Reflections On Blacksburg and Seattle: Humanity and Technology, Violence and Guns
On Monday morning, 16 April, shots rang out on the campus of Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, my alma mater. To date, 33 deaths: mass murder/suicide of students and faculty (and perhaps staff, we just don't know yet).
I learned of the first murder by e-mail, working from home; the second, logging on to Google News at Chicago's O'Hare airport en route to Seattle from a quick trip home to Georgia. The one more distant geographically (2,780 miles away, according to Google maps) has had the greatest emotional impact. Together, they have caused me to rethink my beliefs about humanity and technology, violence, guns.
Humanity and Technology
What is it about the human animal that causes us to rubberneck at roadside collisions? Whatever it is, that base voyeuristic impulse seems magnified by the always on technologies of the Internet, specifically instant messaging and blogs.
In my Blogging, Media and Politics class today, we talked about student (blog) journals and Flickr photos as forms of citizen journalism. And some (not all) are: they provide insight and information about a story that would not survive the filters of editors and news producers. At least, not before the 24x7 Internet news cycle.
The ability to put a human face on the tragedy is one of the greatest benefits of these new media technologies.
The ease with which people can spew, gossip, wring hands, pontificate, or metaphorically drive back-and-forth, rubbernecking, is a major drawback.
The 24x7 always on Internet news cycle has another, insidious, side effect: an apparent belief that any threat should be immediately broadcast, verified or not. I speak here, of the insistence by some students and media pundits that Virginia Tech officials did not react quickly enough to contain the shooter. Many people are trotting out an event that occurred in August 2006 as an example of how the University could have communicated quickly if it was so inclined.
But they're wrong.
According to the Roanoke Times (Roanoke is the largest metro area near Blacksburg), on Sunday, 20 August, at 2.30 am a convict escaped in Blacksburg, shooting a security guard and deputy. On Monday, 21 August 2006 at 7.15 am, the escaped convict killed a deputy downtown, adjacent to campus.
[The University] sent out a warning Sunday (by e-mail, one assumes) about Morva's escape, but after Monday's shooting most students were still going about their business, going to classes and getting coffee at Squires Student Center until about 10 a.m. Amid reports that someone fitting Morva's description was inside Squires, the building was evacuated.
... students were told to go home and stay inside residence halls if they lived on campus. Classes were canceled and employees sent home.
From time of first shooting to canceling classes: seven plus hours. From time of first death to canceling classes: about three hours.
Compare that to Monday's tragedy: 7.15 am 9-1-1 call and death of a man and a woman in a dorm. By 7.30, the dorm is secured, and police believe this is a double homicide, "an isolated incident." (Crime statistics bear them out this belief.) At 8.25 am, University officials meet to "assess the situation," and at 9 am the campus police chief briefs them. At 9.26 am, the Administration sends out its first e-mail. (That's amazingly fast, speaking as someone who has been a corporate communications official). This is slightly more than 2 hours after the 9-1-1 call.
The second 9-1-1 call comes in at 9.45 am from Norris Hall. At 9.50 am, "Virginia Tech officials send a second e-mail, warning students that a gunman is loose on campus." That's five minutes.
Three hours after the first 9-1-1 call (10.16), classes are canceled.
Now you tell me: how, exactly, would you have speeded up the communication process? How, exactly, would you have been able to determine that the first shooting was not to be an isolated incident, but was instead the first step in the largest mass murder in the history of this country?
Violence
America glorifies violence and antagonism. Just watch TV (network or cable). Or Hollywood. Or (too?) many computer games like Grand Theft Auto. Or listen to gangsta rap.
I know I'm not saying anything particularly "new" ... here's Bobby Kennedy, 1968 (yes, I know Obama quoted Kennedy, too):
Yet we seemingly tolerate a rising level of violence that ignores our common humanity and our claims to civilization alike. We calmly accept newspaper reports of civilian slaughter in far off lands. We glorify killing on movie and television screens and call it entertainment. We make it easy for men of all shades of sanity to acquire weapons and ammunition they desire.
Young people (males are the high risk group) aged 18-24 are in the highest risk age group for homicides and are in the age group committing the most murders (rate per 100,000 population).
Much of that risk is drug-culture related. Not applicable here.
Most violence against women is domestic violence. That is, the woman knows the perp. Intimately.
A friend wonders if the police had not assumed the first two deaths in Blacksburg were domestic violence related ... if it had been two males, murdered, for example ... would their resulting actions have been any different? It's a good question for the police department to undertake as it reflects on this week's tragedy.
As for the rest of us, I think we need to reflect on Bobby's words. We have to decide which "popular culture" icons fit into our value system and which don't -- and then share that with our children and honor that belief with our pocketbooks. (Remember, it was the pocketbook that brought down Imus; nothing more, nothing less.)
Guns
I'm a southern girl. I was raised with guns -- shotguns, rifles, pistols. When I was 10 or 11, my wish list for Santa included (at the top) a 4-10 shotgun. (I was disappointed; the stocking graced a lowly BB gun. I may have been a tomboy, but my cousin and I learned that our mothers trumped fathers when December 25 rolled around.)
No this is not going to be a diatribe about gun control.
First, this was an extreme event, at least in America. (See Juan Cole for a different perspective.)
In the US, less than 1% of all homicides have more than two victims. And in 2004 (latest data available), there were only 11 murders (.07%) in the US with five or more victims.
It is extremely bad public policy to try to write laws to attempt to control outliers.
But ... (you knew there had to be a but, right?) ... arming every citizen isn't the answer, either. As Amy Kovac wrote last August, a 2001 Harvard School of Public Health study revealed:
Americans feel less safe rather than more safe as more people in their community begin to carry guns. By margins of at least nine to one, Americans do not believe that "regular" citizens should be allowed to bring their guns into restaurants, college campuses, sports stadiums, bars, hospitals, or government buildings.
And it's not an easy thing to point a gun at another human, even when threatened, my friends who are gun-owners tell me. I don't know; I've not been in that situation. But a New England Journal of Medicine study suggests a gun in the home is "more likely to kill a family member or a friend than it is to be used against an intruder."
So I don't think it's a good idea for the US to revert to a wild west mentality and have every citizen licensed with a concealed weapon permit. Given the state of road rage in America, I believe this is a particularly bad idea.
What then, do we do?
First, we acknowledge that if someone wants to kill another person and is willing to die in the attempt, there is little if anything we can do to stop the murder.
Second, we acknowledge that our universities are institutions with a history and culture of openness. Students are, for the most part, legally adults. (They can marry without parental consent. They can vote. If we had a draft, they are older than draft age. Most can't legally drink, yet, however.)
This is one area where comparisons with high schools (metal detectors, chain link fences) falls down on a logical plane. It also falls down on a practical one. Universities are hundreds or thousands of acres in size and have a population as much as an order of magnitude larger than high schools.
Third, in this era of instant communications and color-coded terrorism threats, we must acknowledge that it is impossible for every conceivable risk to be communicated to every riskee within seconds of someone determining that there might be a risk. We have to trust those charged with protecting public health and welfare to know what they are doing. We also have to become engaged in civic affairs, properly fund said institutions, and engage in the civic duty envisioned by our founders: become informed, be a government watchdog, go to the polls, and throw the bums out if they shirk their responsibility.
Should we explore means other than e-mail for alerting students, faculty, and staff of on-campus risks? Of course. But a flood of irrelevant information is just as bad as a paucity. Call it the "boy who cried wolf" syndrome ... or, to reference a technology example, the "do you really want to do that" software prompt that is ineffectual in stopping you from deleting an important file.
Finally, we grieve for those lost in this latest, uniquely American, tragedy.
Related:- Locking Down the VT Campus: 3CI & "Should Have", Ardith, Newsvine
- Slow Down Demands for Gun Control, Tom Head, Guide to Civil Liberties
- Major Sources, Citizens Contribute to Coverage, Bridget Johnson, Guide to Journalism
- Does America Value Gun Rights More Than Students?, Deborah White, Guide to Liberal Politics