Tuesday, April 17, 2007

So I was all ready to launch into the whole Imus thing when the shootings at VA Tech happened. Here's the latest that I've read: 32 people killed, 15 injured; Killer was a student by the name of Cho Seung-Hui; Early in the morning, he killed a couple of students at a dorm while looking for his ex-girlfriend; An email went out advising students of a serious situation and that they should be cautious; A second email was then sent which said that a gunman was loose on campus; Either before that or after that a second round of shootings happened at another section of campus, where some 30 people died. Now the first thing that bothers me about this is the re-introduction of the gun control debate. This is such a red herring--why are we even bringing it up now? If no action is going to be taken on guns either way, then let's leave the topic alone. I think the real issue here is not even protection of college students but communication with college students. I saw a woman on CNN last night who represented securityoncampus.org who said that it is possible to enable a program whereby instant alerts can be sent to the mobile phone of every college student in the case of an emergency. That means that after the first shooting, 26,000 students could have known about it and everyone could have stayed inside a safe place. I keep seeing the president of the college being pressed on the issue of why an email wasn't sent out soon after the first shootings but he keeps saying that under the circumstances it was difficult to ascertain the nature events and they were going on the information that they had. But, I think the gripe that people have and the question he seems to not be being asked is why they didn't even try. Why didn't they try to send an email out sooner and why wasn't it more serious than "be cautious?" I don't have much else to say about this. I'm just angry that this freak turned out to be Asian, and I hearken back to my days in college and wonder how our campus would have responded to the same such incident. I think of our fat, old security guards who could barely make it around to the front of their desks without being winded let alone chase down a teenager across campus. On the completely opposite side of the spectrum and in much happier news, I am officially a Tito. Big congrats to James and Kristine Formanes on the birth of their daughter yesterday. Hopefully I can get a picture soon, wink wink. OK, be safe all!