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[datawoman]

I liked the comment about rolling out Nancy Grace.  It made me laugh!!! Thank you.  As to the rest of the comments since page 10 (that's when I went to bed last night) we seem to be wandering a bit.

I listened to the memorial service today on KNX news radio 1070 because I could not bear to see any more pictures.  I cried.  I laughed.  I enjoyed the hightie tighties (probably mis-spelled).

And I liked the end where the students all chanted Let's go hoakies, lets's go hoakies!!!  They get it!!! Our students get it!!!  I felt like yelling Let's go hoakies!!!

Now, where is my kleenex????

(I wonder if you can find maroon and orange shirts in Los Angeles???)

[arrow564]

My Deepest Condolences to all the victims of this horrible act of terrorism. Please do not turn this in to a racial issue.

We must not let Him win by turning against each other. He is now facing more punishment than we could ever provide on earth.  just don't let your anger turn into hate for thats the only way that he will win.

I just want to know... why? Why? WHY? I may never understand... we may never understand.

[sikora]

Perhaps I'm just too crass of a human being, but I always find myself fascinated with our collective attempts to make sense of the senseless when grieving over unpredictable horrific events.  Arming the faculty... come on. 

There's just no way to prevent such atrocities.  We're humans.  We are not perfect.  We cannot raise perfect children or students. (And, frankly, trying to do so puts way too much pressure on them.)  We get hurt by others; we hurt ourselves; we hurt the ones we love.  Sure, most of us do not kill the others in our lives, but none of us will ever be sufficiently omniscient to protect our loved ones from situations like this. 

It is depressing to have our illusions of safety and order removed.  All the laws in the world aren't going to make us safe.  Even my normally optimistic peace-love-and-happiness Marx-had-some-good-ideas self doesn't truly believe that if everyone is loved and raised well and supported that we can prevent someone from wanting to hurt another person. 

Our lives -- the very foundations of our existence -- are far too imperfect. 

Anthroid, help me out here.

Trying to make sense of such an event is inevitable, human, and all to important.  From my work in comparative healing processes, I've learned that the need to make sense, to answer the question Why me? Why us? in such situations is a human universals.  To paraphrase an important anthropologist who died recently, human beings are creatures who spend their lives suspended in webs of significance.  Without "sense," the web falls apart.  What we are doing here, and all over, is patching the web.  

But it will never be the same.

obscure, but still the first dog in space.

[husqvarna]

My humble, sincere and heartfelt prayers are with all of you. May God bless you all. May you be lifted up. The Lord God (Jehovah) is a balm in Gilead to all those who morn. Praying for your comfort. Interceding for (your) peace.
 

Yes, that is what we all need, that balm in Gilead.  There is so much longing, sorrow, and hope in the idea of a balm in Gilead.  And I pray, to whom ever will listen, that those among us (and I mean all of us) who are directly wounded in whatever way by this tragedy, that the healing balm will come, and the rest of us will be taught to bring that balm.

Just after the shootings in the Amish school in PA last fall, I learned an Amish expression.  "Sometimes God calms the storm.  Sometimes God lets the storm rage and calms the child."

Peace is underrated.  I pray for peace, even for Cho.  Even for GWB.  Imagine, if the balm reached him...

Obscure, but still the first dog in space

Dietrich Bonhoeffer has a famous quote: "Peace is the opposite of security."  The essay as a whole is an important statement on the place of the Christian (or any religious pacifist, read more broadly) within the context of international affairs.

[historywoman]

For me, the most moving story to emerge from yesterday's horrible events is that of Professor Liviu Lebrescu. In his youth, Lebrescu survived the Holocaust.  Yesterday, as he heard the shots of the approaching gunman, he blocked the door with his own body, and urged his students to flee, to jump out the classroom windows.  Professor Lebrescu lost his life when the gunman shot him through the blocked door.  Having survived one of the most horrible evils in human history, Professor Lebrescu stood in the face of yet another evil, bravely sacrificing his life so that others might live.

Would that we would all have the courage to do the same.

HW

[husqvarna]

It's interesting to read what new forumites are coming out on these posts, and what messages they are posting.  Sorry if this has already been observed... I haven't read through this thread very thoroughly at all.

[infopri]

Having survived one of the most horrible evils in human history, Professor Lebrescu stood in the face of yet another evil, bravely sacrificing his life so that others might live.

I hadn't heard about this, historywoman.  Thank you for sharing the story, even though it made me cry.

[trabb]

3. The Chair of the English Dept has (rightly, in my view) refused to release these writings or his grades to the press.

Unfortunately (in my opinion), his classmates are not doing the same.  Two of Cho Seung-Hui's plays have been published online after being released to AOL by a classmate who had access to them through VA Tech's blackboard site.  I guess the more sensationalized the news media can make it, the better, right?

[reluctant_loudmouth]

3. The Chair of the English Dept has (rightly, in my view) refused to release these writings or his grades to the press.

Unfortunately (in my opinion), his classmates are not doing the same.  Two of Cho Seung-Hui's plays have been published online after being released to AOL by a classmate who had access to them through VA Tech's blackboard site.  I guess the more sensationalized the news media can make it, the better, right?

I disagree. 

http://newsbloggers.aol.com/2007/04/17/cho-seung-huis-plays/

I think this is not sensationalism & there is a serious issue quite suitable for discussion in this forum.  In what situations do we have to "turn in" a potentially troubled student?  How do we know that a referral to authorities/counseling will not alienate that student even further?

[We still don't know whether what happened could be an indirect result of the administration's attempts to act on that professor's report.]

[case_insensitive]

3. The Chair of the English Dept has (rightly, in my view) refused to release these writings or his grades to the press.

Unfortunately (in my opinion), his classmates are not doing the same.  Two of Cho Seung-Hui's plays have been published online after being released to AOL by a classmate who had access to them through VA Tech's blackboard site.  I guess the more sensationalized the news media can make it, the better, right?

I disagree. 

http://newsbloggers.aol.com/2007/04/17/cho-seung-huis-plays/

I think this is not sensationalism & there is a serious issue quite suitable for discussion in this forum.  In what situations do we have to "turn in" a potentially troubled student?  How do we know that a referral to authorities/counseling will not alienate that student even further?

[We still don't know whether what happened could be an indirect result of the administration's attempts to act on that professor's report.]

I think this is a good idea for a future thread.

[sisyphus]

In his youth, Lebrescu survived the Holocaust.  Yesterday, as he heard the shots of the approaching gunman, he blocked the door with his own body, and urged his students to flee, to jump out the classroom windows.  Professor Lebrescu lost his life when the gunman shot him through the blocked door.

I have heard people say what we need on our campuses are fewer guns; I have heard people saying what we need is more guns.

I am afraid what we need are more people like Professor Lebrescu, more professors and students willing to learn from and follow his example.

[case_insensitive]

Strangely, no one in my first class mentioned Va Tech today.

My second class could talk of almost nothing else... hard to segue into accounting from a discussion of this tragedy...  A very difficult start to the class, but I felt that if they needed to talk about it, we should.

[trabb]

This may have been posted earlier in the thread; if so, my apologies for duplicating:

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/04/17/vtech.victims/index.html

I've always admired Professor Giovanni; today she became one of my heroes.

[felix_unger]

I think this is not sensationalism & there is a serious issue quite suitable for discussion in this forum.  In what situations do we have to "turn in" a potentially troubled student?  How do we know that a referral to authorities/counseling will not alienate that student even further?

[We still don't know whether what happened could be an indirect result of the administration's attempts to act on that professor's report.]

I think this is a good idea for a future thread.
[/quote]

Yes, a totally different thread, because this is NOT the point I understand trabb to have been making at all. Hu was referring to the post-facto sharing of these writings with the general public, which I cannot imagine to have any other purpose than to satisfy ghoulish curiousity. This is a very different conversation from whether and how professors should go about alerting authorities to disturbing student work when it is first turned in to them (which I understand from NPR that his professor did in fact try to do). The latter is morally (and perhaps legally) justifiable, the former grossly irresponsible and just plain sick.

Trabb, is that accurate?

[falada]

When New Orleans was flooded and destroyed, a friend of mine caught the BBC news (the CBC was on strike at the time, and the CBC news was replaced by the BBC). Anyway, the New Orleans tragedy was buried under a bunch of other stories. It was given about as much air time as an earthquake in India would be given here. It wasn't in their backyards, and it was just another natural disaster that had happened "somewhere else."

Sorry to have to say this on this thread, but this is a crock as far as the US is represented in the UK. NO was big news for a long time in the UK, with a lot of reporting and documentaries. The VT story is likewise the main story in most of the UK mass media. There is puzzlement at the  US's gun culture (and that is not to comment on the positions stated in this thread, just to say that that puzzlement exists); but the main theme is deepest sympathy.

I'll second this. Katrina was covered intensely here and the VT massacre was on BBC24 nonstop from the first reports of the mass casualties as well as dominating the front pages (and for at least one, unusually, the back page as well) of all major newspapers.