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“I fear for my life and the lives of others on campus. I do not believe that this student is mentally sound” (Hoeft). Life is a precious thing; one may not realize how important it is until they are faced with a threat on their mortality. More than thirty of Virginia Tech’s students were faced with that mortality on April 16, 2007, when Seung-Hui Cho murdered them with two semiautomatic handguns, and then he killed himself. Many problems lead to this unfortunate event, and many people seem to blame the school. Lynn Daggett, a Professor at the Gonzaga University School of Law, states, “Schools struggle with whether, when, and how to involve the police, both when students appear to present a threat to others, as in these high profile cases, and also when the school suspects a student of criminal behavior” (Daggett). This paper will discuss the Virginia Tech incident in hindsight, and elaborate on the lack of police involvement, sharing of student information, and how can this data keep these events from reoccurring.
In order to understand this paper, one needs to know what the Virginia Tech incident entailed. Seung-Hui Cho was a disturbed student who did not receive enough psychological assistance for his issues. As mentioned before, on April 16, 2007, Seung-Hui Cho was the murder of what The New York Times reported as “the deadliest shooting rampage in American History”(Hauser). Cho murdered thirty-three people; many of the victims were students, who were shot in a dorm or classroom. The New York Times report, by Christine Hauser and Anahad O’Connor, went over the horrendous event; “The killings occurred in two separate attacks on the campus in Blacksburg, Va.” Around 7:15 am the first attack took place, two people were shot and k...
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... Hall, and W. Gerry Gilmer. "Connecting the Dots...: Information
Sharing By Post-Secondary Educational Institutions under the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA)." Education & the Law 20.4 (2008): 301-316. Academic Search Complete. Web. 13 May 2014.
Hauser, Christine, and Anahad O'Conner. "Virginia Tech Shooting Leaves 33 Dead." The
New York Times. The New York Times Company, 16 Apr. 2007. Web. 9 May 2014.
Hoeft, Mary. "Professors in the Crosshairs." Inside Higher Ed. Inside Higher Ed, 24 Feb.
2011. Web. 26 Mar. 2014.
Martínez, Louis E. "The Police Response to Critical Incidents in Academic Institutions."
Journal of Police Crisis Negotiations 12.1 (2012): 69-77. SocINDEX with Full Text. Web. 26 Mar. 2014.
Roy, Lucinda. "Prologue, Chapter 1, Chapter 2." No Right to Remain Silent: The Tragedy at Virginia Tech. New York: Harmony, 2009. 1-61. Print.
New York Times - Breaking News, World News & Multimedia. 11 Jan. 2010. Web. 19 May 2010.
“FERPA [Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act] essentially means you have no right, as a parent, to know what or how your children are doing in school.” Michele Willens says this in her article, “College Students Have Too Much Privacy” about the FERPA act that was passed in 1974. It was originally put in place to protect the privacy of students, but it also keeps information private from the student’s parents, or current gauardians. Because so many parents waste money on college students that might miss classes or even drop out without them knowing, the FERPA act needs to be reformed.
Privacy was once taken for granted in public education, but now through the 1974 law, Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act it is pushed to the forefront of the minds of every educator in the United States (Cossler, 2010). This law has paved the way for many lawsuits regarding privacy of student’s records, which have left teachers scared, undereducated and unaware of certain regulations of the law. FERPA laws provide protections for students, but also allow access of all student records to the student’s custodial parents, which in some situations has cause problems and in some cases have specifically brought clarifications of the law. Has the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act provided the much needed privacy for students or created an overboard policies?
Martínez, Louis E. "The Police Response To Critical Incidents In Academic Institutions." Journal Of Police Crisis Negotiations 12.1 (2012): 69-77. SocINDEX with Full Text. Web. 26 Mar. 2014.
On the essay, David, Skorton and Glenn Altschuler also point out how uneasy police officers feel at the idea of having students with guns on campus, because in the case of a tragedy happening there is no distinction between the innocent students is and the delinquent. A “former provost of Idaho State University” stated her concern about the insecurities towards this new law insisting that “When you’re responding to a situation like that, and someone’s in plain clothes with a gun, who’s the bad guy? Who are you going to take out to save the lives of…other students you are trying to protect?”
In its societal context, the Columbine school shootings are not an obvious part of a discernible sociological pattern. We know that approximately 4,500 youngsters are killed every year in intentional shootings, with thirty per cent of that number probable suicides. That's almost 13 a day, the same number as were killed in Littleton (The Washington Post, April 25, 1999). The data on school shootings, according to the Center for Communicable Diseases, indicate that only about 28 per cent actually occurred inside the school and that one-third of the victims were not...
College campuses have an increased rate of reported crimes in recent years. How can this be reduced? What can be done to improve this situation? Security can only cover parts of the campus at a time. Spontaneous outbreaks of crime can be thwarted if students actively participate in stopping crimes. Allowing students who have obtained a Concealed Handgun License, CHL, to carry a gun on campus will make campuses safer and reduce the amount of school shootings and other forms of crimes common to college campuses. In order to obtain a CHL a person has to be “21 year of age or older, clean criminal history, not be under a protective order, not be chemically dependent, not be of unsound mind, not be delinquent in paying fines, fees, child support, etc., and must complete the required training” (TCHA, 2013). A poster about the benefits of carrying a legal concealed weapon solidifies positive reasons to allow students and faculty to defend themselves from mass murderers and other criminal acts.
How safe do you feel when you attend school everyday? Many students and faculty don’t really think too much about school being a dangerous place; however, after a couple of school shootings had taken place their minds and thoughts may have changed completely. On April 16, 2007, in the town of Blacksburg Virginia, a college student who attended Virginia Tech, opened gunfire to his fellow classmates. This shooting has been considered to be the biggest massacre in all of American history. There are many things to be discussed in this major tragedy. Some of them include the events leading up to the shooting, the timeline that the shootings occurred, the causes, and the significance in this particular shooting. The Virginia Tech is only one of the several examples of the horrible behavior and violence in our school systems today.
On April 16th, 2007 Cho had created one of the most deadly school shootings in America. ( "Virginia Tech Shootings Fast Facts." CNN.) It was unfathomable to think that in the close future, America would encounter many more detrimental school shootings. This is including the shooting of elementary students in Newtown, CT where Adam Lanza had shot and killed 27 children and faculty. Lanza had been known to have significant health issues that had kept him from living a normal life. (Sanchez, Ray, Chelsea J. Carter in Atlanta, Yon Pomrenze in New York, and The CNN New York Bureau Staff. ) Both of these shooters had killed themselves shortly after their attacks. School violence has become a nation-wide issue.
School shootings have altered American history greatly over the past two decades. From 1997 to 2007, there have been more than 40 school shootings, resulting in over 70 deaths and many more injuries. School shoot-outs have been increasing in number dramatically in the past 20 years. There are no boundaries as to how old the child would be, or how many people they may kill or injure. At Mount Morris Township, Michigan, on February 29th, 2000, there was a 6 year old boy who shot and killed another 6 year old girl at the Buell Elementary School with a .32 caliber pistol. And although many shootings have occurred at High Schools or Middle Schools, having more guns on those campuses would not be a good environment for children to grow up in. However, on a college campus, the pupils attending are not children anymore; the age range is from 17 to mid 20’s. Therefore they understand the consequences associated to the use of weapons and have gained more maturity. In April 16th, 2007, at Blacksburg, Virginia, there was a shooting rampage enacted by Sung-Hui Cho (23 years, from Centreville, VA) who fired over 170 rounds, killing 32 victims, before taking his own life at the Virginia Tech campus. Colleges and Universities would be a much safer place, for student and teacher, if guns were permitted on campus for self-defense purposes.
The Virginia Tech shooting, also known as the Virginia Tech massacre, was a school shooting that took place on April 16, 2007, on the campus of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Virginia. Seung-Hui Cho, a senior at Virginia Tech, shot and killed thirty-two people and wounded seventeen others in two separate attacks, about two hours apart, before committing suicide. Another six people were injured trying to escape from the classroom windows. The attack is the deadliest school shooting by a single gunman in U.S. history and one of the deadliest by one single gunman worldwide. The attacks received international media coverage and speculation. It created an intense debate about gun violence, gun laws, gaps in the U.S. system for treating mental health issues, the shooter’s state of mind, the responsibility of college administrations, privacy laws, journalism ethics, and other issues
This essay is going to talk about one of the deadliest school shootings that killed 13 students and injured several. On April 20, 1999 two teens went on a shooting spree killing 13 and wounded several more before turning the guns on to them killing themselves. The columbine shooting one of the worst shootings in U.S history raised a debate on the gun control and school safety. This essay is going to bring out the real cause of the shooters actions and apply two juvenile delinquency theories to them.
Johnson, Alex. "College Gunman Disturbed Teachers, Classmates." Gunman Disturbed Teachers, Classmates - US News - Crime & Courts - Massacre at Virginia Tech | NBC News. N.p., 18 Apr. 2007. Web. 25 Apr. 2014. .
On Monday, March 21, 2005, a 16-year old boy by the name Jeffrey Weise, opened fire on his grandfather, grandfather’s girlfriend, Red Lake Senior High School students and staff, and eventually killed himself. Weise’s rampage began with the killing of his grandfather, Daryl Lussier, 52, and grandfather’s companion, Michelle Signa, 32, early Monday morning before heading to Red Lake Senior High School. Lussier was “a veteran sergeant with the Red Lake police department” (Maag 2005: 4), who had a “.40-cal. handgun and 12-gauge shotgun” (Magg 2005: 4) located within the home. From previous e...
Sullivan, Margaret, ed. The New York Times. 2013 The New York Times Company, n.d. Web. 29 Oct. 2013. .