Taking Action

On April 16th around 7:30 a.m. one boy walked out of his dorm only to see policemen outside of his building. He was a normal student who lived in the same dorm where the first shooting took place. He got outside of the building and out to what is known as the drill field until someone finally stopped him and told him what had happened. This is one example of many ways Virginia Tech did not take the right precautions on the day of the shootings.

The student was not stopped while walking out of his dorm where the shooting had taken place only 15 minutes earlier. This is one aspect of the Virginia Tech situation that I feel adamant was handled the wrong way. Virginia Tech in no way could have predicted this horrific act would have happened on that Monday. However, there are precautions they should have taken to avoid criticism about their decisions from the public.

Virginia Tech's campus was not informed until two hours later that the first incident had even happened. I am aware that the police had looked at this as a domestic dispute and saw no real threat to the rest of campus. However, there was an armed person that they did not have in custody and could have been anywhere on that campus. That is why at this point they should have taken action, rather than not doing anything.

Because it was so early in the morning they could have stopped all those off campus from coming on and had police at the buildings send those there home. If they would have police on standby and entrances of the campus and all buildings there would have not have been as many people on campus.

One argument against this is that they did not want to cause chaos. They could have informed students that there was someone armed possibly on campus and for them to take precaution and it would not have been chaotic. This way they could have had a more control over the situation and had more to back the University up if this would have happened still. Waiting two hours to send any notification to the students makes no sense to me.

One reason I feel this way is because of an experience I had and how UNCW handled the situation. My freshman year I lived in Cornerstone Dorm. At the end of the year a male that lived in the dorm killed a girl on my hall. I remember that day; once the police arrived everyone was brought up to the third floor and no one was allowed to leave until they had questioned people and checked out everything. At this point they had the man that did this in their custody. Comparing UNCW's reaction to a similar situatuion shows Virginia Tech's faults.

By no means am I saying that this situation would have been prevented all together. God has control over these situations and we cannot predict tragedies like this. However, for Virginia Tech’s scenario they should have taken better precautions and it could have saved some lives or not caused as much controversy for their decisions.