"We are the Hokies"
The unlikely face of a mass-murderer. , a 23 year-old final year English student at Virginia Tech, who has been named as the gunman. Originally from South Korea, he has been living in the US since 1992. Apparently this was a deeply troubled young man, whose college writing assignments were that he was referred to university counsellors. He purchased the 9mm handgun in a Virginia gunshop a month ago.
I arrived in Washington DC today. Driving though the embassy district, many of the flags in front of buildings were flying at half-mast. President Bush spoke at a special convocation at the University this afternoon. In the same ceremony, the poet and Virginia Tech professor read a poem which amounted to a rallying cry:
We will continue to invent the future. Through all this blood and tears, we are the Hokies . . . We will prevail ... we will prevail ... we are Virginia Tech.
Ironically -- or so it now seems -- I am in DC partly to report on a major conference on Northern Irish poetry. A significant dimension of that conference concerns poetry in the context of conflict and after conflict.
Comments
Will ...
What is being said in Washington about the gunlaws issue?
Did this student buy LEGAL guns?
This speech by Giovanni and the reaction to it at the convocation was incredible, moving and demonstrative of the great American buoyancy we've come to observe in these recent years.
(Welcome back to this side of the pond William.)
I think he did Sam. What does it matter? The guy was disturbed. I don't know how you stop wackos who want to kill from killing. Let say the guy wants to kill as many students as he can. Lets say he can't get a legal gun because of government legislation. Is there no other conceivable way he can kill? Of course there is - he could get an illegal weapon - always available in every country in the world, most notably to us - Northern Ireland. Or, he could make a bomb - easy to do these days with the internet. Or he could hijack a lorry and drive it into the college. Or he could go on a rampage with a kitchen knife, or a baseball bat, or 101 other everyday items. What do you do? Ban them all? That's a really naive approach. When guns are banned all you do is take them out of the hands of the "good guys" - the "bad guys" stay armed.
SG
I haven't read a single intelligent comment yet on any ´óÏó´«Ã½ blog about this incident. I haven't heard even one suggestion that since there were a number of people who KNEW that this man was badly deranged for a long time, they should have seen to it that he was referred for psychiatric counseling, that he possibly should have been confined to a mental institution, or that due to his condition he should have been deported as mentally unfit to remain in the US. Lots of blame to go around for people who could have and should have done something and it will during the official inquiries. So far all I've read about here is useless ranting about guns, guns, guns.
The silicon chip inside her head
Gets switched to overload
And nobody’s gonna go to school today
She’s gonna make them stay at home
And daddy doesn’t understand it
He always said she was good as gold
And he can see no reasons
'Cos there are no reasons
What reason do you need to be show-ow-ow-ow-own?
The Telex machine is kept so clean
And it types to a waiting world
And mother feels so shocked
Father’s world is rocked
And their thoughts turn to their own little girl
Sweet 16 ain’t that peachy keen
Now that ain’t so neat to admit defeat
They can see no reasons
'Cos there are no reasons
What reasons do you need?
Oh Oh Oh Oh
And all the playing's stopped in the playground now
She wants to play with her toys a while
And school's out early and soon we'll be learning
And the lesson today is how to die
And then the bullhorn crackles
And the captain tackles
With the problems and the hows and whys
And he can see no reasons
'Cos there are no reasons
What reason do you need to die, die?
Oh Oh Oh
Tell me why
I don’t like Mondays
Tell me why
I don’t like Mondays
Tell me why
I don’t like Mondays
I wanna shoo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oot
The whole day down, down, down, shoot it all down
I hate the way the media seems to concentrate on the perpetrator and not on the victims.I hope this time the memories that are left with the general public worldwide are of the innocent victims.I don't want to see/read or hear anymore about the guy that carried out these murders and if the media do concentrate on telling his story it'll probably encourage some other sicko to carry out something similar again.
Stephen, Mark; couldn't agree more.
It may be a little known fact but there are NO known words in the English language which rhyme with "orange."
We just had an awful storm covering a very wide area in the midatlantic and northeast US. Lots of rain, some snow, and fairly cold. Wind was not too bad but many low lying areas were badly flooded. Washington DC was hit too.
Katy Kay said on ´óÏó´«Ã½ TV tonight that there were suggestions that the campus security at Virginia Tech hadn't acted quickly or aggressively enough. How many people here remember last year when ´óÏó´«Ã½ posted a blog entry on WHYS about campus security in UCLA involved in a brawl because an Iranian American youth could not produce a college ID card and refused to obey their orders to leave the college library. A melee ensued. It only got local coverage but in the ´óÏó´«Ã½ blog entry, it was clear which side ´óÏó´«Ã½ was on feeling the campus security personnel had been too aggressive.. Americans get bashed by ´óÏó´«Ã½ if they do a thing one way and bashed if they do the other. That tells me all I need to know about ´óÏó´«Ã½.
Ok so Mark is on a rant again about the ´óÏó´«Ã½. whatever the topic, it's an excuse to have a go at the ´óÏó´«Ã½. With PB, its gays, with Mark it's the ´óÏó´«Ã½. Ok, you stay in America Mark and enjoy Fox News, the rest of us might prefer the beeb's coverage of any event.
As for the content of blogs on the Beeb, I've been following them and there's LOTS of discussion of the mental state of the killer and whether enough was done to act on warning signs. Will even has a link here to items about that on ABC.
The guncrimes debate is a legitimate one, it's not the only one.
Cybez- when details come out about the victims we'll have wall to wall reports on them.
I knew i'd find a religious element to do with this story somewhere:
"God cares about Virginia Tech"
yes - thats why he let them all die.
Jeffrey my thoughts are with the friends and family of the victims and I hope there are 'wall to wall' TRIBUTES for them.
I'm looking for a Cho Seung-Hui dartboard because I'm sure that would encourage the sport of darts and it would mean Cho Seung-Hui contributed positively to our society.
Jeffrey leitch #9
It would be OK with me but not only won't ´óÏó´«Ã½ stay on its side of the pond, unlike UK residents who can withold their funding by doing without a TV or radio and thereby not paying a license fee, unfair as that is, but I have no choice but to subsidized ´óÏó´«Ã½s lies. My federal income taxes in part pay to for PBS and NPR which have contracts to rebroadcast ´óÏó´«Ã½ in the United States. Perhaps I'll start a movement to have them removed from the public airwaves as a hostile enemy alien presence. They would of course sill be available over the internet, on optional extra cost cable TV channels, on pay radio, and on shortwave should they decide to broadcast directly to North America again but at least I wouldn't have to pay for it. But I think it's hopeless. The world's biggest mouth is becoming all pervasive, there's probably no keeping them out. And that's another thing, they are always here. Hardly does one group leave when another one arrives. The once quaint, curious, and rare British accent is becoming for me an all too frequent common irritation. It's starting to grate on my nerves.
Mark - are you kept awake at night worrying about these things?
The things that grate on your nerves could be an ongoing theme here. It would certainly gives us more of an insight in to your psyche - fascinating - give us some more.
dp, you've been getting more for all the months I've been posting. Where have you been? Is there a way to access the archived blog postings? Start with the interview William Crawley had where Dawkins and McIntosh had a debate. I think that's where I came in. Then look at the blog about personal philosophies of 272 words or less. I submitted one while some of those who talked a good game submitted nothing. Maureen, come out come out wherever you are.
greetings from virginia tech. thanks to all for their condolences.
ok, so i went to the convocation. bush and kaine and warner and webb were all there. nice photo-op for them i guess.
we piled into lane stadium with about 15K others... cassell coliseum was full (our little hoops joint only holds about 11K).
then we had this multi-cultural ceremony. the only ones left out were the wiccans and the druids... i guess they're pretty pissed off.
the media are a bunch of vultures, and they are here from *everywhere*. europe. asia. australia. going into stores, stopping kids on-campus. they've located
a few roommates of victims, and they're all over them. what a circus. they were running people down to stick a microphone in their face during the moment
of silence at the convocation. do you bastards mind pausing in your feeding frenzy for 10 seconds while we honor our dead? could you just PRETEND to give a damn for a few seconds?
now that the mourning period has been allowed to go on for 24 hours, we've entered the "let's blame someone" phase of the story.
the president of the university and the chief of police - who didn't lock down the university after the initial shooting - are gonna catch hell. the university is going to get sued. there are 60 parents out there with dead kids, plus another 30 parents with kids in the hospital... and they're going to claim that lives could have been saved if the university had
been locked down after the first incident - and they're right.
at the time of the first shooting, university officials and police thought that the incident was isolated. in retrospect they were clearly wrong. i sympathize with them: they thought
they were doing the right thing. lots of excuses can be made, but the bottom line is that 30 additional people got killed and another 15 wounded - two hours after the first incident. if the university had been
locked down those kids would not have been in those classrooms. heads are gonna roll on this one, and that's too bad, because i think that the president of the university and the chief of police reacted as best
they could to an unprecedented situation.
the story this morning is that some english prof was "disturbed" by stuff the shooter wrote. i'm guessing that stephen king wrote some pretty odd stuff when he
was in college, too. i don't think it's ok to blame the administration.
this was a well-thought-out operation, with evidence of planning in advance and malice aforethought. you want to blame someone? blame the guy with the guns.
he bought those guns - legally - over a month ago and planned this event. he knew what he was doing. he unloaded several clips of ammunition. his surviving victims
all have multiple gunshot wounds.
troubled kid? yeah, i'd say so. you can't lock someone up for being troubled. it's college; everyone's troubled. i'm disappointed that the cops couldn't bring him down alive, though... it would have
been nice to fry him. 32 times.
To get back to the point of this post, did anyone else see Giovanni make this astounding speech yesterday? If I've any criticism it's that it was a little early; I was stunned to find that the convocation was happening only a day after the attack. The other reason Giovanni is interesting is that the gunman, Cho, was in her creative writing class. It appears Giovanni kicked him out because she was extremely concerned at his writing and his general weirdness... he was tutored privately instead. There were red flags and warning bells about this guy long before this happened. Unfortunately it's all too easy to point it out after the fact, and I hate witch-hunts, but it appears that there may have been a chance to stop this....?
The US Rock, Pop, and Folk Singer James Taylor once sang the following verse in one of his songs in the 1970's [I still remember hearing it as an 8 year old in Ohio in 1970]: "I've Seen Fire And I've Seen Rain".
Our Generation [The Baby Boomers] have seen a lot of fire and a lot of rain in our lifetimes but the Virginia Tech Massacres [2007] and The Twin Towers [2001] will be remembered as the most infamous events in US History in the first decade of a new millenium.
As I am trying to write, I am also trying to contain my anger, my anxiety at what transpired. These Students [I am 45 years old now] could have been our sons, our daughters. I go to work and I could only thnk about my wife and my 11 year old daughter as they go about their routine in work and school.
I at times think of myself at work or at a market wandering if an individual at work or in a public place could do the same thing.
I Challenge my Readers to think about this event and pose themselves two questions:
1. Could Banning Guns have prevented this tragedy?
2. Have we been bombarded by Violence, Perversion, Hatred in the Mainstream Media?
3. Do Certain People receive inspiration those from these violent and perverse shows on the mainstream media, the movies, and other modes of entertainment ?
I PROPOSE A DEBATE ON THE FOLLOWING:
1. BAN OR NO BAN ON HANDGUNS?
2. BAN OR NO BAN ON VIOLENCE, PERVERSION IN HOLLYWOOD? [OR AT LEAST TURN OFF THE TV, NOT GO TO MOVIES, OR CONSUME SUCH FORMS OF SORDID ENTERTAINMENT]?
3. IF THE FAMILY IS THE SOCIETY, HOW DO WE RETURN TO THE BASICS OF MAKING PEOPLE RESPONSABLE FOR THE ACTIONS OF THEIR CHILDREN?
2. Have we been bombarded by violence, perversion, hatred in the mainstream media?
Yes, by people like Alan Johnston.
14 Mark wrote:
"Maureen, come out come out wherever you are."
I'm still here, dahling! I've been keeping an eye on the secular humanists lately (Has Belfast Embraced Darwin) but for some reason they all retreated from an interesting discussion.
You never change, still railing at the world but then so am I ;-)
Peace,
Maureen
Quote from Cho Seung-Hui
"Thanks to you I die like Jesus Christ, to inspire generations of the weak and the defenceless people"
looks like JC was an inspiration.
17. At 10:30 PM on 18 Apr 2007, Roberto Carlos Alvarez-Galloso,CPUR wrote: "1. Could Banning Guns have prevented this tragedy? 2. Have we been bombarded by Violence, Perversion, Hatred in the Mainstream Media? 3. Do Certain People receive inspiration those from these violent and perverse shows on the mainstream media, the movies, and other modes of entertainment ?
I see that Hull has raised these same issues particularly with regard to video games - he adds an additional discussion topic concerning mental health and the fear of school organizations from acting out of a fear of lawsuits.
Political correctness gone mad, methinks!
Peace,
Maureen
I think there'll always be those who fall outside the category of 'mentally ill' but could still easily fall into mental instability on their own; Cho appears to have been such a case. Unfortunately there's not much that can be done about that, and it appears that several valiant attempts to help him were made in the past; what can one do? Human nature demands answers with such fervour that it inadvertently creates scapegoats such as 'Guns are the problem'; we don't want to admit that such events are sometimes, unfortunately, part of life.
I see this as no different than any other terrorist attack. Among those who inist that we investigate, restrict, deny access to guns to people like this single deranged individual are those who are furious at the prospect of intercepting telephone calls from outside the country where people may be plotting suicide bombings having equal or great consequences or monitoring those living here suspected in such plots. America had better get used to it, the suicide bombers are coming. It hasn't put 2+2 together and gotten 4 about this just the way it missed all the signs of the forthcoming the 9-11 attack. By comparison to the size of the population, the impact of Palestinian suicide bombers on Isreal was often far greater than the VT shootings but many were outraged when Israel finally decided to build a wall to keep them out. And guess what, it's working. Not perfectly but better than nothing.
I think a major issue regarding this tragedy is being overlooked and it isn't gun control, the stigma against treating mental illness in the Korean community.
I have become aware through personal experience that there is great shame in mental illness in Korean culture. Immigrant parents are often are in denial about the seriousness of mental illness of family members. In conversations with professionals I have learned that when mental illness issues come up in Korean families, family members tend to try to place blame as opposed to solving the problem. What this means is that even if some of the shooters teachers saw problems and tried to help him, he very well might have been told by members of his family that "there is nothing wrong with you, you are working too hard, you should pray more, something is wrong with the school etc..." As one psychologist told me "the family becomes enemy of the treatment.'
Psychotic mental illness doesn't just pop up because a kid is having a bad time at school. It is cased by a chemical imbalance in the brain( like bipolar) or trauma during childhood , almost always before the age of 13. Yet I have hear from school professionals that initial reaction when talking to Asian immigrant parents of mentally ill young adults is either denial or to blame a girlfriend, job, school, or spouse. I talked with a psychologist who said the parents blamed him, that their kid was fine until the psychologist convinced him he was crazy.
I my self when trying to get help for my wife, after years on denying there was a problem my wife was eventually hospitalized against her will. I was told by my in laws that she was fine until she met me and that I was the cause of her problems.
Teachers and fellow students felt the killer had problems and recommended treatment. WHAT ABOUT THE FAMILY!! Why weren't they aware of his problems and trying to get him help. I think this denial of mental illness within the culture may be to blame .
This bias against psychology in Korean culture has had real and devastating effects on many, many people. I was hoping that a positive outcome of this tragedy would be a greater awareness of this problem. I realize you are an entertainer not a politician but I have been a fan of your for years and have admired you speaking out on issues. I was hoping you or someone who works for you would know how to promote awareness of the issue to help others who are in need of professional mental health treatment.