Virgina Tech Massacre Liken to Columbine

Another April has been showered with tragedy. In years past we have dealt with Waco, Oklahoma City, Columbine, and now Virginia Tech.

Seung- Hui Cho opening fire on the campus on April 16, 2007 and it took hours to let people on the campus know what was going on. There seems to have been an enormous amount of confusion in the matter. Grade school through high school administrators (both public and private) have striven for years to make their school safer and have gone to great lengths to alert teachers and counselors as to how to recognize when someone is in crisis. They have plans in place incase the unthinkable happens.

This young man, who by all accounts came from a good, decent family, was clearly in crisis. One of his professors recognized it, his classmates recognized it, but all the recognition in the world does no good if nothing is done about it. Unfortunately, college aged students can be in real trouble and there isn't a lot anyone at the school can do about it. They can find a reason to expel the student, but they cannot force them into psychiatric care. Just as sometimes happens when someone is fired from their employment, it won't stop them from returning to the location and taking out their frustration on their former co-workers. All he would have done is show up on campus as a non-student and done it anyway.

It is argued however that Cho was not mentally disturbed, but merely desensitized to violence in a world where violence is prevalent in everything from television and movies, to music and games. He was angry for some reason or another, and seeing no reason not to act out, he did and he got the attention he craved. Unfortunately it was the wrong kind of attention.