Virginia Tech Tragedy Only Teaches Us What We Already Know
Steve Shives
April 18, 2007
Now that I’ve had a few days to think it over, I’ve concluded there are no new lessons to be learned from the shootings at Virginia Tech Monday morning, when student Cho Seung-Hui committed the deadliest gun massacre in the history of the United States, murdering 32 people and then killing himself. To try and discover meaning in an event like this is only human nature, to attempt to pin a moral on the story only natural. But all of the lessons I’ve taken from this tragedy—some good, some bad—are things we should already know.
The first and most emphatically made point is that human beings are capable of monstrous evil. Already political activists are trampling one another to define the massacre according to their pet issues—gun control advocates see it as the perfect excuse for stricter anti-firearms laws, second amendment defenders use the opportunity to suggest that the best answer to gun violence like this is more guns, media watchdogs point fingers at our violence-glorifying popular culture—when the only party truly at fault is the man who killed 32 people, mostly his peers, then committed suicide. Cho Seung-Hui was apparently a very troubled guy, but nothing short of genuine insanity should absolve him of an iota of responsibility for what he did. We can talk about what may have influenced or enabled him until we run out of breath, but the guilt still falls on him and him alone. Sometimes people do unconscionably bad things. That’s nothing new—Cho Seung-Hui, when he picked up his guns and used them in the worst way you can ever use a gun, merely reminded us of it.
The second point is it’s useless to second-guess ourselves after something like this. Questions have been raised about the police response following the initial shootings, which took place two and a half hours before Cho committed the majority of his massacre. Should the campus have been shut down? Some have wondered whether the college could have notified the students about the initial shootings sooner, cautioned them to be on the lookout for a shooter possibly still at-large. As it happened, students weren’t emailed about the first shootings until shortly before Cho opened fire in Norris Hall. A few commentators, severely lacking in empathy, have even chided the victims, asking why no one tried to rush the gunman and neutralize him before he’d murdered nearly three dozen people. These people seem to expect all college students and professors to possess the reflexes and crazy courage of a green beret.
I don’t see how finding fault in the police, the college or the victims is helpful. Given the facts available to them at the time, and given what an unusual and confusing situation this was (most spree killers don’t take a two hour break in the middle of a massacre, and the circumstances of the initial shooting seemed to suggest a domestic dispute), I can understand the police and college officials not immediately acting to lock down the entire enormous campus. As for the victims, most of them reacted to being shot at the same way most of us would: with fear and panic. Blaming them for that is pointless as well as heartless.
The third point is that statistics are useless for predicting the future. This incident cut against the grain in several ways. Perpetrators of this type of crime are historically white men; Cho Seung-Hui was Korean. When news of the shootings first broke, many assumed the gunman must have acquired his firearms illegally; Cho used handguns which he had lawfully purchased only days prior to the incident. Otherwise his crime fits the profile of a typical spree killer—killing in multiple locations with relatively little time in between, killing indiscriminately, and killing himself at the conclusion. There is little here to suggest what might be done to prevent this sort of thing in the future, short of fencing off our colleges with barbed wire and turning campuses into police states.
And that’s the fourth point, and probably the most difficult one to reconcile: people who live in a free and open society will always be susceptible to this kind of tragedy. I’m not saying there aren’t things we can do to attempt to prevent something like this from happening in the future—colleges will certainly be less reticent to inform students about shootings on campus, however isolated they may seem, from now on, for one thing—but there are only so many precautions we can take before we start giving away liberties. Would college campuses and other open public areas be safer if they were patrolled day and night by armed guards and covered over every visible inch by electronic surveillance? Certainly. But, even in the aftermath of such a tragedy, is that really the sort of place we want to live?
The fifth point is that human beings are also capable of astonishing bravery. Even at this early stage, only two days removed from the event, when facts are still being sorted out of the chaos, tales of true heroism have emerged. Zach Petkewicz, a senior in class at Norris Hall Monday morning, crouched behind a podium when he heard gunshots and screams from down the hall. Seeing the classroom’s unprotected door, Zach and two fellow students barricaded the entrance with a table, holding it there as Cho attempted to enter the room. Cho fired twice into the door and then moved down the hallway to continue his killing spree. When a CNN reporter asked Zach what he thought about others calling him a hero, he said, “I’m just glad I could be here.”[1]
Liviu Librescu was another hero. Librescu was 76 years old, a Romanian-born Jew and survivor of the Holocaust, an author of several books on aerodynamics and aeroelasticity, a professor at Virginia Tech for twenty-two years. Liviu blocked the door to his classroom when Cho attempted to enter. Cho shot him through the door, but before he died Liviu was able to hold the door shut until all his students had escaped through windows. If there is a nobler way to go out of this life, I’ve never heard of it.
The first and most emphatically made point is that human beings are capable of monstrous evil. Already political activists are trampling one another to define the massacre according to their pet issues—gun control advocates see it as the perfect excuse for stricter anti-firearms laws, second amendment defenders use the opportunity to suggest that the best answer to gun violence like this is more guns, media watchdogs point fingers at our violence-glorifying popular culture—when the only party truly at fault is the man who killed 32 people, mostly his peers, then committed suicide. Cho Seung-Hui was apparently a very troubled guy, but nothing short of genuine insanity should absolve him of an iota of responsibility for what he did. We can talk about what may have influenced or enabled him until we run out of breath, but the guilt still falls on him and him alone. Sometimes people do unconscionably bad things. That’s nothing new—Cho Seung-Hui, when he picked up his guns and used them in the worst way you can ever use a gun, merely reminded us of it.
The second point is it’s useless to second-guess ourselves after something like this. Questions have been raised about the police response following the initial shootings, which took place two and a half hours before Cho committed the majority of his massacre. Should the campus have been shut down? Some have wondered whether the college could have notified the students about the initial shootings sooner, cautioned them to be on the lookout for a shooter possibly still at-large. As it happened, students weren’t emailed about the first shootings until shortly before Cho opened fire in Norris Hall. A few commentators, severely lacking in empathy, have even chided the victims, asking why no one tried to rush the gunman and neutralize him before he’d murdered nearly three dozen people. These people seem to expect all college students and professors to possess the reflexes and crazy courage of a green beret.
I don’t see how finding fault in the police, the college or the victims is helpful. Given the facts available to them at the time, and given what an unusual and confusing situation this was (most spree killers don’t take a two hour break in the middle of a massacre, and the circumstances of the initial shooting seemed to suggest a domestic dispute), I can understand the police and college officials not immediately acting to lock down the entire enormous campus. As for the victims, most of them reacted to being shot at the same way most of us would: with fear and panic. Blaming them for that is pointless as well as heartless.
The third point is that statistics are useless for predicting the future. This incident cut against the grain in several ways. Perpetrators of this type of crime are historically white men; Cho Seung-Hui was Korean. When news of the shootings first broke, many assumed the gunman must have acquired his firearms illegally; Cho used handguns which he had lawfully purchased only days prior to the incident. Otherwise his crime fits the profile of a typical spree killer—killing in multiple locations with relatively little time in between, killing indiscriminately, and killing himself at the conclusion. There is little here to suggest what might be done to prevent this sort of thing in the future, short of fencing off our colleges with barbed wire and turning campuses into police states.
And that’s the fourth point, and probably the most difficult one to reconcile: people who live in a free and open society will always be susceptible to this kind of tragedy. I’m not saying there aren’t things we can do to attempt to prevent something like this from happening in the future—colleges will certainly be less reticent to inform students about shootings on campus, however isolated they may seem, from now on, for one thing—but there are only so many precautions we can take before we start giving away liberties. Would college campuses and other open public areas be safer if they were patrolled day and night by armed guards and covered over every visible inch by electronic surveillance? Certainly. But, even in the aftermath of such a tragedy, is that really the sort of place we want to live?
The fifth point is that human beings are also capable of astonishing bravery. Even at this early stage, only two days removed from the event, when facts are still being sorted out of the chaos, tales of true heroism have emerged. Zach Petkewicz, a senior in class at Norris Hall Monday morning, crouched behind a podium when he heard gunshots and screams from down the hall. Seeing the classroom’s unprotected door, Zach and two fellow students barricaded the entrance with a table, holding it there as Cho attempted to enter the room. Cho fired twice into the door and then moved down the hallway to continue his killing spree. When a CNN reporter asked Zach what he thought about others calling him a hero, he said, “I’m just glad I could be here.”[1]
Liviu Librescu was another hero. Librescu was 76 years old, a Romanian-born Jew and survivor of the Holocaust, an author of several books on aerodynamics and aeroelasticity, a professor at Virginia Tech for twenty-two years. Liviu blocked the door to his classroom when Cho attempted to enter. Cho shot him through the door, but before he died Liviu was able to hold the door shut until all his students had escaped through windows. If there is a nobler way to go out of this life, I’ve never heard of it.
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