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This morning in Richmond, VA, a state government commission, convened by its governor, Tim Kaine (D) four months ago to investigate the horrific incident last April now infamous the world over as "the Virginia Tech Massacre," issued a report on its findings.
So what did they find? Among other things, that campus police chief Wendell Flinchum was not allowed to issue warnings to students for TWO FULL HOURS(!!) after Seung-Hui Cho killed his first two victims in a dormitory, because Flinchum was required to have any such warnings vetted by an administrative committee prior to issuance. And that even though the VTech police had long known of Cho's history of mental health problems, they didn't give that info to those on campus charged with providing the clinical help that could have kept him from snapping so violently, for fear of running afoul of federal law governing the privacy of personal medical data and opening themselves to prosecution and the college to lawsuits.
Kaine made the rounds of the TV networks' morning news shows today, hours before officially receiving the commission's report. While admitting the above two items jumped out at him from the report, he stopped short of saying that Flinchum or VTech prexy Charles Steger ought to lose their jobs because of them. At least one bereaved mother of a VTech senior slain by Cho, interviewed by the Associated Press, begged most strenuously to differ, calling on Kaine to "step up and show some leadership" by firing both men. A grieving parent's wish to see heads roll (and spare other parents such pain in future) is certainly understandable, but it must be noted that no one so closely and viscerally tied to a tragedy like this can possibly be objective.
For my part, I am reserving judgment on what should be done until I see the report in its entirety. And to its credit, the state legislature in VA did move swiftly to close gaps between state and federal gun laws in the weeks after, hopefully making it much harder for another mental case like Cho to get his/her hands on lethal ordnance. But that being said, what has so far been publicized of the report paints a damning picture of bureaucratic obstructionism, idiocy in policy and pusillanimity in refusing to share information that could have prevented the killing of 32 people—or at least reduced the tragic losses. The more time passes and the more I learn about the incident, the more eminently avoidable it seems to have been.
So what did they find? Among other things, that campus police chief Wendell Flinchum was not allowed to issue warnings to students for TWO FULL HOURS(!!) after Seung-Hui Cho killed his first two victims in a dormitory, because Flinchum was required to have any such warnings vetted by an administrative committee prior to issuance. And that even though the VTech police had long known of Cho's history of mental health problems, they didn't give that info to those on campus charged with providing the clinical help that could have kept him from snapping so violently, for fear of running afoul of federal law governing the privacy of personal medical data and opening themselves to prosecution and the college to lawsuits.
Kaine made the rounds of the TV networks' morning news shows today, hours before officially receiving the commission's report. While admitting the above two items jumped out at him from the report, he stopped short of saying that Flinchum or VTech prexy Charles Steger ought to lose their jobs because of them. At least one bereaved mother of a VTech senior slain by Cho, interviewed by the Associated Press, begged most strenuously to differ, calling on Kaine to "step up and show some leadership" by firing both men. A grieving parent's wish to see heads roll (and spare other parents such pain in future) is certainly understandable, but it must be noted that no one so closely and viscerally tied to a tragedy like this can possibly be objective.
For my part, I am reserving judgment on what should be done until I see the report in its entirety. And to its credit, the state legislature in VA did move swiftly to close gaps between state and federal gun laws in the weeks after, hopefully making it much harder for another mental case like Cho to get his/her hands on lethal ordnance. But that being said, what has so far been publicized of the report paints a damning picture of bureaucratic obstructionism, idiocy in policy and pusillanimity in refusing to share information that could have prevented the killing of 32 people—or at least reduced the tragic losses. The more time passes and the more I learn about the incident, the more eminently avoidable it seems to have been.