Virginia Tech

As the carnage unfolded, eyewitnesses IM’d terrifying firsthand accounts to their friends, some of which appeared on blogs and MySpace within minutes of the shootings. Yet students complained that the first official word they heard about a killer on campus came a full two hours after two students were shot to death in a nearby dorm, just as their suspected attacker opened fire again in an academic building on the other side of campus.

There were two hours between the first two students being shot and the killing spree. It also took two hours for the school to mention that there may be a killer on the loose on campus. This in my mind is not acceptable, not in todays world of computers, cell phones, and school shootings.

The school was also closed in the first month of this school year because there was a killer on the campus. This should have prompted a better way of communicating quickly in the school that there was a problem/disaster.

There is no way that it should take 2 hours, and if it does, that gives the administration more time to warn students and teachers through better means that a simple email that says ‘oh, by the way…‘.

Better gun control, stopping the sale of violent video games, and most of those other “solutions” will not really do much until there is a better way of notifying the people in the University that there is a problem and that they should be weary of something, be it a killer, a natural disaster, or something else that is not easily controllable.

Another thing is, shouldn’t there have been a whole bunch of police on campus? Campus security was already there obviously, but they are not trained to deal with shooters I don’t think. You would have thought that someone would have had the presence of mind to call 911 right when the first shoots were heard, instead of videoing with their cell phones that there were shots being heard. Rather than do that, how about doing something to stop the shooting?

I think that 30 deaths could have been avoided. 3 is more than enough for me. Hell, it could have been stopped before anyone died had they taken his writing serious the first time it was brought up.