Multiple shootings at Va Tech

[buckeyegrad]

The Va. Tech officials administration is bound to be questioned on this, and I think it actually fair and essential to do just that.

They have justified their reaction as being based on reasonable assumptions, key among which is the assumption that the dorm shooter had gone from campus. (Which claim is undercut by the VT President's assertion that the campus police and local authorities were still trying to pursue the suspect when the classroom shootings began). But the point is that that their reactions were not based on firm facts - they were based on what turned out to be incorrect assumptions.

I am absolutely certain of one thing, if anything remotely like the early morning shooting were ever to happen again at VT their reaction, by rule would be very, very different. Think in terms of classes closed down. Think in terms of police at each and every major thoroughfare on what is, sadly, a very open and easily accessed campus. Think in terms of assuming the worst case scenario (shooter still on campus) and acting accordingly.

Which worst case scenario was a distant nightmare in the VT Administration's imagination till today, and, candidly, a distant nightmare in the minds of many including mine.

Great Post.

As someone who professionally studies higher education administration, I cannot fathom why the VT administration did not assume a worst case scenario and institute an immediate lockdown of the campus. The only plausible explanation I can develop is that the campus culture of VT really did assume that it was "isolated" from what is stereotypically, but incorrectly, considered an urban problem. This may have lead them to believe that the worst case scenario had already occurred with the two dead in the dorms.

This being said, even if the administration had gone for immediate lock down of the campus, there would have been no way of getting the word out to everyone and stop all traffic on campus. They are correct in this statement. Nevertheless, the number on people about campus could have been greatly reduced and perhaps instead of 33 dead, we might be talking less than 10. Not that that number is more acceptable, but some deaths and injuries could have been prevented.

 

[OSU_Buckguy]

i'm watching larry king on cnn. on comes doctor phil. i switch to fox news. there is mark fuhrman.

 

[Jeffcat]

ok i wasnt going to voice my opinion as to what happened especially with all the false media leakouts, and little info that we have but if you really want my personal take on what i think happened or what i think resembles what happened then here is my take from what info there is out there(could be false info).

premise 1: the guy reportedly was searching for his gf at norris but killed a black male and a female at the dorms(from what we know).
premise 2: there was a report at 7:15 of the 2 murders and the police arrived
premise 3: guy reportedly had an ammo vest and a .22 and a 9mm handgun with him and chains.
premise 4: campus officials send out email after incident and no found suspect around 9:15
premise 5: person open fire around 9:40 at norris and kills 30 others in room to room shootings apparently at random and fires approx 80-100 shots in a 25 min period before killing himself

now with these premises i am going to PRESUME what i believe what happened on the basis of what little i know right now and how much the media has skewed things.

the guy is a dark haired asian with reports saying he is a lil under 6 foot wearing a tan shirt and black vest(at norris). he is distraught over a gf or ex gf and kills 2 people in her dorm that either are just there and/or just somehow related to her. i say this because he could have just as easily have killed a lot more than 2 people yet he seemed to methodically kill them and leave based on how he wasnt there when police arrived. eyewitness descriptions are weak at best given the situation. students may not be there and the ones that are certainly are not going to put all of their focus into IDing the suspect but rather on staying alive. this can lead to skewed reports of seeing things such as white male with dark greased hair, etc, etc. it can lead to conflicting eye witness descriptions.
the basis of the crime is very similar to osu in many aspects. they appear to have a large open campus and a large courtyard much like the oval on their campus that he would have to cross or go around. this is much like if this would happen at a freshman dorm like smith hall and then the gunman would go to mcpherson to kill the remaining people. the gunman had 2 hours before incident 1 and 2. this is some gray area as of now. he may have methodically plotted or just went right at it in a slow manner. one way is he walked around their oval and went to the building and in a timely manner chained the doors shut. another way is he could have gone back to a residence and got a backpack or then put on his vest and grabbed all of his ammo and weapons and just casually went on his way. it could also be combination...who knows. he went in and chained the doors with either a pure intention of killing himself or creating a hostage situation. needless to say he is now even more distraught after already killing 2 people and based on reports he was looking for his gf at norris. he probably does not know the exact location of her whereabouts so searches each room and after growing frustration of not finding her, finally enters each room and opens fire in a search for her. in a bout of hopelessness he spares nobody and fires on those in which have nothing to do with his original matter and kills them. he goes room to room to room and then when police show up and he sees them he gives up and kills himself. whether or not he found his gf is unclear as of yet.

now this is obviously all my assumption but on the basis of what i somewhat know RIGHT NOW this seems to piece together rather well in my books. what really happens is a just a matter of time. i dont know if i want to necessarily "blame" the VT officials, given the original situation, for not being more aggressive after the first incident but something more than emails needed to be done. the biggest errors was as you said....assumptions about incident 1 in a scenario so severe that you never assume anything and take every precaution. a lot of idiots dont realize that you are not going to be able to shutdown an entire campus in the matter of an hour(granted police arrive and evaluate incident 1) but most colleges can alert staff readily and let them know the situation briskly and notify the students in some manner(hence incident 2). if officials would of been more aggressive IT MAY HAVE(not definitely) saved lives. i say this because who knows. with students spread out and leaving he may have even been able to kill more for all we know but it seems more likely that he would not be able to do so and it seems like a more suitable solution then students with no knowledge of the situation being essentially ambushed and slaughtered by a student(and yes i believe him to be a student).

just my take.

 

[Jeffcat]

names of the fatalities that i have found out of so far.

ryan clark was the black male murdered in the dorm.

Professor G.V. Loganathan was killed in his classroom, along with
graduate student Juan Ortiz and senior student Jarrett Lane. these 3 were in an advanced hydrology course of 9 students at the time of the shooting.

 

[jlb1705]

Great Post.

As someone who professionally studies higher education administration, I cannot fathom why the VT administration did not assume a worst case scenario and institute an immediate lockdown of the campus. The only plausible explanation I can develop is that the campus culture of VT really did assume that it was "isolated" from what is stereotypically, but incorrectly, considered an urban problem. This may have lead them to believe that the worst case scenario had already occurred with the two dead in the dorms.

This being said, even if the administration had gone for immediate lock down of the campus, there would have been no way of getting the word out to everyone and stop all traffic on campus. They are correct in this statement. Nevertheless, the number on people about campus could have been greatly reduced and perhaps instead of 33 dead, we might be talking less than 10. Not that that number is more acceptable, but some deaths and injuries could have been prevented.

It's very easy to say that an immediately lockdown was in order after everything has taken place. According to VT Police, a preponderance of the evidence available to them at the time led them to believe that it was a domestic incident.

Large and even medium-sized college campuses are small towns and cities unto themselves. I realize that there are many aspects that make a college campus a different and unique place, but even so, is it really prudent to attempt to lockdown an entire campus of that size over a residence hall shooting? I mean, in your typical small town, nobody shuts down their stores or is sent home from work because somebody on the other end of the small town got shot.

I don't think it's fair at this point to accuse VT of mishandling this unfortunate situation. It appears they have been carrying out their emergency plans the best they can. It seems to me that there is a growing call to question their course of action and their planning, and you can bet that when the time comes, they will be assessing that plan and coming up with something new. Unfortunately, I don't think any institution could have planned for this - there's just little to no way to defend yourself completely against this kind of brutally efficient rampage.

Needless to say, while Virginia Tech spends tomorrow investigating and trying to pick up the pieces, other institutions across the country will be assessing their own plans and procedures for this kind of scenario.

 

[jlb1705]

ok i wasnt going to voice my opinion as to what happened especially with all the false media leakouts, and little info that we have but if you really want my personal take on what i think happened or what i think resembles what happened then here is my take from what info there is out there(could be false info).

premise 1: the guy reportedly was searching for his gf at norris but killed a black male and a female at the dorms(from what we know).
premise 2: there was a report at 7:15 of the 2 murders and the police arrived
premise 3: guy reportedly had an ammo vest and a .22 and a 9mm handgun with him and chains.
premise 4: campus officials send out email after incident and no found suspect around 9:15
premise 5: person open fire around 9:40 at norris and kills 30 others in room to room shootings apparently at random and fires approx 80-100 shots in a 25 min period before killing himself

now with these premises i am going to PRESUME what i believe what happened on the basis of what little i know right now and how much the media has skewed things.

the guy is a dark haired asian with reports saying he is a lil under 6 foot wearing a tan shirt and black vest(at norris). he is distraught over a gf or ex gf and kills 2 people in her dorm that either are just there and/or just somehow related to her. i say this because he could have just as easily have killed a lot more than 2 people yet he seemed to methodically kill them and leave based on how he wasnt there when police arrived. eyewitness descriptions are weak at best given the situation. students may not be there and the ones that are certainly are not going to put all of their focus into IDing the suspect but rather on staying alive. this can lead to skewed reports of seeing things such as white male with dark greased hair, etc, etc. it can lead to conflicting eye witness descriptions.
the basis of the crime is very similar to osu in many aspects. they appear to have a large open campus and a large courtyard much like the oval on their campus that he would have to cross or go around. this is much like if this would happen at a freshman dorm like smith hall and then the gunman would go to mcpherson to kill the remaining people. the gunman had 2 hours before incident 1 and 2. this is some gray area as of now. he may have methodically plotted or just went right at it in a slow manner. one way is he walked around their oval and went to the building and in a timely manner chained the doors shut. another way is he could have gone back to a residence and got a backpack or then put on his vest and grabbed all of his ammo and weapons and just casually went on his way. it could also be combination...who knows. he went in and chained the doors with either a pure intention of killing himself or creating a hostage situation. needless to say he is now even more distraught after already killing 2 people and based on reports he was looking for his gf at norris. he probably does not know the exact location of her whereabouts so searches each room and after growing frustration of not finding her, finally enters each room and opens fire in a search for her. in a bout of hopelessness he spares nobody and fires on those in which have nothing to do with his original matter and kills them. he goes room to room to room and then when police show up and he sees them he gives up and kills himself. whether or not he found his gf is unclear as of yet.

now this is obviously all my assumption but on the basis of what i somewhat know RIGHT NOW this seems to piece together rather well in my books. what really happens is a just a matter of time. i dont know if i want to necessarily "blame" the VT officials, given the original situation, for not being more aggressive after the first incident but something more than emails needed to be done. the biggest errors was as you said....assumptions about incident 1 in a scenario so severe that you never assume anything and take every precaution. a lot of idiots dont realize that you are not going to be able to shutdown an entire campus in the matter of an hour(granted police arrive and evaluate incident 1) but most colleges can alert staff readily and let them know the situation briskly and notify the students in some manner(hence incident 2). if officials would of been more aggressive IT MAY HAVE(not definitely) saved lives. i say this because who knows. with students spread out and leaving he may have even been able to kill more for all we know but it seems more likely that he would not be able to do so and it seems like a more suitable solution then students with no knowledge of the situation being essentially ambushed and slaughtered by a student(and yes i believe him to be a student).

just my take.

If the rumor/assumption that he was searching for his girlfriend/ex-girlfriend is true, I hope he found her. I know it sounds crass, but I can't imagine what kind of life she would have to try to lead if she had somehow made it through the day alive - especially when other people found out who she was. I wouldn't be able to live with myself.

 

[Jeffcat]

17 confirmed fatality names

17:
Ryan Clark
Henry Lee
Leslie Sherman
Mary Read
Emily Hilscher
Dr. GV Loganathan
Juan Ortiz
Jarrett Lane
Jamie Bishop
Kevin Granata
Prof. Liviu Librescu
Maxine Turner
Reema Samaha
Daniel Perez
Caitlin Hammaren
Brian Bluhm
Matt La Porte

 

[Jeffcat]

If the rumor/assumption that he was searching for his girlfriend/ex-girlfriend is true, I hope he found her. I know it sounds crass, but I can't imagine what kind of life she would have to try to lead if she had somehow made it through the day alive - especially when other people found out who she was. I wouldn't be able to live with myself.

no doubt there. like i said its all assumption on my part but it just seems to piece together better than anything else i have thought of so far. i believe the dead have all been accounted for but im hoping the best for those in ICU/critical condition as of now.

 

[buckeyegrad]

It's very easy to say that an immediately lockdown was in order after everything has taken place. According to VT Police, a preponderance of the evidence available to them at the time led them to believe that it was a domestic incident.

I'm not trying to place blame here, only trying to understand the logic of the administration's actions. I realize that the police thought it was a domestic incident and that they also had reason to believe the murderer had fled campus. However, considering the murderer was not captured or verified to have left campus for good, actions to prevent a worst case scenario should have been taken (i.e. immediate lockdown). Like I said, the campus culture of assuming isolation may have lead them to believe the worst case scenario had already happened with the two dead in the resident hall.

Large and even medium-sized college campuses are small towns and cities unto themselves. I realize that there are many aspects that make a college campus a different and unique place, but even so, is it really prudent to attempt to lockdown an entire campus of that size over a residence hall shooting? I mean, in your typical small town, nobody shuts down their stores or is sent home from work because somebody on the other end of the small town got shot.

You are correct that campus' are unique places and hence the small town analogy does not work. The administration has a responsibility to create a safe educational environment for each student. That being said, I don't think it is fair to expect them to prevent such a situation as this from ever occurring (it's not even possible), but it is fair to expect them to try to reduce the chance of such situations from occurring as part of their charge to create a safe environment. There is nothing wrong with questioning whether the VT administration effectively did this or not.

 

[jlb1705]

I'm seeing a few trends in the coverage of this tragedy that are really disturbing me. First of all is the need for the public to place blame, and the media is the ringleader in that circus. I have no problem with questioning the actions of the authorities and administration - in fact, it is a healthy and necessary part of the process. It's just not healthy to be doing it right now. Give the families, friends and communities time to grieve. Give the authorities time to investigate. When there are more facts and less emotions, it will be a much more productive discussion. It's even worse that these questions are being raised in a way that infers blame being placed on the institution. The president of the university did not go out and fatally shoot 32 people. Since he's not dead though and the shooter is, he's going to be the focus of the mob.

Secondly, I'm disturbed by the instant messenger-YouTube effect on this tragedy and the coverage. It has already made an instant celebrity of the Palestinian man who filmed the campus as gunshots rang out. Every news site I've been to today has been soliciting reactions from people "who were there" I saw one newscast today that was talking about trolling blogs for details on the incident - and was even advising worried parents to try to find somebody with access to Facebook to find out if their son or daughter was still alive. Frantic text messages are being published. There seems to be desperation to offer up any artifact of this tragedy for consumption. As a nation, we just wasted one week of our lives worrying about what kinds of things are and are not fit to be broadcast on TV and radio, yet there is a hunger for the kind of graphic coverage that's going on right now. On a personal level, I find video of the gunshots being fired - knowing that each one more likely than not represents somebody's friend or family member being brutally executed - to be far more appalling than anything that was involved in the outcry against Don Imus. I turn the channel whenever that video comes on. Unfortunately, we now live in a culture where that video will become ubiquitous, and I think it's shameful.

Related to both of these trends is the inference that Virginia Tech made grave mistakes in the actions they took to notify students of the events that were unfolding. This accusation is being raised by the line of questioning of the news media - an institution that is culturally and functionally designed for the constant and instant reception, processing, and dissemination of information. There is a disconnect though, in that many parts of the rest of society do not or can not operate in that manner. Additionally, today's students communicate and gather information in a wide variety of ways. I think we are all well aware of most of them, so I won't list them. All of the research I have seen though shows that when it comes to a university communicating with their students, there is no one surefire way to communicate with all students. On top of that, students are misleading in that they will indicate that they prefer particular methods of communication, yet will ignore correspondence sent via that method. Reaching many students by phone can be difficult if not impossible. A graduate student colleague of mine did a study on student contact information, and found that the institution they studied did not have the proper contact telephone number for over half of the students they surveyed. Residence hall telephones are practically obsolete now due to cellphones - and in a case like this, they could have been very useful in spreading news on campus. Students typically indicate that they prefer communications from their institution via email, yet anecdotally, many students ignore mass emails from the instition, and many more still do not activate their campus email account or check it often enough to make it even remotely effective in a case like this.

 

[jlb1705]

I'm not trying to place blame here, only trying to understand the logic of the administration's actions. I realize that the police thought it was a domestic incident and that they also had reason to believe the murderer had fled campus. However, considering the murderer was not captured or verified to have left campus for good, actions to prevent a worst case scenario should have been taken (i.e. immediate lockdown). Like I said, the campus culture of assuming isolation may have lead them to believe the worst case scenario had already happened with the two dead in the resident hall.

You are correct that campus' are unique places and hence the small town analogy does not work. The administration has a responsibility to create a safe educational environment for each student. That being said, I don't think it is fair to expect them to prevent such a situation as this from ever occurring (it's not even possible), but it is fair to expect them to try to reduce the chance of such situations from occurring as part of their charge to create a safe environment. There is nothing wrong with questioning whether the VT administration effectively did this or not.

Is the function of assuming isolation really a function of campus culture? I think that it's more likely a function of culture in general, in that I have a difficult time imagining any institution reacting any differently in the early stages of their investigation and reaction.

 

[methomps]

If I had my way, every time a news organization questioned why certain decisions weren't made within a short timeframe, it would be immediately followed by clips of news anchors reacting to the initial reports on 9/11. Let the world see a news anchor question why the administration didn't take precaution x, then show that correspondent saying "I wonder if somehow this was an accident and the pilot didn't see the WTC tower"

 

[OSUsushichic]

G. V. Loganathan, professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering in the College of Engineering at Virginia Tech, received Virginia Tech's 2006 W.E. Wine Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Loganathan first became a member of the Virginia Tech community in 1982 and has since earned several honors, including the Outstanding Faculty Award, the Dean's Award for Excellence in Teaching, and Faculty Achievement Award for Excellence in Civil Engineering Education.

http://www.universityawards.vt.edu/award.php?item=514

:(

 

[methomps]

premise 1: the guy reportedly was searching for his gf at norris but killed a black male and a female at the dorms(from what we know).

I've seen some news reports say that one of the victims killed in the dorm was his gf. If this is so, then he may have been looking for her lover or he may have realized that his life was over and decided to go down shooting.

 

[MililaniBuckeye]

As strange as this sounds, though no one can ever be comforted by this, I would have preferred that it would have been some terrorist attack, rather than some random act of violence. For some reason that's much scarier for me.

This deserves this week's "You've Got to be Fucking Shitting Me" award. Had this been a terrorist attack it would've shown just how easy it is for one death-wish mother fucker to slaughter dozens of people and get huge news coverage. No need to fuck around to trying to get materials--now tracked by the FBI--to build bombs. Just go buy a couple legal firearms and a couple hundred rounds of ammo and go hunting.

Conversely, it being a "random act of violence" implies just that--randomness, and with it rarity.

As for those yayhoos out there saying the school administration should've done more, there is absolutely no way to prevent this. If I got pissed off at some local moke and decided, "Fuck it, I'm gonna go kill as many people as I can", there's no way anyone will be able to stop me until I railed through dozens of victims. Look at the weather during the shooting...light snow flurries (i.e., cold) so everyone had heavy jackets on, which is perfect for a gunman to hide weapons and ammo. This act was unpreventable...