the Face of a Gunman

This 23 year old shot and killed 32 students at Virgina Tech early yesterday morning before turning the gun on himself and committing suicide. I naturally feel great remorse for those who had to experience the horror of this event, but what stirs me the most is that these students and their loved ones might never find out why Cho Seung-Hui committed such an heinous act. Depression? Anger? Boredom?

To be honest, I also have sympathy for his parents who now how to live with this shame and constant fear from those who will lash out against them. What is going through their minds right now? Has their "American Dream" come to a grinding halt now that their own son is not only dead, but a mass murderer.

I graduated from the University of Texas at Austin so this event definitely gave us alums and extra jolt when we heard the news. In case you're wondering what I'm referring to, I'm talking about the Whitman shooting that happened back in 1966. Some faculty I work with were actually there when it happened and the details of that day (especially Whitman's methodical actions) are incredibly gory and fascinating at the same time. Back then, there wasn't much of a sophisticated warning system in place. You just had to get news from the panicky masses or notice the sniper up at the top of the Main Building pegging people. Scary shit, let me tell you. You can still see some bullet holes on the front steps of the limestone courtyard that faces south...

Many students from Virgina Tech cite well deserved frustration with the delayed response time the university took informing students about the emergency situation. Apparently an email was sent out a couple hours after the first shootings...that is a LONG lag time. I'm not sure what other methods they used, but 2 fucking hours after the shooting and officials finally send an email citing a campus emergency to the students? Did this message get hung up on the server or something? Was someone agonizing over wording? What the hell happened? Someone is going to be in the hot seat, I imagine.

On a related note, it blows my mind that someone was calm enough to record the shooting on his cell phone.