Shootings at Virginia Tech

[jumper03 0]

Makes me hope I haven't pissed off any students...

Scars remind us that the past is real

[apollard24 0]

Just doesnt make any sense what so ever

Breathe out so I can breathe you in...

[airtwardo 6]

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What a sad day, my thoughts are with all involved.

Indeed.


Who would have ever thought the words School & Massacre would be linked so commonly and often ?!



What is happening to the world??

~ If you choke a Smurf, what color does it turn? ~

[billvon 2,380]

>And classes weren't canceled at that point? Only 2 hours later when
>dozens of people were killed? Why????

Confusion? Most universities don't have a "shooter on the loose" alert system. It's easy to assume you heard wrong when someone on a peaceful campus says that someone's been murdered in a dorm a few minutes ago.

Not saying that it's OK, but even much less deadly incidents I've been involved with - plane crashes, skydiving injuries, car wrecks - generate a tremendous amount of confusion and sometimes even a sort of paralysis as people try to deal with what just happened. It can be easy to concentrate on the immediate issue (i.e. getting help to the people in the dorm) and overlook some wider concerns (like shutting down the entire campus.)

[wildcard451 0]

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I've heard that the shooter apparently lined people up execution style and shot some of them that way..

Fuck that, if you're gonna get killed ayway, do something about it.

[karenmeal 0]

I know that after the first shooting at 7:15 am my dad (a professor there) immediately started calling and e-mailing students to tell them to NOT come to class and to see if they were OK. Why would any professor hold class? I can see why classes of 200 would be much more difficult to efficiently notify (except for e-mail) but an emergency alert should have been issued to the entire community (which basically consists of the school) so that people could decide to stay home. Why would a professor choose to hold class after finding out about the first shooting????????????

They had two hours. I highly doubt that all the students in the engineering building were oblivious to what went on earlier. I'm guessing some professors just didn't judge the risk of a gunman on the loose important enough to cancel class.

Not to mention that just this past fall they had a Blacksburg native go on a shooting rampage on campus and kill some police. They reacted quickly to that by notifying students and immediately canceling class.

If they had reacted similarly today many lives could have been saved.

It's almost like they had practice for this incident and had the opportunity and the motivation to get a good plan in place... but then they failed today.

"Life is a temporary victory over the causes which induce death." - Sylvester Graham

[iambeav2 0]

Glad the jumpers and sad for the ones past. This has become my #1 news source, and when I walked into the breakroom at work and heard of this, the first thing I did is come check DZ to see if any of the jumpers were hurt and any other stats, b/c CNN only has what the cop's'll tellem, maybe the vT students had more.

Crazy ass sick people, you know?!?!

...it's not the fact that you don't appreciate what you have until it's gone...it's the fact that you don't appreciate what you have until someone appreciates it for you!

[karenmeal 0]

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Makes me hope I haven't pissed off any students...

From all reports that I've heard it was a student who was looking for his girlfriend who decided to cause carnage on the way.

"Life is a temporary victory over the causes which induce death." - Sylvester Graham

[jumper03 0]

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Makes me hope I haven't pissed off any students...

From all reports that I've heard it was a student who was looking for his girlfriend who decided to cause carnage on the way.

There have been other incidents though. A few years ago a Engineering doctoral student in Cali took a shot gun to his thesis committee.

You never know what is going to happen next.

Scars remind us that the past is real

[grue 1]

This is nothing new, it's not a recent trend. Yes, this incident is the worst thus far WITH GUNS, but killing sprees at school have been happening for a long, long time, and the worst one ever was EIGHTY YEARS AGO, where a man killed 45 and injured almost 60 little kids.

Overall, it's sad, but not surprising. The US is, as a whole, a very violent country.

cavete terrae.

[keka 0]

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Makes me hope I haven't pissed off any students...

From all reports that I've heard it was a student who was looking for his girlfriend who decided to cause carnage on the way.

what!?
that's sick! what a retard!
I'm so pissed at this whole thing.
how come someone thinks that they can take away people's lives they way they want or when they want to!?

I know that for the parents is better (maybe) that this guy is dead, but in the other hand... I wish he would be alive to pay for each and every one he killed.
what a coward.

http://www.woundedwarriorproject.org
PMS#551
I love my life :)

[karenmeal 0]

That was in 1927. Different times.

I'm pretty sure that this will be the worst in history by the end of the day.

"Life is a temporary victory over the causes which induce death." - Sylvester Graham

[grue 1]

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That was in 1927. Different times.

I'm pretty sure that this will be the worst in history by the end of the day.

We'll see.

In any case, people are the problem, not the tools they use. I'm not even pro-gun (or anti-gun for that matter), but I know enough to be able to see that the gun isn't the problem, it's the person using it.

cavete terrae.

[airtwardo 6]

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That was in 1927. Different times.

I'm pretty sure that this will be the worst in history by the end of the day.

We'll see.

In any case, people are the problem, not the tools they use. I'm not even pro-gun (or anti-gun for that matter), but I know enough to be able to see that the gun isn't the problem, it's the person using it.

Agree, weren't a lot of guns found to cause the WTC.

~ If you choke a Smurf, what color does it turn? ~

[bmcd308 0]

>>people are the problem<<

Sadly, it is hard to ban homicidal idiots. Given that we cannot do that, there comes a cry to do something. Anything. Please. Quickly.

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www.jumpelvis.com

[benblee 0]

I'm a Georgia Tech student and I can tell you a few things about the way colleges operate. Number one is that they are very good at keeping things quiet. There have been a number of suicides that are only heard about weeks and months later (even by people in your same dorm). This was most likely the first reaction of the school. Second, there are plenty of campus police to put on every street corner on campus saying that class is cancelled (Even if the professors don't know it yet). Lastly, the schools know what's going on and can (and should) have more in place to help students.

Here's a for instance:
When my parents were going through a nasty divorce, I went to the counceling center to talk to someone to make sure I was keeping my head straight. They said I could schedule an appointment for 5 weeks from then. Then they told me that they have counselors on call for emergencies, but that they were booked up for a week. What if instead of me, it was a student like this one? They would have just sent him out the door. They are just plain understaffed. The kicker is, the first priority for funding in the student government meeting was for our Athletic Association (which is asking for and extra $3 million). A fraction of that can and should be spent on things like help for students that are already under a very large amount of stress. Instead, it goes to over paid Athletic Association personnel that really don't do anything productive.

$3 million for athletics instead of helping students at a school that has the 3rd highest suicide rate in the country.

Schools know, and schools can avoid these situations, and they choose not to.

I feel terrible for the Virginia Tech people and I am very thankful that every one of their skydivers is alright. They have an outstanding skydiving club up there full of outstanding people.

Ben Lee
www.CollegeSkydiving.com

[karenmeal 0]

There was a shooting on my college campus here in Seattle a few weeks ago.

The teacher of my 9:30 class was notified before class, but did not feel that any of us needed to know what was going on. We were very close to the building that that particular shooting took place and we didn't need to know?!??!?!!?

I found out about it FOUR hours later when I walked right by the crime scene on my way to the library.

I feel like my right to make decisions regarding my safety was completely violated by the teacher not notifying us of what happened.

Schools need to wake up and take immediate actions.

So classes get canceled. So what.. lives could be saved by taking immediate measures to protect people.

"Life is a temporary victory over the causes which induce death." - Sylvester Graham

[airtwardo 6]

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$3 million for athletics instead of helping students at a school that has the 3rd highest suicide rate in the country.

Worth repeating.

~ If you choke a Smurf, what color does it turn? ~

[Scoop 0]

I don't see why an educational facility should be expected to provide councilling. If people need help they should seek it themselves privately . Then the money could be better spent on educational needs. We live in such a soft society nowadays concerned with welfare where years ago there wasn't a problem. By proportionality all those that survived through the world wars and all the stresses they faced should have become serial killers having seen whole roads and housing estates bombed, people got on with problems years ago

[benblee 0]

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I don't see why an educational facility should be expected to provide councilling. If people need help they should seek it themselves privately . Then the money could be better spent on educational needs.

So you said it yourself. The money can be better spent. The other thing to mention is that part of the tuition and fees are for this counceling center. If they can't offer help, then let me keep my money for that and seek my own help. Either way, schools just plain push harder nowadays, and they expect a lot more from their students.

As far as things in the old days and how people dealt with it, the same stuff happened then. Go back far enough and things were even worse. That's how the world and the people in it work. Some are good, some are bad, and some are just horribly mixed up.

I was just stating that there are much better ways to deal with these problems and that we leave a lot of room open for these problems to happen. You either want to help fix it, or you don't. It's the whole "learn from your mistakes" attitude.

Ben Lee
www.CollegeSkydiving.com

[billvon 2,380]

The next person who mentions gun control (or the lack thereof) will be banned from this forum without warning.

[McBeth 0]

Thank you Bill.

[PLFXpert 0]

Oh geez...I don't want to be involved in this convo..damn my mouth.

Karen, I agree that I, too, would want to know what's going on...

Having said that...when I first read your response about why all classes weren't immediately canceled after the early morning dorm shooting, I had different thoughts...

And then just to make sure I wasn't a total cold-hearted bitch, I asked a couple friends & neighbors disgussing the topic whom agreed--not that I needed them to agree, but I needed to know I'm not the total bitch I thought I was when I first read your response...

Anywho (get to the point already, Care!) my first thought was, "Why cancel class b/c a person was shot in a dorm?" Shootings, accidents, deaths happen every second. Life still must go on.

From what I just saw on CNN...they're not even sure yet if the two incidents (the early morning shooting and the later-day massacre) are related.

Of course I feel differently about a massacre.

My sincerest condolences to the students of Virginia Tech and their friends & families.

Paint me in a corner, but my color comes back.

[kbordson 8]

This whole event is terribly sad. So many futures ended.....

I don't know if the shooters suicide is good for the situation (wont be drug out in long court cases) or bad (no answer to the "why")

So sad.

[benblee 0]

You're definitely right on the fact that you can never really know when to make what call. I guess its just really frustrating as a student when something like this happens and you're still asked to go to class to look at powerpoint slides that could have been emailed to you.

It's a big game that probably can't be won, but its good to keep looking for ways to help or at least to better the odds of everything turning out alright.

If you don't know the VT skydivers, check out their website, they're a great group that is always lending a helping hand. http://www.skydiving.org.vt.edu/

Ben Lee
www.CollegeSkydiving.com