There’s a lot of discussion going around about what VT officials shoulda, woulda, coulda done to prevent more carnage on their campus. I think we all need to STFU and quit pointing fingers at regular men and women dealing with something that is so far outside of what anyone expects or anticipates.
It is very easy to be the armchair quarterback on Sunday and it is very easy to sit in the comfort of our homes and blame someone in charge for what happened on Monday. Who do we need to blame–we can start with the asshole who took guns on campus and started shooting people. I’m sure there will be tons of discussion about how to prevent people from snapping and turning to violence to resolve personal problems. That’s valuable information to have if you are ever witness to someone close to you who may be on the verge of harming himself or others.
What we really need to do is to quit second-guessing the VT officials and let them figure out what happened. Let’s hold off on the judgment for a little while. Can’t we expand our attention spans for more than the time it takes to listen to some sound-bites–before we’re ready to move on to another story? We spend months on a bleached-blonde train wreck and yet we jump to conclusions and finger-pointing as soon as we catch a whiff of something so tragic. Let VT have a minute to catch its collective breath.
For some disclosure:
I work for a very large urban university in Virginia. I’m also a student there. We spent a great deal of time watching teevee yesterday as the events unfolded. We spent a lot of that time in silence. Many of the people I work with have kids and many of them have kids who are either in college or about to go. Some of the people I work with also have grown children who work in a university system. My husband and close friends went to VT. This hits close to home.
Well said.