The Stories of Virginia Tech

The New York Post has the story of one student who was wounded in the shootings yesterday but probably saved others with his actions in barricading the classroom door. You can read the entire chilling account here. The two paragraphs in the story which will be the subject of endless debate are these:

The German class started on schedule, at 9:05 a.m. What Derek did not know was that the deranged man had been running loose at Virginia Tech for two solid hours.

He fired his first shots, in a dormitory, at 7:15. Nobody made a big deal about it, and classes went on as usual. Every student on campus had a target on his back.

The calls are already being made to fire Tech's top brass:

Parents of a Virginia Tech student expressed outrage Monday at what they call an inadequate response by college brass to the worst mass-murder shooting in American history.

John and Jennifer Shourds of Lovettsville, Va. demanded the immediate firings of University President Charles Steger and Virginia Tech Campus Police Chief W.R. Flinchum who he said "screwed up" the handling of separate shooting incidents that left 33 students dead, including the shooter.

“My God, if someone shoots somebody there should be an immediate lockdown of the campus,” said John Shourds. “They totally blew it. The president blew it, campus police blew it.”

This is an understandable reaction, but one that is based on emotion and not a solid understanding of the facts, mainly because nobody at this early stage has a solid understanding of the facts. This shooting situation is unlike any other mass shooting that I can remember. Having incidents two hours apart likely could not have been expected or anticipated, even by law enforcement professionals. Dean Barnett has similar thoughts to mine:

A lot of people questioned the response of the Virginia Tech police department. The first two murders occurred at 7:15 in the morning. The next thirty murders happened at 9:40. A lot of people wanted to know why, with a murderer on the loose, Virginia Tech didn’t put the campus into lockdown.

That position didn’t make much sense to me. Virginia Tech has a student population of almost 30,000. Adding in the staff members, faculty, etc., the Virginia Tech community numbers over 35,000 people. If there was an unsolved murder in a city of 35,000, would the city go into lockdown mode until the crime was solved? Would the city authorities even consider going into lockdown mode? Given the facts that the authorities yesterday understood the motive for the initial killings and there was absolutely no reason to believe a mass murderer was on the loose, shutting down the campus would have been a bizarre reaction to the initial tragedies.

However, people will demand scalps and since the shooter is dead they'll have to find others to blame.