Virginia Tech

This morning's paper contains an article revealing the latest amendments to the official report on the Virginia Tech campus shootings in 2007.

Exact time frames are hard to establish from the article, but it seems an hour and a twenty minutes elapsed between first notification to families of staff of the two earliest shootings in the dorm and the general campus wide lock down order.

Yup. You read that right.

The lock down order came only after the policy committee had deliberated what to do it would appear. It's also interesting that campus trash collections were suspended 21 minutes before faculty and students were notified of the danger. Meanwhile, a member of the policy group "emailed a colleague in Richmond about 8:45 am that a gunman was on the loose, but warned the colleague to make sure the information didn't get out because it was not yet 'releasable'." Two families of the administration's policy group were notified at 8:05 am. The massacre in the classroom building began at 9:40 am.

Governor Tim Kaine now says administration actions were "inexcusable."

"If university officials thought it was important enough to notify their own families, they should have let everyone know," said Kaine.

One voice of moderate temperament was heard amid the uproar.

On campus Friday, Student Government Association President Brandon Carroll said he does not think the revised report damages the administration.

"Hindsight is 20/20," Carroll said. "It really upsets me that they're trying to bring back something bad that really hurt our community." [Wahhhhh.]

Only after victims' families met with university officials in the fall of 2008 were the volumes of e-mails, reports, and other data released which shed further light on the administration's behavior. Governor Kaine had resisted re-opening the probe.

Nothing to see...just keep moving. Move along, now. Our policy group is on the case.

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It seems the administration policy group is loaded with slow learners.

VIRGINIA POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE AND STATE UNIVERSITY
POLICY AND PROCEDURES



(click to enlarge)

The shooter.



Let's revisit the official security actions in place to protect the campus populace from that fellow. From the current policy statement above: Any such individual who is reported or discovered to possess a firearm or weapon on university property will be asked to remove it immediately. Failure to comply may result in student judicial referral and/or arrest, or an employee disciplinary action and/or arrest.

Simply draconian.



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My son had a close friend who may have been on campus that day. We've lost contact with him. An army vet. He introduced Ben to the joys of traveling lightly in the back country. They have a name for it that escapes me at the moment, something like "ultra-light backpacking." I'm sure Kevin and his army buddies had a different name for it. Kevin made him leave behind his roll of toilet paper. He survived, and became a better man for the experience. He now chews nails and spits rust.

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ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ!