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[bower]

although VT has slightly more than 25k students (17k or so are off-campus residents), all 25k do not have 8am or 9am classes on Mondays. Most of us are members of a campus community and we all know that all of our students are not on campus at 8-9 am monday mornings. In regards to locking down a large campus, think about your own campus and determine how long it would take to close access to the campus (close roads and walkways). How long would it take for campus security to lock all academic buildings? I would guess that if campus security had only 5 officers locking 50-60 buildings that it would still take less than 2 hours.

[infopri]

Bower, I understand your feelings, but you're not being very realistic.  And datawoman, I don't think they said they weren't looking for him; they merely said they had reason to think he'd left campus.  And, in fact, there is no (released) evidence (yet) that the same shooter was involved in both incidents--although my money is in fact on a single shooter.  Moreover, unlike the second incident, they had reason to think that the first shooting was some kind of domestic incident, which would suggest that the rest of campus wasn't at risk. 

Even so, the administration did in fact take immediate steps to try to make everyone safe.  But "immediate" still requires (a) the arrival of the police (several minutes), (b) the assessment of what has happened (at least a few more minutes), (c) the collection of information from witnesses (still more minutes), (d) the notification of the administration and bringing those folks up to speed (more minutes, some of which are simultaneous with the first steps), (e) identifying the best/fastest way to get the word out to the most people, and only THEN (f) taking the steps identified in (e).

As several people on this thread have already said, there will be lots and lots of time for the blame game later, after we have more information.  It's premature to start playing it now.

[datawoman]

Just curious:  Have any of you had any notification from your campus PR about this:  like this could never happen here, or keep your eyes open, or anything?  Nothing at ours--just stuff about closed freeways and upcoming training seminars.  Wierd.  Our students are a little jumpy but functioning as normal.  We have talked about it all day in class.  We ALL notice sirens and helicopters going overhead though.....

[onomatopoeia]

We know that students are among the dead, but does anyone know if faculty or staff were killed?

[infopri]

How long would it take for campus security to lock all academic buildings? I would guess that if campus security had only 5 officers locking 50-60 buildings that it would still take less than 2 hours.

Bower, you're not thinking this through.  Locking the buildings might well have meant locking the shooter in.  That would have helped no one.

We know that students are among the dead, but does anyone know if faculty or staff were killed?

The men giving the press conference would not comment on this question until all the victims were identified and their families notified.  But I did hear one of the interviewees (a student, I think) mention two faculty.  I wouldn't put too much stock into such rumors, though; earlier today, rumors said there was only one death.  I'll bet there will be an official count released tomorrow.

[mountain_ivy]

Local, recent information:

http://www.roanoke.com/news/nrv/breaking/wb/113294

[doppelganger]

I find it interesting here that gun control and the media are being avidly discussed here, but not my point about identification and assessment of students with psychological problems.  "Campus counseling center" is not what I'm talking about here.

It would be great if there were a good way to ID potential hairtriggers, but there isn't. We know a few 'warning signs', but they're really not dependable. Most of the guys who do these rampages are not overtly disturbed. They're usually also smart enough to lie if confronted about symptoms. They sit in the back of class, don't talk much, have few friends...and they own guns. Lots of guns. And ammo. IMHO, controlling the weapons would be far easier than targeting the users. These crimes simply do not occur in countries where guns (or bullets) are not so easily available.

True, there is no real way of preventing this from happening.  I had the police come to one of my classes because one of my students threatened his classmates with a gun, but until it turned into a viable threat, there was nothing we could do about his increasingly erratic behavior except put the counseling center and the deans on alert.  You cannot arrest someone for being irrational or strange.  Even then, they sent the cops to protect my students because they could not find the young man on campus because it was so large.  

If the cops cannot find a student when they know his name & address & class schedule, can you imagine trying to find an unknown person?    

Did the rest of campus find out about this one?  No.  They assumed he was just unstable and not going to act on the threat.  (Rightfully, so, as it happened.)

But, that was a campus which had buildings that they could not effectively evacuate for fires or drills and which gave us no guidance whatsoever during 9/11, so we were all holding classes that morning.  I cannot even conceive of how you would get a hold of everyone, even with an administration that was not oblivious.  

There's just no way to prevent these things, I fear.

[ms_collegiality]

I broke the news to my students this afternoon and most had not heard.  I have a smart classroom, so I went onto msn.com and we watched streaming footage and talked about what we would be feeling and doing in their shoes for half an hour.  We had just been studying propaganda and fallacies last week, and the students were all over the inane comments by newscasters.  I was proud of them.

At one point, we looked at a "slide show" of photos on msn.com, and one student pointed out a photo of a young man who was in handcuffs "as a safety precaution" and said that he looked "Middle-Eastern."  The resulting discussion was one of the best teachable moments I've ever experienced in a classroom.

[pink_]

My deepest sympathies to the VT community.

I don't know anyone there but, as a prof, I feel a deep sense of sadness thinking about how the sense of safety and security of the VT community was shattered today.

Me too.
I mentioned, I think, very early in this thread that something similar had happened on my campus when I was in grad school though not nearly to the same extent--one student died, another was seriously injured and others were lucky.

It completely shattered the feeling of safety and security on our campus, and we were all affected whether we knew the vitims or not--it was a huge school, so most of us didn't.

Maybe mistakes were made today, I don't know.  But who would expect something like this?  To me, this is a horrible, unthinkable thing, and I remember the shooting on my own campus and Columbine a few years later.  Maybe we should be more sensitive to students who seem "on the edge," but in the case on my campus, it wasn't a student.  In fact, for those of you wanting to make gender statements, it wasn't even a man.  It was a woman who lived in the town and who had a history of mental illness.  This is part of the "problem" with an open campus like mine or VT--regular people from the community can just show up.  Usually they don't bring assault rifles.

My heart hurts for everyone connected to today's tragedy whether by proximity, geography, or our world of academia.

[secretagent]

FYI: It's VPI, not VT. Virginia Polytechnical Institute.

[medprof]

FYI: It's VPI, not VT. Virginia Polytechnical Institute.

No, it's not.

[infopri]

FYI: It's VPI, not VT. Virginia Polytechnical Institute.

The school's own website says "Virginia Tech" in big letters.  "Virginia Polytechnic [not Polytechnical] Institute and State University" appears only in very tiny type at the bottom of the page.  (Also note the "vt" in the URL.)

http://www.vt.edu/

[iomhaigh]

As much as we may rag on administrators from time to time on this board, my heart just goes out to President Steger right now.  Can you imagine any more horrifying task for an academic?  We got into this profession to teach and learn.... and to have to speak to the world about how students at your school were massacred? 

I know he is but one of the many, many people struggling with this situation, but it chokes me up to watch him try to cope with this in such a bright bright spotlight.  That could be any one of us someday folks.  Sigh.  Does anyone really get job training to deal with this kind of stuff? 

[amlithist]

Jesus--my nephew just interviewed there last week, and did a demo in that building. 

OK, I'm going to go sit in the dark and shake for awhile, if anyone needs me.....

[zarathustra]

As much as we may rag on administrators from time to time on this board, my heart just goes out to President Steger right now.  Can you imagine any more horrifying task for an academic?  We got into this profession to teach and learn.... and to have to speak to the world about how students at your school were massacred? 

I know he is but one of the many, many people struggling with this situation, but it chokes me up to watch him try to cope with this in such a bright bright spotlight.  That could be any one of us someday folks.  Sigh.  Does anyone really get job training to deal with this kind of stuff? 

I know, seriously.  Our pres. would come undone.