Virginia Tech Campus Shut Down - Shooting Incident

[Easy Mac]

So have they found the alleged girl yet? I would think that would put to rest the second shooter theories or at least shine some light on the whole thing.

[stevew]

Originally Posted by Easy Mac

So have they found the alleged girl yet? I would think that would put to rest the second shooter theories or at least shine some light on the whole thing.

Multiple reports seem to suggest that she was killed with the RA at 745.

[Easy Mac]

Also passed:

Emily Hilscher
Jamie Bishop
Kevin Granata
Henry Lee
Ryan Clark
Leslie Sherman
Dr. Give. Loganathan
Juan Ortiz
Maxine Turner
Reema Samaha
Mary Read
Liviu Lubrescu

whats really weird, for lack of a better term, is to see these kids facebook pages just sitting there, with their pictures seeming so happy.

Sad, great story about the Professor Lubrescu
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nat...orld-headlines

[stevew]

Originally Posted by stevew

Multiple reports seem to suggest that she was killed with the RA at 745.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/liv...e_id=1811&ct=5

[sabotai]

Originally Posted by Easy Mac

whats really weird, for lack of a better term, is to see these kids facebook pages just sitting there, with their pictures seeming so happy.

Worse is seeing comments left on their facebook/myspace/what-have-you from their friends earlier in the day asking for them to call and if they're ok.

[Vinatieri for Prez]

Originally Posted by Groundhog

See, to me that says that maybe people shouldn't have handguns either.

Yeah, but we're past the point of no return on those, I think. It's the mass killing machines I am more worried about. To put in context, if this shooter had an assault rifle, maybe we're talking a hundred dead.

Here's hoping the NRA and Charlton Heston decide not to have their next meeting in Blacksburg.

[bob]

Originally Posted by VPI97

What I've heard via word of mouth (Montgomery Co. Deputy -> my dad -> me) is that they had an eyewitness to the first shooting who described a white guy fleeing the scene and driving off in his car. Blacksburg P.D. picked the guy up and was questioning him when the second shooting occurred. Dunno if he's still a suspect or if it's going to end up being the same guy as the Norris shootings...I guess the ballistics report will be the deciding factor on that.

According to someone on Fox last night (5 of them were on screen, and i was looking away so i'm not sure who was talking) local police were looking for a white male with greasy hair driving a black truck with farm plates in the first shooting. This person was found and was being talked to at the time of the second shooting. Seems like they are basically just waiting for the ballistics to confirm he was not involved because they keep saying they don't think there was a second shooter involved yesterday.

[Qwikshot]

This just reminds me of this past weekend's "Soprano's" episode, where the orderly caring for Johnny Sack had been a doctor prior to being imprisoned. He had killed his wife that he had suspected had been cheating on him, and then her sister who happened to be visiting at the time, and then the mailman.

I guess it was the stone cold delivery of this line after confessing he had killed the mailman

"At this point I had to fully commit."

I laughed at it then because it was just so deadpan, but I'm guessing this guy at VT had the same mentality (if it is just one shooter).

[Subby]

According to the Washington Post, the shooter was a student and is from Fairfax Co., VA (the same county where a number of fofcers, including myself, live).

[Subby]

Victims of Shootings at Virginia Tech Remembered
By The Associated Press

Tuesday, April 17, 2007; 7:34 AM

Vignettes of some of the victims of the Virginia Tech shooting rampage:
Liviu Librescu, 76, was known for his research, but his son said he will be remembered as a hero.

The Israeli lecturer taught at Virginia Tech for 20 years and was internationally known for his work in aeronautical engineering.
"His research has enabled better aircraft, superior composite materials, and more robust aerospace structures," said Ishwar K. Puri, the head of the engineering science and mechanics department.
Librescu's son, Joe, said his father's students sent e-mails detailing how the professor saved their lives by blocking the doorway of his classroom from the approaching gunman before he was fatally shot.
--
Kevin Granata, a professor of engineering science and mechanics, served in the military and later conducted orthopedic research in hospitals before coming to Virginia Tech, where he and his students researched muscle and reflex response and robotics.
Puri called Granata one of the top five biomechanics researchers in the country working on movement dynamics in cerebral palsy.
Engineering professor Demetri P. Telionis said Granata was successful, but also kind.
"With so many research projects and graduate students, he still found time to spend with his family and he coached his children in many sports and extracurricular activities," Telionis said. "He was a wonderful family man. We will all miss him dearly."
--
Ryan Clark was called "Stack" by his friends, many of whom he met as a resident assistant at Ambler Johnson Hall, where the first shootings took place, and as a member of the Marching Virginians band.
Clark, 22 of Martinez, Ga., just outside of Augusta, was a fifth-year student working toward degrees in biology and English.
Gregory Walton, 25, learned his friend was among the dead from an ambulance driver.
"He was just one of the greatest people you could possibly know," Walton said, fighting tears. "He was always smiling, always laughing. I don't think I ever saw him mad in the five years I knew him."
--
G.V. Loganathan was born in the southern Indian city of Chennai and had been a civil and environmental engineering professor at Virginia Tech since 1982.
Loganathan, 51, won several awards for excellence in teaching, had served on the faculty senate and was an adviser to about 75 undergraduate students.
"We all feel like we have had an electric shock, we do not know what to do," his brother G.V. Palanivel told the NDTV news channel from the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu. "He has been a driving force for all of us, the guiding force."

[Toddzilla]

I'm not trying to be a monday morning quarterback, or second guess the Tech Police, but after a shooting in which the gunman was clearly at-large, how in the world do you not cancel classes and clear the campus?

Too many students?
Too big of a campus?
Too many people in-route?

And you do nothing? With a known killer on the loose?

Sigh.

Todd Zilla
VPI&SU
Class of 1988

[Toddzilla]

Originally Posted by bob

According to someone on Fox last night (5 of them were on screen, and i was looking away so i'm not sure who was talking) local police were looking for a white male with greasy hair driving a black truck with farm plates in the first shooting. This person was found and was being talked to at the time of the second shooting. Seems like they are basically just waiting for the ballistics to confirm he was not involved because they keep saying they don't think there was a second shooter involved yesterday.

I think the fact that the police never once mentioned or even hinted at the fact there may have been a second shooter at-large, or that they were actively searching for another gunman gave away the fact that they were convinced it was one person the whole time.

[molson]

Originally Posted by Toddzilla

And you do nothing? With a known killer on the loose?

This has been discussed quite a bit in this thread, and people have different opinions.

Personally, I don't see how any of the proposed lockdowns/clearing campuses/mass unlawful detentions of civilians do a damn thing when you have someone running around in a free society willing to kill. People want to live terrified - what's the point? Murders happen all the time, unfortunately and only in the very smallest number of these incidents do things escalate. If someone got shot in a neighboring apartment complex, and the shooter got away, I sure as hell wouldn't stand for the police detaining me in my apartment.

If we divided the country in two, and one half had metal detectors at every dorm and educational building, massive lockdown policies at any hint of violence, police power to indefinitely detain innocent civilians to "sort out police matters" - I'd surly live in the other half (and I'm not convinced in the slightest that my half would have a lower crime rate). And I'm 100% sure we'd all be hell of a lot happier.

[bob]

More details from another press conference.

- Classroom shooter ID'd as a 23 year old S. Korean English major, resident alien status, that lived on campus. Name was given but i didn't catch it.
- Guns found were a 9MM and a .22.
- One of guns used at the classroom's was the one used in the dorm shooting. However, they don't have evidence proving classroom shooter was the dorm shooter. They don't think there was a second shooter, but want to prove it rather than assume it.
- They are still talking to the other person of interest originally detained about the first shooting to see if he was involved.
- No evidence that the recent bomb threats were involved in this (some speculated it might have been done to test police response times).

As far as the school goes:
- Classes canceled for remainder of the week.
- Norris Hall closed the remainder of the semester.

[stevew]

April 17, 2007 — Cho Hui Seung, a resident alien of the United States, a South Korean national and a Virginia Tech senior has been identified as the gunman in the shootings that left 33 people dead on the Virginia Tech campus Monday, ABC News has learned.

The student killed two people in a dorm room, returned to his own dorm room where he re-armed and left a "disturbing note" before entering a classroom building on the other side of campus to continue his rampage, sources said.

Cho's identitiy has been confirmed with a positive fingerprint match on the guns used in the rampage and with immigration materials. It is believed that he was the shooter in both incidents yesterday. Sources say Cho was carrying a backpack that contained receipts for a March purchase of a Glock 9 mm pistol, sources said. Witnesses had also told authorities that the shooter was carrying a backpack. Sections of chain similar to those used to lock the main doors at Norris Hall, the site of the second shooting that left 31 dead, were also found inside a Virginia Tech dormitory, sources confirmed to ABC News.

In all, the massacre at Virginia Tech left 33 people dead — including Cho himself — in the worst shooting in modern American history.

President Charles Steger told "Good Morning America's" Diane Sawyer that police were still investigating the possibility of a second shooter, and said authorities had already interviewed one "person of interest."

"There may be others," said Steger, who will join the Virginia Tech chief of police at a press conference Tuesday morning. "We just don't know."

Steger also said that authorities hoped to have ballistics evidence to release that would confirm a connection between the two shootings.

Watch live coverage of the press conference on ABC News Now.

In a press conference Monday night, the university president, who continues to defend the way the school responded the dormitory shooting that began the day of campus bloodshed, gave a detailed timeline of the morning's tragic events.

He said a 911 call reporting a shooting at a dormitory was made at approximately 7:15 a.m. While police were trying to assess what they first believed was a domestic dispute, they received a second 911 call, nearly two and a half hours later, that reported shootings on the opposite side of campus. According to the Virginia Tech Police Chief Wendell Flinchum, officials had not definitively linked the two shootings as of Monday night.

Full coverage continues on "Good Morning America" and "World News With Charles Gibson" an ABC network special Tuesday at 10 p.m. EDT

Two guns were recovered, a 9 mm pistol and a .22-caliber pistol.

Flinchum said they have ruled out the possibility of a murder-suicide in the first shooting at West Ambler Johnston Hall. Ryan "Stack" Clark, a member of the school's marching band, the Marching Virginians, and a student resident assistant, was killed there by a shot in the neck. The second victim in the dorm shooting was a female.

Last night, investigators also had a preliminary identification of the shooter involved in the Norris Hall rampage.

When asked to describe the scene at Norris Hall, where the second shooting took place, Flinchum called it "one of the worst things I've seen in my life."

While Flinchum would not name any of the victims, he did say that university staff members were among the dead.

There have been, however, at least 15 shooting victims identified in press accounts, including four professors and 11 students.

Some students question why administrators did not cancel classes after the first shooting, and why it took more than two hours to inform the university community via e-mail about the first incident.

[Toddzilla]

Originally Posted by molson

Personally, I don't see how any of the proposed lockdowns/clearing campuses/mass unlawful detentions of civilians do a damn thing when you have someone running around in a free society willing to kill.

Nope, you're exactly right. However, I've got to believe that when there is a shooter on the loose, fewer people on campus is better than more people.

[Drake]

More people on campus increase the odds that any one person won't be shot. How's that?

[Honolulu_Blue]

So begins the "lockdown" paranoia. . .

http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/a...EWS03/70417015

Brief Cranbrook lockdown after report of man wearing women’s clothing


April 17, 2007
By EMILIA ASKARI
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER

Classes at Cranbrook went on as normal this morning after a brief lockdown, triggered by an allegation of a man wearing women’s clothing on the Bloomfield Hills campus.

A mother who was dropping off a student in the parking lot told authorities that she saw a 6-foot-tall man wearing a blonde wig, high heels, a skirt and a black coat.

“She thought it was kind of strange, so she called police,” said Bloomfield Hills Detective Lt. Paul J. Myszenski.

Classrooms were locked for about an hour and a half while police searched the campus. They found nothing suspicious.

“In the wake of what happened yesterday in Virginia, it’s better to be safe than sorry. It’s better to call us than have an oh, whoops,” Myszenski said.

In a news release, the school said, "Cranbrook Schools went into lockdown mode shortly after 8 a.m., when an unidentified person was spotted on the campus of Cranbrook Schools. Cranbrook contacted Bloomfield Hills police and followed its standard lockdown procedures. At 9:20 a.m., the lockdown was lifted and the students are resuming their daily schedules as planned."

Helicopters circled the campus and news media waited outside the campus gates during the search.

Michelle Kim of Birmingham had been waiting outside the Kingswood part of the campus to pick up her daughter since 8:40 a.m. “I was very, very worried about it because of what happened yesterday.”

When asked whether the alleged incident is illegal, Myszenski said no, but, “If you’re a man, you don’t hang around a school dressd as a woman."

“What kind of crime did this person commit? A fashion crime.”

[molson]

Originally Posted by Drake

More people on campus increase the odds that any one person won't be shot. How's that?

And evacuating people also increases the odds that the killer is flushed out, putting the community at risk.

And putting people in lockdown increases the chance of death if there's a fire. (Unlikely, but so is what happened yesterday).

I can't wait for the victims to be exploited by the media in fueling their crusade against VT.

[molson]

Originally Posted by Honolulu_Blue

So begins the "lockdown" paranoia. . .

It will become the new fire drill - a routine part of dorm life that no one takes seriously and causes no one to take extra precautions.

[JPhillips]

There's one big question that need answering from the administration.

Was there a security plan in place for an unknown violent assailant on the loose? If so, what training was done with campus and local police?

Given the UT shootings, the rash of HS shootings in the late nineties, and the fact that a gunman was on campus last year it's incredible that the response to this event was as disorganized as it was. There were a number of reasonable steps that should have happened as soon as they suspected a shooter was on the loose.

Cancel classes.

Encourage all students to go to their dorms because a violent criminal may be on the loose.

If possible put the dorms on keycard activation. An RA can check for persons who don't have their keycard.

Put staff in commuter lots to inform students that classes are canceled.

In coordination with local police and sheriff's department begin patrolling the campus.

You don't need to have a complete lockdown to increase safety. Doing nothing and not informing the student population was completely irresponsible.

[King of New York]

There's nothing they could have done to stop this guy completely, but they didn't have to make things easier for him by sending out the email notification some two hours after the initial shootings, and by presenting him with a target-rich environment of packed classrooms filled with people who seem to have had no inkling of what had happened earlier, because some or all of those classes presumably began after the email warning went out.

What was to be gained by not cancelling classes? Mass murderers can kill many more people if their targets are concentrated rather than dispersed, and I think that cancelling classes is completely consistent with a healthy respect for civili liberties.

[Maple Leafs]

Originally Posted by JPhillips

Encourage all students to go to their dorms because a violent criminal may be on the loose.

The first shooting happened at a dorm. Seems odd to send the students back to their dorms as a safety precaution, no?

[BrianD]

Originally Posted by JPhillips

You don't need to have a complete lockdown to increase safety. Doing nothing and not informing the student population was completely irresponsible.

Even when they had the shooter (so they thought) in custody?

[Toddzilla]

Originally Posted by Maple Leafs

The first shooting happened at a dorm. Seems odd to send the students back to their dorms as a safety precaution, no?

Not when you're behind a locked door. Much safer than sitting in a classroom with no cover and no way to keep someone out.

[molson]

Originally Posted by Maple Leafs

The first shooting happened at a dorm. Seems odd to send the students back to their dorms as a safety precaution, no?

Not to mention that the shooter was a dorm resident. And you can only lock yourself in your room so long - if you want to use a bathroom, for example.

A lot of people's suggestions sound reasonable enough. But I don't know how you notify 15k+ people in 2 hours on limited information, or what good that does. What you start a panic and someone's killed in a car accident as a result?

The world's a dangerous place, always has been. That's not a problem that can be solved. There is an enormous amount of on-campus violence every year across the country. That’s not a reason to treat our campuses like military bases.

[King of New York]

Originally Posted by BrianD

Even when they had the shooter (so they thought) in custody?

If they had had this guy under arrest and charged, I would agree with you--an arrest suggests that they have strong evidence indiciating guilt. But, as I understand it, they were just questioning him. Ruling out other possibilities at a preliminary stage of an investigation is always a mistake.

[King of New York]

Molson, not all risks are equally probable, and to treat all risks as equally probable (and therefore equally unavoidable) is not logical. The likelihood that if you cancel classes, students are going to start crashing their cars into one another and die as a result, or that during a lockdown, a student is going to be unable to go to the bathroom and dies of a burst bladder as a result, is vastly smaller than the likelihood of an armed gunman on the loose killing again in the vicinity of the original killings.

[molson]

Originally Posted by King of New York

Molson, not all risks are equally probable, and to treat all risks as equally probable (and therefore equally unavoidable) is not logical. The likelihood that if you cancel classes, students are going to start crashing their cars into one another and die as a result, or that during a lockdown, a student is going to be unable to go to the bathroom and dies of a burst bladder as a result, is vastly smaller than the likelihood of an armed gunman on the loose killing again in the vicinity of the original killings.

I don't know, the odds of a violent domestic dispute claiming 30+ lives was exactly 0% prior to yesterday.

[bob]

At this point, I wonder how VT is affected long term by this. Lots of students are angry about how this was handled, as well as being upset that this happened in addition to the incident at the beginning of the year, the bomb threats, etc. And even though this is random and could have happened at any campus, I can imagine parents not wanting their kids to go there out of fear.

I imagine lots will be ready to transfer because of the difficult memory of things there. I can't imagine going to a class in that building in the future.

[Icy]

I'm very sorry for the victims and specially their famillies, they must be living their worst nightmare right now.

One thing i heard today in Spanish news and also read in this thread is that the VT staff used an email as way of communicating about the incident and danger and it's really weird to me so i guess i didn't understand it well.

An email for an emergency?? so if they have a fire emergency, what would they do? send a regular mail or publish it on the next day newspapers? I can't think on an email in my top ten fast ways of telling somebody about an emergency. Don't they have a speaker system? sound and visual alarm system? Can't at least the teachers be notified so they can lock their classrooms?

Maybe it's that students there are reading emails every 5 minutes so it was the best way of telling them, but i doubt it.

[Drake]

Originally Posted by molson

It will become the new fire drill - a routine part of dorm life that no one takes seriously and causes no one to take extra precautions.

They've been doing these (armed intruder drills) at my kids' schools since shortly after Columbine. Granted, those are elementary/middle schools rather than college campuses.

[bob]

Originally Posted by Icy

Can't at least the teachers be notified so they can lock their classrooms?

Well, another issue was that most of the rooms didn't have locks on the door.

[cthomer5000]

Originally Posted by Icy

I'm very sorry for the victims and specially their famillies, they must be living their worst nightmare right now.

One thing i heard today in Spanish news and also read in this thread is that the VT staff used an email as way of communicating about the incident and danger and it's really weird to me so i guess i didn't understand it well.

An email for an emergency?? so if they have a fire emergency, what would they do? send a regular mail or publish it on the next day newspapers? I can't think on an email in my top ten fast ways of telling somebody about an emergency. Don't they have a speaker system? sound and visual alarm system? Can't at least the teachers be notified so they can lock their classrooms?

Maybe it's that students there are reading emails every 5 minutes so it was the best way of telling them, but i doubt it.

Do we know that it was email and email only? Or was it email in addition to?

[King of New York]

Originally Posted by molson

I don't know, the odds of a violent domestic dispute claiming 30+ lives was exactly 0% prior to yesterday.

The Texas bell tower sniper started out by killing his mother and wife, I believe, and then decided to take out random strangers.

(FWIW: I'm an ACLU-type myself, so I am sympathetic to your positions!)

[Galaril]

this blog is the top blog run by expats in korea and has been running some interesting info on the killer.
http://www.rjkoehler.com/

[Fighter of Foo]

Originally Posted by JPhillips

There's one big question that need answering from the administration.

Was there a security plan in place for an unknown violent assailant on the loose?

I'm going to guess no, and at the risk of being flamed, why the fcck would they? Seriously?

This question is like asking if the army has a plan for dealing with specific types of bullets.

You prepare for emergencies and disasters. Anything more specific and it quickly becomes pointless (see airport security).

[molson]

Originally Posted by Galaril

this blog is the top blog run by expats in korea and has been running some interesting info on the killer.
http://www.rjkoehler.com/

So he apparently has lived in the US since he was 3.

[Young Drachma]

Originally Posted by sabotai

Worse is seeing comments left on their facebook/myspace/what-have-you from their friends earlier in the day asking for them to call and if they're ok.

Yeah. Last year, when a girl was murdered here, you could still her facebook page for a while and it was a little weird -- not unusual or bad, but weird -- because people turned it naturally into an online vigil of sorts. It's not online anymore, of course.

[Young Drachma]

Though I guess I wonder how that would feel/be for loved ones to have out there? I mean, it's the last tangible thing that you might have had that they created themselves. I know that when my grandfather died and then when my grandmother died the following year (and they weren't yet 60) when I was in HS, my mom wanted to keep the voice mail he recorded for as long as she could and didn't finally get rid of it until we sold their house and that was only because the phone company told her it couldn't be retrieved.

[Logan]

My input on this thread will be very simple. I'm more interested in reading other's thoughts than participating in a back-and-forth.

I went to a very large university (Rutgers) that is spread out over a fairly large area, but the main campus I was on (College Ave) is surely much smaller than VT's campus. I don't believe for a second, that if god forbid this ever happened there, that the school, police, whatever could have come close to locking everyone up and keeping everyone safe. It's a logistical nightmare.

My point is...stop criticizing, because there is no chance in hell any school of a decent size would be able to handle this. Feel free to debate what missteps probably took place, what should have been done differently...but there is just no way all these correct moves could have been implemented that would have avoided all this.

[Drake]

I work for a major American university. If I hear gunshots in my building, I don't wait for the university to tell me what to do to protect myself. If I hear a report of violence on campus, I don't wait for the university to tell me how to respond.

My question is: why are these college-aged adults acting like they needed someone to tell them what to do? The concept of in loco parentis pretty much died in the 1990's.

[Oilers9911]

The media just drives me nuts in all this. Parading these kids from VT who have just been through hell, in front of a camera asking stupid questions and basically asking them to speculate who, why and so on. Leave the kids be for awhile at least.

[Drake]

CNN: How are you feeling right now?
Student: Crappy.
CNN: Can you elaborate on that?

[VPI97]

Originally Posted by Icy

One thing i heard today in Spanish news and also read in this thread is that the VT staff used an email as way of communicating about the incident and danger and it's really weird to me so i guess i didn't understand it well.

An email for an emergency?? so if they have a fire emergency, what would they do? send a regular mail or publish it on the next day newspapers? I can't think on an email in my top ten fast ways of telling somebody about an emergency. Don't they have a speaker system? sound and visual alarm system? Can't at least the teachers be notified so they can lock their classrooms?

Maybe it's that students there are reading emails every 5 minutes so it was the best way of telling them, but i doubt it.

Well, students & faculty are offered mobile email access through the school-run wireless network and exchange server that covers all of campus and a large part of Blacksburg. I can't speak for all of the current students, but I know that all my relatives that have been at VT in the past few years had real-time email access. I don't think there's any question that email is an essential part of campus communication.

[Drake]

I'm actually pretty impressed that they got an e-mail out to the entire student and faculty population in two hours. When I'm tasked with sending an e-mail to everyone on campus, it usually takes the administration in RUSH! RUSH! RUSH! mode three days to get me the fully approved and vetted text of the message.

[Ksyrup]

Never let a good plug/marketing opportunity get away...


"I knew it was something way more serious than that, so I started taking the video," he said, adding that he often visited CNN.com and knew he could send his video to I-Report."

[King of New York]

Originally Posted by Drake

I work for a major American university. If I hear gunshots in my building, I don't wait for the university to tell me what to do to protect myself. If I hear a report of violence on campus, I don't wait for the university to tell me how to respond.

My question is: why are these college-aged adults acting like they needed someone to tell them what to do? The concept of in loco parentis pretty much died in the 1990's.

The students' complaint is not, I think, that VT failed to tell them what to do once the students started to hear gunshots. It's that no general report was sent out until 9:26, and as a result, they did not have a chance to decide how to respond, because they did not know that there was anything to respond to.

[molson]

Originally Posted by Drake

I'm actually pretty impressed that they got an e-mail out to the entire student and faculty population in two hours. When I'm tasked with sending an e-mail to everyone on campus, it usually takes the administration in RUSH! RUSH! RUSH! mode three days to get me the fully approved and vetted text of the message.

And with everyone blaming and talking liability, those emergency emails damn well better be cleared by the legal department first.

[Drake]

Originally Posted by King of New York

The students' complaint is not, I think, that VT failed to tell them what to do once the students started to hear gunshots. It's that no general report was sent out until 9:26, and as a result, they did not have a chance to decide how to respond, because they did not know that there was anything to respond to.

That's true, I guess, but given that the university didn't really know that there was anything other than a domestic dispute to respond to until the second round of shootings either, I don't think the university can be blamed. Even if they had canceled classes immediately, it's going to take a couple of hours for that information to filter out, which means that you've got a bunch of confused students milling about on campus (showing up, hearing the news, deciding whether or not to leave).

I don't have a problem with the students bitching about it. It's just part of what they need to do to start to conceptualize what happened. They're putting their lives and worldview back together after an eruption of chaos. That's normal and healthy. What won't be normal and healthy is all the finger-pointing and hand wringing that's bound to come down from a legislative body six months or a year from now.