Bowling for Virginia Tech

The shootings at Virginia Tech yesterday have left me reeling.

It's difficult to write about because I can't pick it apart rationally, at least not yet.

The randomness of the killings, the senselessness -- it's all truly frightening to me.

The shooter's complete disregard for the sanctity of life and his total lack of conscience is something that I can't understand. It's inhuman.

My heart breaks for the victims and for their families. Their loss is so great. May God be with them.

My heart also breaks for the Virginia Tech family -- students, faculty, staff, and alumni. They're experiencing a different kind of pain. The full impact of the shootings on them, the stress of the trauma on witnesses and friends and colleagues of the dead, may not be known for quite some time.

Then, there's the rest of us -- students across the country, their parents, their loved ones.

As President Bush said in his remarks on the shootings:

Schools should be places of safety and sanctuary and learning. When that sanctuary is violated, the impact is felt in every American classroom and every American community.

That's so true. We're an enormous country; but at times of such enormous tragedy, we're close. We can relate to the fear and the sorrow. We open our hearts and we pray.

It's not uncommon to have that "it can't happen here, it can't happen to me" attitude. The unthinkable only happens to other people. Not so.

The 32 murders at Virginia Tech yesterday remind me of how false that sense of security really is.

We are so very fragile. In spite of all our plans and expectations, what lies ahead for us is an unknown.

Each day is a gift and each life is so very precious.

I'm still reacting to the shootings on an emotional level. I suppose shock does tend to hamper one's ability to be rational.

Although my thoughts are with the suffering, I do have a few thoughts on what happened.

To begin, questions about inadequacies regarding the university's response after the initial murders are valid.

Read the emails sent by Virginia Tech.

The first 911 call from the dorm shooting came in at 7:15 AM. The first email warnings came over two hours later.

I see that as a problem, but I don't have all the facts. The investigation is ongoing. Police and the university haven't provided a lot of specific information as to why certain decisions were made, but more is being learned.

The Washington Post reports:

The shooter, whose name was not released last night, wore bluejeans, a blue jacket and a vest holding ammunition, witnesses said. He carried a 9mm semiautomatic and a .22-caliber handgun, both with the serial numbers obliterated, federal law enforcement officials said. Witnesses described the shooter as a young man of Asian descent -- a silent killer who was calm and showed no expression as he pursued and shot his victims. He killed himself as police closed in.

He had left two dead at the dormitory and 30 more at a science and engineering building, where he executed people taking and teaching classes after chaining some doors shut behind him. At one point, he shot at a custodian who was helping a victim. Witnesses described scenes of chaos and grief, with students jumping from second-story windows to escape gunfire and others blocking their classroom doors to keep the gunman away.

Even before anyone knew who the gunman was or why he did what he did, the campus community in Southwest Virginia began questioning whether most of the deaths could have been prevented. They wondered why the campus was not shut down after the first shooting.

...Although the gunman in the dorm was at large, no warning was issued to the tens of thousands of students and staff at Virginia Tech until 9:26 a.m., more than two hours later.

"We concluded it was domestic in nature," [Virginia Tech Police Chief Wendell] Flinchum said. "We had reason to believe the shooter had left campus and may have left the state." He declined to elaborate. But several law enforcement sources said investigators thought the shooter might have intended to kill a girl and her boyfriend Monday in what one of them described as a "lover's dispute." It was unclear whether the girl killed at the dorm was the intended target, they said.

The sources said police initially focused on the female student's boyfriend, a student at nearby Radford University, as a suspect. Police questioned the boyfriend, later termed "a person of interest," and were questioning him when they learned of the subsequent shootings at Norris Hall. A family friend of the boyfriend's said the boyfriend was stopped by police alongside Route 460 in Blacksburg, handcuffed and interrogated on the side of the road and later released.

...[University president Charles] Steger said that, even though the gunman was at large, "we had no reason to suspect any other incident was going to occur." He said only a fraction of the university's 28,000 students live on campus, and "it's extremely difficult if not impossible to get the word out spontaneously."

Students on campus and parents were angry. When Blake Harrison, 21, of Leesburg learned of the shootings, he said, he called an administrative help line and was told "to proceed with caution to classes." He said: "I'm beyond upset. I'm enraged."

...Parents arrived at the Inn at Virginia Tech to meet with other grieving families and were distraught at the university's management of the incident. "I think they should have closed the whole thing. It's not worth it. You've got a crazy man on campus. Do something about it," said Hoda Bizri of Princeton, W.Va., who was visiting her daughter Siwar, a graduate student.

I would have cancelled classes immediately.

I think two students being gunned down in a dorm and no suspect in custody is ample reason to go into lockdown.

I know that's easier said than done when you're talking about 28,000 students, with few of them living on campus. Locking down a university is not like locking down a high school.

Still, whether or not all students and faculty could have received the information is irrelevant. That's not an excuse to fail to shut down the university with shooter at large.

At this point however, I prefer to withhold judgment on Virginia Tech President Charles Steger and the police response. I understand the outrage and the desire to place blame, but I think all the information about what happened should be aired before making determinations about culpability.

I think it should be remembered that the shooter committed the murders. Blame him first and foremost.

It's just like after Columbine -- so much finger-pointing.

Of course, the death toll wasn't even known yet and the great gun debate heated up.

I find it unseemly for groups to jump all over the tragedy to push their agendas, just hours/minutes after the story broke.

Can't there at least be a brief period of national mourning before the arguing begins?

And then there's the media. Of course, there's a desire to get information and the press has a duty to inform the public.

But I don't like all the excessive promos of "news" specials offering no new information. The exploitation factor is already running very high.

The musical scores that accompany the coverage truly bother me. I don't need a piano in the background to add dramatic effect. It's as if the event is being packaged as entertainment. This isn't a movie -- yet.

That brings up another question: Will Michael Moore do a sequel to Bowling for Columbine?

Can Bowling for Virginia Tech be far off?

I really think it's disrespectful to turn such a horrific event into a circus and the pain into a cash cow.

I don't want any part of that.

President Bush spoke for me when he said this:

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.

Now's a time to grieve and a time to pray.

Let the dead be laid to rest with dignity.