Here's Tim Edson, a columnist for the Virginia Tech student newspaper, on yesterday's tragedy:
While the true toll of this outrage is just beginning to become clear, some in the media, as well as in the Virginia Tech community have unfortunately been undeterred from letting the recriminations fly. Anger is understandable; in fact, outrage is more than justifiable given that someone would so carelessly and savagely take innocent lives. At this time, however, pointing fingers and casting blame isn't only wrong, it's disrespectful to the victims, families, friends, and everyone else so grievously affected by these horrific events.Using the 30 victims as mere props to make a political point is one of the more loathsome tactics imaginable, but we're already seeing it, and you know we'll be seeing a lot more of it in the coming months.We need to remember that the real villain in all this is the mass murderer responsible.
Another story from Blacksburg yesterday: One of the dead was a 76-year-old professor of engineering named Liviu Librescu, an Israeli who survived both the Holocaust and Communist Romania, only to perish in the shooting. However, Librescu was said to have barricaded the doors of the classroom, an action that likely saved many other lives.
Posted by Stephen Silver at April 17, 2007 05:49 PMI don't see how holding a school responsible when they were warned that the student was psycho is political in any way. The students themselves have said they are angered by how this whole thing was handled at the time. Now they are in shock that they have lost friends and loved ones in a horrific event.
Posted by: A at April 17, 2007 11:33 PMUniversity red tape - at any university - is notorious. I completely believe the whole thing about students being kept in the dark for 2 hours, and about the fact that there was a lockdown after the first shooting that could have ended everything then and there, but it was lifted and the shooter went on to kill 30 more people.
Posted by: LilB at April 18, 2007 01:38 PM