Photo: Alan Kim/The Roanoke Times
Most students never expect to have a gunman kill 32 people on campus, but at Virginia Tech that nightmare became a reality that could have happened almost anywhere.
At 7:15 a.m. there was a call to the police about the first shooting that took place in the dorms and two students were murdered in the incident. In response to this the college sent out an e-mail. Phillip Murillas, freshman at Virginia Tech, shared the e-mail that he recieved at 9:26 a.m. from the college in response to the shooting with the Washington Post.
A Shooting incident occurred at West Amber Johnston earlier this mourning. Police are on the scene and are investigating. The university community is urged to be cautious and are asked to contact Virginia Tech police if you observe anything suspicious or with information on the case.
Sure, sending an e-mail to students was a way to contact them about the emergency, but this doesn’t seem overly effective. What if you didn’t check your e-mail that morning? You would have been completely oblivious about situation. One of the first things the college should have done is put the campus on lockdown. With a lockdown students would have known the severity of the problem and the police would have had the proper amount of time to evaluate the situation.
Classes continued normally and some students were possibly unaware of the situation. When the second shooting occurred with the campus security was at a level lower than it should have been. That’s when the second e-mail was sent telling students a gunman was on campus and to stay in buildings and away from windows. The second e-mail was also sent ten minutes after the second shooting.
President Bush spoke for the nation when he said, “Today our nation grieves with those who have lost loved ones at Virginia Tech. We hold the victims in our hearts, we lift them up in our prayers, and we ask a loving God to comfort those who are suffering today.”
1 comments:
Hi Salem!
Yeah, hindsight sucks doesn't it? It's not there when you need it the most to save you.
It's all great to look back and see what went wrong. Perhaps just seeing it as a domestic incident wasn't such a bad choice at the time.
People have been asking why this stuff happens at our schools and colleges now, and I think it's because our colleges have become our town squares and our town centers. Look at my town: there's no town square where people hang out and meet each other, except for the malls. There are small cafe's in my area, but they are all small clique's perhaps, and not a town square.
I saw a cartoon in the Times Union last Thursday, and it summed up all the school shooting with graves, and these two grave diggers digging a new one next to Virginia Tech. A bubble said "might as well get ready for the next one" or so. Kinda shows the sad state of affairs.
-Bad Ronald
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