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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.
The events surround the deaths of four students in Kent, Ohio are disorderly and violent. In the government’s investigation after the shootings, the officials made several recommendations to students of the future. As the massacre is looked back upon, there are several key events that
The New York Times. The New York Times, 15 Aug. 2013. Web. The Web.
"In October 1997, a 16-year old in Pearl, Mississippi, first killed his mother and then went to school and shot nine students, two fatally; in December 1997 a 14-year old went to his school in West Paducah, Kentucky, killed three students and wounded five others; in March last year, two boys, aged eleven and thirteen, killed four girls and a teacher outside their school in Jonesboro, Arkansas; the next month a science teacher was shot dead, allegedly by a 14-year old, at a school dance in Edinsboro, Pennsylvania; last May in Fayetteville, Tennessee, an 18-year old student allegedly shot dead a classmate in the school car park; two days later, in Springfield, Oregon, a 15-year old opened fire at his high school, killing two teenagers and wounding more than twenty (police later found that his parents had been killed at home) ("Lesson"). On April 20th of this year, two teenagers enter their school and open fire, killing 12 students and one teacher before taking their own lives.
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?
New York Times. The New York Times Company, 23 Jan. 2010. Web. 22 Jan. 2014.
On April 16, 2007, Seung-Hui Cho, a 23-year-old college student, shocked the nation when he perpetrated the deadliest shooting massacre in U.S. history. The violent rampage took place on the Virginia Tech University campus in Blacksburg, Virginia, where Cho was a senior majoring in English. Before turning the gun on himself and delivering a fatal gunshot to the head, Cho murdered more than 30 of his classmates and University faculty; numerous others were injured. In a strange twist, several days after the tragedy, a package determined to have been mailed by Cho during the shooting spree was received at NBC News in New York. The package contained photos of Cho posing with guns, as well as video clips and various pages of Cho’s writing. Portraying himself as a martyr avenger of the weak and defenseless, the targets of Cho’s angry ranting included wealthy students, bullies, Christianity, and society (Kleinfield, 2007). In the wake of tragedies like Virginia Tech, an automatic public response is to want immediate answers, explanations. It seems logical that something so extraordinarily awful and wrong must have been caused by an equally unusual and outrageous problem or anomaly. However, explaining heinous crimes of violence is not so straight-forward; understanding violent behavior involves multiple, and sometimes conflicting, theoretical perspectives and disciplines.
Seung Hui Cho, a student at Virginia Tech, armed himself with knives, chains, guns, and ammunition on April 16th, 2007. He went on a shooting rampage on campus and killed thirty-two people before turning the gun on himself. On the morning of the shooting, Seung Hui Cho woke up early. He armed himself with guns and several rounds of ammunition. He made his way to West Ambler Johnston Hall, where he killed students Emily Hilscher and Ryan Clark. After killing two students, Cho went back to his room and collected personal belongings and pictures. At 9:01am, he mailed a suicide note and pictures to NBC in New York. At 9:26 in the morning hours after the first shooting occurred, campus police alerted students and staff of the active shooter on campus. Cho then walked to Norris Hall and chained the doors shut at the entrance. With classes in session, Cho walked up to the rooms and killed thirty-two people before killing himself (“Students Killed in Virginia Tech Massacre”). The Virginia Tech massacre, one of America’s worst school shootings, created even a greater sense of urgency for gun control
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 New York Times. The New York Times, 20 Mar. 2014. The 'Standard' of the 'Standard'. Web. The Web.
FERPA, the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act, is a Federal law meant to protect the privacy of students personal, educational, and health information. The initial wording of FERPA implies it provides a extremely high level of personal privacy in our education. However, as you dig deeper into the law it becomes glaringly obvious how little protection this law actually provides. With multiple “loops-holes” built into its protection, FERPA has become nothing more than an illusion of privacy protection.
Walker, S., & Katz, C. (2012). Police in America: An Introduction (8th Edition ed.). New York:
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.
" The New York Times. The New York Times, 24 Dec. 1998. Web. The Web.
Cordner, G. W., & Scarborough, K. E. (2010). Police administration (7th ed.). Albany, N.Y.: LexisNexis/Anderson Pub.