Virginia Tech Tragedy

It’s 24 hours after the Virginia Tech shooting and we don’t know much more than we did yesterday. Although police have made a preliminary id of the shooter, this has not been released by officials yet. Americans are on the edge, wondering who he is, if he was a student and why he would shoot all of those innocent students.

One of the focuses of media coverage in this story is the fact that Virginia Tech, didn’t take enough action to protect its students, while the other issue being brought up is gun control. One New York Times article said that “the university did not evacuate the campus or notify students of that attack until several hours later.” This has been a problem for many students. It is important that they feel safe and that everything that can be done to protect them,is done. Reports like this are often followed with the university’s president Charles Steger, saying “Today, the university was struck with a tragedy that we consider of monumental proportions” and the campus police chief Wendell Flinchum’s quote “we acted on the best information we had at the time.” Both of these statements may be true, but I don’t think it is going to stop all of the controversy that is will arise, since the only notification, after the 7:15 a.m. shooting, came two hours later and it apparently didn’t seem serious enough to readers. One student said that he read it and it seemed like the university had the situation under control.

This is a tragic, but interesting story for the media. Hopefully, the real story of these students will not be lost because of issues like gun control and finding fault in Virginia Tech officials for not letting students know what was going on. While these issues should be raised and are important in preventing a future incident like this, right now I think the focus should be on the people who have suffered from this disaster.

To the students of Virginia Tech, our hearts, thoughts, and prayers are with you.