extraordinary, under those 
circumstances, were the efforts of the students and alumni to express 
their love of Virginia Tech, of one another, to hold open the gap 
between their experience of the place and the violence and death that 
were coming to define it. They had been robbed of friends, of 
classmates, and of teachers; they had had the taken-for-granted 
safety of the dorm room and the classroom shattered. They have lost 
for now a sense of safety in the thrilling openness of university 
campus. They did not want, in addition, to be robbed of their 
experience of the place or their attachment to it; did not want their 
murdered friends, classmates and teachers to be remembered only for 
the horrifying way in which their lives were taken. Just as the 
names and stories of the victims began to give a human scale and 
texture to an otherwise surreally traumatic and depersonalizing 
event, so, too, the students' reserve and their claims to the 
totality of their experience and attachment began to restore to them 
all that they have learned and loved at Virginia Tech. In their 
expressions of pride, they fight to have life and attachment prevail 
over the isolation, illness, and rage that appear to have been major 
factors in this horror.

It is not difficult for Cornellians to answer the students' call, to 
attach to Virginia Tech, out of compassion, and with a capacious 
understanding of what Virginia Tech is and what it represents. Like 
Cornell, it was founded in the 1870s as a land grant university, and 
it is beloved throughout the state of Virginia for its remarkable 
contributions for over a century and a quarter to the state, the 
nation, and the rest of the world. It is nestled among some of the 
most beautiful and gentlest mountains in the Appalachians, and even 
in this cold Virginia April, has already displayed wild profusions of 
yellow forsythia and daffodils (or jonquils, as my mother would say), 
pink and white dogwood, and the beginnings of that splash of color 
that only azaleas can produce in the turn toward Spring.

It is a university with a great faculty and great students, proud, in 
particular, of its Agriculture and Life Sciences, its engineering, 
and creative writing, the liberal arts, and its outreach and 
extension, proud, too, of its legendary athletics teams. It is 
beloved, as I have said, not only by students, faculty, staff and 
alumni, but by the entire state of Virginia, even those who choose 
the University of Virginia in the great rivalry between Virginia Tech 
Hokies and Virginia Cavaliers that is one of Virginia's great 
sports. This week, everyone is a Hokie fan. Already on Monday and 
then on Tuesday and Wednesday, counties all over Virginia were 
covered with Hokie colors, Virginians having donned Virginia Tech 
sweatshirts and hats, some spontaneously, some at the urging of the 
churches that were holding vigils.

At the convocation in Blacksburg on Tuesday, poet Nikki Giovanni used 
her poetic genius to invoke, indeed, to activate a healing sense of 
community and of perspective, linking the tragic deaths and injuries 
at Virginia Tech to other tragedies in other parts of the world, and 
emphasizing that none of them was deserved, also repeating, as 
incantation, the words: "We are Virginia Tech," the emphasis on the 
word "are," signaling the fact of being, of continuity, and a 
commitment to life and to community. "We will prevail," she said, 
but not by moving on, not by denying our shock or the many dimensions 
of grief. We will prevail, she seemed to be saying, by going 
straight through the effects of horror, together.

Here at Cornell let us remember what unites us in our shared 
humanity, our shared vulnerability, our capacity, indeed, our 
responsibility to attach to others, especially the most isolated. 
Let us also risk even, and today, especially, a certain hokiness. 
May life and attachment prevail over isolation, social deaths, 
physical death, and violence, everywhere.

Please join me in a moment of silence in remembrance of Monday's 
victims.

yermom · April 19, 2007, 8:15pm

As the initiator of this question, I might opine on the subject as I wasn't sure how I REALLY felt about it. We have 2 DD in college now, 1 in a public college in VA and the other at a private college in New England. From what my DD says about large schools, there is more room to "fly under the radar". Many of her professors do not know her(or care to know her). The administration is a faceless place to figure out how many courses she needs to graduate or how much money she owes. Large schools are very different places than small ones. D2 said that it would be very difficult to stay below the radar as there is more accountability for your actions. She knows the Dean of her Commons, her profs, and her Head Resident. If there was a loner, they would know.

I think this whole tragic episode may have shaken all colleges to the core. I think there will be training at all levels to recognize students who are in trouble. There does appear to be a reluctance to intervene if there is a student who has psychological/psychiactric issues. There isn't a clear-cut policy to follow and each episode appears to be on a case-by-case basis. I'm sure by next year this will change. I feel it will make colleges more of a community in the best sense of the word.

Outside the college communities, lots of heavy lifting still needs to be done. I doubt much new will happen in the world of gun law, forced commitment, and the like.

bigp9998 · April 19, 2007, 8:18pm

@ Sharon D et al

You cannot possibly use the argument that something like this is actually preventable. What, you want to lock up every student who has very few friends, writes about violent subjects, and has some sort of mental issue? Because removing him from campus would not have solved anything. As another poster mentioned, his motivation for this event only would have gotten stronger. The majority of universities have nothing in place preventing a random person unassociated with the university from walking into a random classroom and opening fire. It is very easy in hindsight for one to say "oh, well why didn't they do something about it? He clearly had mental problems" What exactly do you want them to do? Of the hundreds of students that fit his personality description in the country, one went berserk. So you want all others to be forcefully removed from campus? Locked up? Killed?

On another topic addressed by posters, the gun control debate that is certain to occur has been argued constantly after every school shooting in United States history. Quite frankly, both sides of the argument don't have any merit. Note that I am not advocating either side but instead pointing out the flaws of both.

Increasing the number of guns in society would only increase the violence. What's to say that having armed professors would have caused any less chaos? With the bullets flying and nobody knowing what was happening, it could have only gotten worse.

And decreasing the number of guns, although the overall murder rate might be decreased, would not have prevented this tragedy. If he was completely convinced to do this, he would have found a way. Plus there is the whole second amendment thing.

So what is to be learned from the incident? Well, that things like this are unavoidable. Every once in a while an insane person will go over the edge and kill anyone they can. A few security measures and better treatment of mental conditions won't change that.

Please understant that while I may sound overly critical of everyone who has provided a solution, I am only showing that events like this are inevitable. I am not "taking the side of" the shooter or anything of the sort. I am only pointing out the truth.

redbeard · April 19, 2007, 8:38pm

To answer the OP's question, consider this:
Today's Washington Post has a superb narrative of Monday's events. They walk through the early morning 'day in the life' of many of the victims and other affected individuals. More than anything, this gives you a sense of life on a large college campus: all-nighters, weekend gatherings, informal groups, some people sleeping in 'rooms not their own', tough classes, writing papers, etc. You will read about the banter between the faculty and the students at Norris. (Heartrendering, but, at the same time, mesmerizing.) It tells you a lot about how connected some students were with their faculty.

There's no sugar coating it: going to Tech will be a challenge. If my child wanted to undertake that challenge, I would offer my full encouragement. Then I would thank the good Lord that I was blessed with a child with such strength of character.

Northstarmom · April 19, 2007, 9:05pm

I would not want my kid to go to VT next fall for the same reason that I would not have wanted my kid to go to a New Orleans university last fall: I wouldn't want my kid to be a freshman in college in a place rife with post traumatic stress syndrome.

I would not assume that VT would be any more prone to violence than any other place in this country. I would think, however, that the faculty, administrators and many students would still be emotionally coping with the devastating experience that occured this week.

curmudgeon · April 19, 2007, 9:38pm

if it were my kid's choice, I would support that choice. I have been mightily impressed with the place.

SharonD · April 19, 2007, 10:25pm

bigp9998: Yep....that's exactly what I would like to see happen....this student had MAJOR issues and he did NOT belong on this campus and I bet if he had slaughtered your son or daughter you wouldn't be so adamant that "things like this are unavoidable." If that is true then let's just rewind back to Monday morning and say, "Oh well.....stuff happens and why is everyone making such a fuss and by the way, would you please turn the channel"?

I don't even know anyone on that campus that was murdered, but I do know that every life is valuable and worth saving and IF this boy had gotten the proper help he needed AND removed from the campus, these people and he might still be alive. You cannot just go around and accept every evil thing that happens in this world with the attitude that nothing can be done because it hasn't affected you personally. These people will all have died in vain if something isn't done to change the process for allowing a killer like this to stay in mainstream society, let alone on a college campus. They deserve better than that.

bookworm · April 19, 2007, 10:31pm

At local HS, a student has threatened to kill the Jewish students. The Principal has told student body not to worry, but many kids will not be showing up at school tomorrow.

When I think of all the depressed, isolated kids I have known, it is hard to predict which ones could cause trouble. After the fact, the signs are obvious.

SharonD · April 19, 2007, 10:54pm

bookworm: yeah and after the fact is too late and how can the principal tell the students not to worry? The student doing the threatening needs to be suspended until he/she can be evaulated and proven not to be a threat to anyone. But that probably won't happen because the principal is thinking the kid is all talk and since no one much is going to show up for school tomorrow anyway, maybe the kid will change his/her mind....not good enough for me. I pray this kid gets help and that nothing serious happens.

bigp9998 · April 19, 2007, 11:13pm

So Sharon, what is your solution? You are providing a barrage of after-the-fact wishes and recommendations of what should happen in the future. And no, I do not "just go around and accept every evil thing that happens in this world with the attitude that nothing can be done because it has not affected [me] personally". There are a great deal of negative situations in the world that in my opinion can be resolved through diplomacy and peace instead of war. They are just examples, but the majority of militaryconflicts can be resolved through peaceful means. In no way do I just accept that they happen.

It is just that mass murders and shootings can in no way be predicted. Since those involved are usually very introverted and lonely in the first place, it is IMPOSSIBLE to tell which ones are potentially violent.

Once again, it is so easy for you to say that he should have been removed but this is only as a result of the events. Had the massacre not happened neither you or I would never have heard of this student or even had any idea who he was. So I ask you again to present to me an actual solution instead of just "gotten the proper help and removed from the campus". I restate the fact that removing him from campus would have only escalated his frustration and their was nothing to prevent him from simply walking onto campus, into the building, and doing the exact same thing. So do what in fact do you propose? Incarcerating every depressed student who writes about violence in notebooks? Let's see your actual solution instead of just nonsense about what should have been done.

And of course every life is valuable and worth saving. You've got to be kidding me. Don't act like I don't value life. There just isn't a workable solution to the particular case of school shootings because they are impossible to predict.

bookworm · April 19, 2007, 11:23pm

Sharon,
The HS boy is suspended, and police will be on campus tomorrow. No guns were found at his house. I think the HS is doing all it can. Still, as Biff notes, anyone can walk onto a parking lot.

edad · April 20, 2007, 5:54am

SharonD: I understand your perspective and I do agree with some of your points. Before you start blaming the V Tech administration or society for not acting, you might want to consider some harsh realities.

Society is struggling with rising healthcare costs. Even for acute physical diseases, medical coverage is often minimal. Reimbursements are being cut, hospitals are closing and every hospital and healthcare provider is being pushed to find the least expensive solutions. Patients are being discharged as soon as possible and every hospital is looking to cut corners by further shortening length of stay. Care for discharged patients is often very minimal and family and friends are being forced to care for acutely ill patients who are being discharged soon after surgery and other acute care procedures. The situation is much worse for mental health coverage. Most insurance plans provide little or no coverage for mental health. State facilities are worse. I live a few miles from a former State run, 1000 bed pyschiatric hospital. The facility was closed almost 20 years ago. There was nothing to replace the care that was provided. The patients needing care are on the streets. There is very little available for the patient who wants care. The individual who denies that they need help is very easily overlooked.

You may believe that those who deny the need for help should be forced into treatment. The diagnosis of mental health diseases is very uncertain. Even if we could diagnose, against an individual's will, treatments are long term, expensive and often not effective. It is important to consider the atroicities which have been commited in the name of mental healthcare. The history of mental health care demands that we error on the side of individual rights.

I suggest you look at some of the realities before you point the finger of blame. This one deranged individual is just an infinitely small part of a major problem. Before you say THEY should have done something, consider that you are a part of this society and you need to do your part to make changes.

cangel · April 20, 2007, 9:01am

Edad is exactly right. When the state funded/run mental health system (which was antiquated and almost barbaric) was dismantled by the federal courts about 30 years ago, the idea was that patients would be cared for in community mental health facilities, that didn't happen.
About 15 years ago there was a flurry of short term inpatient treatment units developed in hospitals, with their prime business being detox, but insurance companies soon deemed that too expensive (all inpatient care is "too expensive", even this type care that doesn't involve very many procedures). That's when mental health coverage began to disappear from commercial insurance.
Another problem is that young adults have some of the lowest rates "insuredness", severe mental illness often starts in young adults, that compounds the problem.

I wouldn't be a bit surprised if we eventually learn that the magistrate's decision that sent the young man to outpatient therapy rather than more restrictive inpatient therapy, had something to do with coverage issues. Probably not, because there hasn't been any evidence so far that he was openly violent before Monday (stalking, unfortunately doesn't count yet), but it wouldn't surprise me.

trey1105 · April 20, 2007, 9:06am

My son had a choice between a VT and another school. He came home on Monday afternoon and said well my choice is made. It wasn't VT. But we, as parents, had not said a word to him about the topic.

zoosermom · April 20, 2007, 9:14am

"Please understant that while I may sound overly critical of everyone who has provided a solution, I am only showing that events like this are inevitable. I am not "taking the side of" the shooter or anything of the sort. I am only pointing out the truth."

So glad you know what the "truth" is and exactly how to run the world. Must be a big responsibility. Please understand that if I sound overly critical of someone who has all the answers, it's only because I am.

momray · April 20, 2007, 9:40am

Don't have time to read every entry into this thread but my nephew and my granddaughter have been accepted at Virginia Tech and both still intend to enroll. My brother was kill on Good Friday by a man with a gun, looking for money. This tragedy hits twice as hard for his son, who had just returned from Hokie Focus Sunday. It's an individual choice; one need made by students and parents. I do know many parents stating their children are coming home.....with no input from their child. In my opinion, this isn't in the best interest. Without options and choices, these young adults may learn to "live in fear".

God Bless Virginia Tech and all the victims and their families and friends. Today, we are all Hokies!

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