Many argue that the word should have gotten out to the students pertaining to the Virginia Tech tragedy, and that if this happened students would not have died or suffered whatsoever. Let me be the first to say that that is completely and utterly ridiculous. Where was Cho within those two hours between the first and second series of murders? It is said that he was in his dorm room preparing media items to send to NBC headquarters. How would lock down have prevented this tragedy?
The gap from the first series of murders to the email is inexcusable, maybe in all rationality being locked in your dorm building unknowingly with the murderer wouldn’t exactly have been the best alternate option. Steps were made by the faculty and administration to help this person before these murders occurred. Yet legally you can only keep someone against their will for so long.
What is laughable is that those who are suffering the most, Virginia Tech, are receiving blame for this tragedy. If the school did put the school under lock down, and murders still occurred because Cho was on campus, the news would be saying now that they should have known better. Either way, it was and is a lose/lose situation. The fact that people can place blame for any of this is ludicrous. The only faults here are of Cho himself, the construction of gun-laws in not needing a mental history check to purchase a weapon and the restriction on admitting mentally ill persons above the age of 18 against their will.
These claims of fault are written in ‘The Quad’ about these poor individuals that suffered in defense of those that died. Yet when you looked outside last week there were 33 t-shirts of maroon and orange that I was told were to “honor the victims’ memory.”
When the count of the dead was 33 including Cho. It is hypocritical to say the least how blame is put on the school, the staff, the administration when the one person that was responsible for all of this, Cho, had a t-shirt outside of Sykes to “honor” his memory.
-Laura Valentin (Special to The Quad)