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Katherine Hillier
Managing Editor
Thirty-three people were killed Monday morning at Virginia Tech in the largest gun massacre in United States history.
At around 7:15 a.m. shots were fired in the West Ambler Johnston residence hall and two students were killed.
Later a student, Seung-hui Cho, went to the Norris Hall building that housed classrooms and opened fire at around 9 a.m., killing 30 students before killing himself.
This is a great tragedy for our country, but what is an even greater tragedy is that after the first shooting in the residence hall, the school failed to notify students of the situation.
As a result, many students attended their morning classes oblivious to the possible danger posed by Cho.
How is it that a fatal shooting of two college students does not constitute a shut down of the campus or even an immediate warning to all students?
It took authorities around two hours to notify students of this tragedy and by that time many students were already in class.
For the students who attended classes in the Norris Hall building the tardiness of information about the shooting quite possibly contributed to their deaths.
It is easy to look back on a tragedy like this and criticize aspects of it.
However, something as simple as notifying students should be an assumed responsibility of campus police.
Unfortunately today, school shootings are becoming more and more common and it seems only natural that the initial response to a killing on a college campus would be to inform all students of the developing situation, regardless of what the police do or do not know.
In their defense, the police claim that they thought the shooter had left the scene.
Even if the shooter had left, if there was an armed man running around, the community should have been informed immediately.
This is information that people need to know about and, one way of spreading information like this quickly is through e-mail.
Nowadays every college student is required to have at least one e-mail address, and there is a good chance that many students would have checked their e-mails that morning since professors tend to communicate with most students via email about class cancellations.
It has been reported that some students had some sort of idea that something had happened on campus that morning, but nothing had been clarified so they went to class.
We live in the age of technology, where many college students communicate with each other through social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace.
After becoming aware of Monday’s attacks, many students communicated with family and loved ones through these sites.
Students are sometimes criticized for their constant use of these social networks, but on Monday, it was networks such as these that informed many people about the conditions of individual students.
These networks kept people informed and maybe, instead of criticizing students about MySpace and Facebook, authorities should find ways to utilize them to their advantage.
Maybe it could save students in future situations.
Hopefully authorities learned from the attacks on Monday and that the next time shots are fired on a college campus their number one priority is to notify all students of the situation immediately for their own safety.
Katherine Hillier, a senior journalism major, is managing editor of the Campus Times. She can be reached by e-mail at khillier@ulv.edu. |
