My mother woke me up Monday morning, calling to say that there had been shooting and a possible ongoing hostage situation at Virginia Tech. So few details were available at that time that we weren’t sure what was happening. We couldn’t get ahold of my sister, Laura, who was scheduled to be on campus that morning, so when the news came out that a second shooting had taken place at Norris Hall we were thrown into panic. Fortunately, she called soon after and we we relieved to learn she was okay. Unfortunately, by midday 33 other people were not.
So many of us here are still in shock. It hasn’t quite set in yet - the fact that something this awful actually took place. Harder yet to understand is that it happened right here, in our beautiful town. It’s too much for us to wrap our minds around. It seems impossible, and yet the painful truth is that it’s not.
I’ve felt for a long time that most press coverage is barely disguised sensational-seeking tabloid reporting and I don’t watch it anymore because of that unless there is something really important I need to know about. Having the national press this close to home really shows how absurd it’s become. It’s hard to avoid literally bumping into reporters. I went to the Holiday Inn across from the campus to return an item I’d borrowed and the place was just swarming with press. A large conference room near the lobby was set up as a CNN war room, with dozens of people furiously typing away on their laptops, making cell phone calls, and monitoring television coverage. Other networks had taken over the cafe and the lounge. It was a surreal scene.
But I digress. My point is that some of the questions and angles they’re using are just ugly. It’s not responsible journalism. It seems their only goal is feed the emotional frenzy and appeal to people’s fear and anger. What does that accomplish? How does this type of reporting improve our world or provide avenues of positive change for the people exposed to it?
It’s not constructive to tear the situation apart and encourage people to play the blame game when so much has been lost already. The national media seems intent on finding fault with VT officials with what happened. Apparently isn’t bad enough that 33 people lost their lives, they need to create more drama and stir up resentment and anger rather than letting the families of the deceased and the Blacksburg community cope with the difficult changes in their lives and move forward.
Two of the most annoying questions are the repeated hounding of the press with “Why wasn’t this prevented?” and “Why wasn’t VT better prepared?” These questions might arise in anyone’s mind, but there are NO answers. How could anyone have predicted that this would happen? No one can prepare for such an event. People want to believe things like can be prevented, and perhaps there are a few things we can learn from this, if we really take the time to understand what’s happened and why.
The tough news is that most tragedies of this nature are senseless and are committed by determined people who would find loopholes and ways to get around any safety measures in place. Several times it’s been suggested that metal detectors should have been installed on all the campus doorways. Seriously? Even if we are just talking about VT and not all the college campuses across the US, I can’t even begin to fathom how many hundreds of machines would be needed. Additionally they would require a person to operate them and conduct searches of folks passing in and out of every entrance in every building. And for what? If someone really wanted inside and didn’t mind care who they injured or killed, they wouldn’t hesitate to shoot the attendant. The same thing goes for people who’ve suggested that guards should be placed in every building. People aren’t thinking rationally when they ask why these measures weren’t in place.
For the most part, these things cannot be prevented but unfortunately, because people don’t want to live with that uncertainty, someone has to be held accountable. People need a living, breathing person to be responsible for this devastating event. Since the gunman is dead and cannot answer to his crime, the media is turning to VT.
There has been a lot of discussion about why the campus wasn’t shut down after the first shooting. That’s an unreasonable notion to even consider. Everyday there are approximately 40,000 people in and around VT on a 2600 acre campus. Think of it as a small town. If a domestic dispute takes place in one home in that town, and police officers have no reason to believe it’s anything other than an isolated event, does the whole town go into lockdown?
If this wasn’t a college campus but a small town, there wouldn’t be questions of what should have been done. It would just be seen as the tragic event that it was. Hindsight is 20/20. In retrospect, there are many things that could have been done, but I believe that VT did the best they could with the limited information they had at the time.
