VA Tech shooting

Parent Cafe
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<p>PrimetimeMom wrote:
{quote}I don’t understand why the campus wasn’t on lockdown/evacuation after the first murders in the dorm? Some students being interviewed on TV are asking the same thing.{quote}</p>

<p>This is one of my concerns also! With the technology and ways of staying in touch we have today it is amazing to me that the information didn’t get out quicker.</p>

<p>My daughter’s campus {OSU} is HUGE compared to VTech and I worry that if they couldn’t get the vital info out to students/staff on a much smaller campus then there is no way they could there!</p>

<p>I am sure we will have lots of answers in the coming days.</p>

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<p>I tend to agree with Xiggi and Sokkermom on this. Let it be for a day.</p>

<p>Living in the DC area for 30 years including NoVA for 15 years I am simply stunned. My son was accepted there. My neighbors’s kids went there. </p>

<p>I don’t want to even think about blame right now.</p>

<p>As an aside on the local TV station a student is now saying that she got a text message from a friend at 8:40 in class saying the campus was on lock down.</p>

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<p>Blucroo, can I ask you to refrain putting words in my mouth in an attempt to recharacterize what I wrote?</p>

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<p>Who are helping these kids deal with this? They sent all the faculty and staff home. I now these kids are “adults”, but they are still kids to me. Are they leaving it up to the RAs to handle the dorms? I hope there are others there to help the kids beside police, FBI, etc.</p>

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<p>There should be a campus-wide loudspeaker system on all campuses so the campus police can tell everyone to take cover or a siren system like the ones for tornado warnings. This would help those walking on campus when an incident happens. Horrid to thnk that is needed, however.</p>

<p>After Columbine, my D (in 9th grade then) could see how vulnerable schools are and she was always worried about it, right through high school. I have had lots of worries about U.S. school safety, especially after the school tragedy in Russia. We need to addresss this on a nationwide level.</p>

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<p>lockdowns were one reason why I got my Ds cellphones a couple years ago
My younger Ds high school, is in a “mixed” neighborhood.
By that I mean it is residental mainly- but also bordered by a few businesses that attract unsavory patrons as well as halfway houses for offenders, not to mention * also* seems to attract out of the area troublemakers, resulting in about 20 lockdowns a year sometimes.
Most I think are brief, and most parents don’t even hear about, but it was still a concern.
But i also wasn’t concerned enough to forbid her to attend the school, because I don’t think you can eliminate all risk, and while some schools may change things- only hindsight is 20/20</p>

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<p>I do think that this is where the “stop the murders” discussions needs to be.</p>

<p>Yes, of course we need to mourn and to pray and otherwise have compassion for all of the people who are at Virginia Tech or who have loved ones there. We also need to mourn and otherwise have compassion for the murderer, who clearly was a very troubled person. </p>

<p>At the same time, we need to be doing everything that we can to work to ensure that the ongoing slaughter of people by gun violence in this country ends.</p>

<p>Just mourning isn’t enough. We mourned after Columbine. We mourned after the shooting at the Amish school. At least some of us here also have mourned after people whom we knew were shot to death or shot others to death. We need to take the actions to stop this kind of heartbreak.</p>

<p>I am sick of having business go on as usual after the public mourning period is over and the shooting tragedies fade from the news.</p>

<p>As for who’s helping the students deal with the situation at Virginia Tech: Everyone at that institution has to be shocked, sorrowful and virtually incapable of coherent action after what has happened today. Presumably everyone there is suffering from post traumatic stress syndrome, and everyone is in need of counseling and other support.</p>

<p>I’m also sure that the administrators are having to do the very difficult job of contacting family members about their deceased and injured children. They also are having to talk to the police and other officials.</p>

<p>People don’t become college professors, administrators and staff members to have students virtually slaughtered in front of them. College staff members and faculty love their students, and are just as in need of support now as their students are.</p>

<p>What I hope is happening is that teams of mental health professionals are being sent from other communities, campuses and from the state. There’s no way that Virginia Tech is equipped to handle the mental health issues that this horrendous tragedy has caused.</p>

<p>I also presume that the campus is going to end up being closed for the rest of the school year just as happened on many campuses after the Kent State shooting.</p>

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<p>I agree with Northstarmom completely. This is the place to discuss senseless shooting tragedies, and to look at our violent culture as the source and solution of the problem.</p>

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Resident staff, which is more than just student RAs, should be there, but obviously the plan varies from school to school. There are adult hall directors (called area coordinators at some schools) trained in counseling and most emergency plans should call for counseling center staff to be there as well.</p>

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<p>This is just horrible. I called my D at her school first thing upon hearing.</p>

<p>Many college campus’s are spread out and the size of small cities. Loudspeakers and lockdowns are not going to do the trick. College’s are not like most K-12 schools, they are more like city blocks or business parks. People coming and going from off campus housing, parking lots, etc. I don’t think there is any reasonable way to prevent something like this.</p>

<p>A heavily armed person who ambushes an unsuspecting and unarmed group of people who have no where to run is going to end badly no matter what.</p>

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<p>The shooters in this incident would have gotten guns by any means necessary. To beat a phrase to death that has already been beaten to death “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” Further restricting citizen’s legal access to guns would not have prevented this tragedy, nor will it prevent future tragedies. If students could have had concealed carry weapons on campus, maybe they could have taken out this shooter, and many of these senseless deaths could have been prevented. But go ahead and take legal guns away if you want to increase the number of incidents such as this.</p>

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<p>I’ll second Dean J’s comment. After 9/11, our campus called in the entire residential and counseling staff to be available for anyone who needed it; we saw staff as well as students. There are plans in place to take care of these students and faculty and staff; I don’t think anyone’s going to be abandoned.</p>

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<p>well stated Northstarmom. The VT community and families will mourn and care for each other. They don’t need a stranger across country mourning today. In fact, what you and I do on this website is of no value to those in Virginia if all we do is bemoan the tragedy. We can afford to be shocked but what we need to do is get angry at the status quo and those who enable such horrible situations to fester and explode. For all of those who want to “let it be” for a day…where will your voice be tomorrow and the next day and the next. Or will you be on to another “breaking news report.”
My prayers go to those in VA. My actions will be much more helpful in the long run.</p>

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<p>No need to discuss or argue. Just as when a neighbor or friend dies, we reach out with flowers or a contribution, here we have an opportunity to reach out in memory of those who died today, that their young lives not have been lost in vain: <a href=“http://www.millionmommarch.org%5B/url%5D”>http://www.millionmommarch.org</a>.</p>

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<p>What a day, I live in Northern VA, our high school was closed three hours early because of the wind today, my S (who is a senior) sat around with 10 of his high school friends in my family room, a couple were on on cell phones trying to call friends at Tech, one girl, wearing a Tech sweatshirt will be a freshman there in the fall, she was fighting back tears, they were all in complete shock, watching CNN. Oh my God what a tragedy for all of the families involved, and for all of us watching on the outside. Hug your children extra close today.</p>

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<p>Mental health issues are being dealt with. The governor, on his way back from Japan, has mobilized state resources. The local Osteopathic College is offering counseling. </p>

<p>I think that they should end the semester but not make the kids go home right away. They need to console each other.</p>

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<p>From what I know of campus counseling centers (and I worked in one when I was working on my doctorate in clinical psychology), they would not be equipped to handle this kind of tragedy, which is more like military mental health professionals are trained to deal with than mental health professionals on college campuses. Basically that campus is now like a war zone.</p>

<p>I can only imagine the chaos that is continuing to go on on that campus as the administrators and faculty try to figure out how to handle such an unexpected and tragic event affecting so many people. </p>

<p>I remember when I was a college professor and one of my students called one morning to tell me that she had opened her dorm apartment door to find the student across the hall bleeding to death from stab wounds. The assailant had fled. When I called the campus counseling center to tell them what happened and suggest that they get over to the dorm, I was the first person to let them know. </p>

<p>The campus police tried to interview in the student newspaper office the student who had found the victim. I had to suggest to the police that they go to a more private location (The whole student newspaper office was open space, and there were plenty of students around). The only reason that the campus newspaper didn’t interview the witness first was that i told her that she should only talk to the police so they could get their best case. </p>

<p>I ended up taking the student witness to my house and letting her spend the night. </p>

<p>The kinds of problems that campus administrators are trained to deal with are things like binge drinking, accidental deaths, not troubled people who choose to use a campus as a shooting gallery. I do hope that outside agencies are rushing to help Virginia Tech.</p>

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<p>“The shooters in this incident would have gotten guns by any means necessary.”</p>

<p>We know nothing about those shooters. Until we do, we can’t make these kind of statements.</p>

<p>Meanwhile, in countries that do have strict gun control laws, one doesn’t hear about this kind of slaughter.</p>

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<p>Stowmom, I was very, very surprised by that as well. During hurricanes (realize it’s not at all the same thing but still), all available staff are on campus to assist the students; all staff work overtime. I am trying to imagine how such a large student body fends for itself if all the staff have been sent home (???). This has to be a HUGE drain on local law enforcement and medical resources.</p>

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<p>Just on the news -The head of the local Red Cross was just interviewd - and it sounds like they were well activated by 10am in an emergency response mode - they are providing 16 professional counselors - there have been emergency counseling centers already set up and seeing students - and an information center has also been set up at a local hotel. </p>

<p>For now - they are also reporting that the campus will be open tomorrow - but no classes til wednesday - we shall see</p>