Re-Tooling TBL

For several years TBL was a blog where I wrote about a wide variety of topics. Those postings are still in the Blog Archive and many are about professional development for engineers. I am now transitioning TBL to be a place where my current and former students can find information related to job searches.

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

April 18th.

More VA Tech.

Today I am in Stuttgart Germany. I have been up for 34 out of the last 36 hours and thus am not completely functioning right. I have not taken any German in my life and thus do not understand any of the words (which makes driving interesting).

I was looking at the local paper, and did not understand any word on the front page with the exception of the word Blacksburg on the headline story. This tragedy is headline news around the world 2 days later and will likely be again tomorrow.

Today I have been reflecting on the incident and the blame that the news media is putting on the college. First of all, we live in a free and democratic society where people have freedom to move around public areas. I hope we do not get to a point where all college buildings and classrooms are locked all the time. The trade-off for this freedom is that occassionally somewhere, someone will completely lose their senses and use that freedom to gain access to innocent people.

Back to the incident. The obvious question is "why didn't the college cancel school?" It is hard not to jump on this band wagon and, using hindsight, say the tragedy could have been averted. Here is where the BOTTOM Line comes into play - I strongly encourage you to think critically about all of the variables. The gunman was still on the loose, they didn't know who or where he was. It seems evident he was intent on killing lots of people. Do you think if he would have found the school buildings empty, he would have thought "oh well, nobody in the engineering building, I guess I just won't kill anymore today?" I don't think so. I think he would have kept searching for a killing venue until he found one.

But that's not the point, the point is - you need to use your incredibly able minds to think through events like these from all angles and not just accept the views that most prominently get stated on tv or in the paper.

Please keep our fellow human beings at Virginia Tech in the front of your minds.

P.S. This blog will be a lot more powerful if readers comment.
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4 comments:

Alisha Brinkman said...

I will be the first to comment =) This is the main topic of discussion in my MBA classes right now. Some students are saying that this is why the right to bear arms needs to be reviewed like they have been saying for a long time. These students think that if we did not have the right to bare arms this tragedy would not have happened.

My feelings......that is totally illegitimate. Think about drug use. The people that use drugs, the ones that feel the NEED drugs always find a way to get them and use them. Same goes for weapons. If the gentlemen felt the need to take someones life he would have done so whether the government says his weapon is illegal or not.

Events such as this happen and will happen. I dont see any way for preventing such things from ever occuring again. Instead of thinking about what was done wrong, what could have been done to prevent it, worrying about why the school was not canceled I feel we need to focus or thoughts to the people who were affected, how we can support them, and how we can better prepare ourselves for future tragedies.

Alisha

April 18, 2007 at 6:28 PM
Ron Ulseth said...

I agree with Alisha's comments that we need to focus on prevention. As a teacher, I empathize with the English tutor that worked with Cho. She knew something was wrong and alerted several people, but was told there was nothing that could be done. I have had similar feelings about students, with the same results, nothing can be done until something happens. There are certain students' names that I fully expect to see someday on a newspaper's headline (and not for a positive reason). We need to have a way to react when your gut is telling you something is really "off" about someone. If for nothing else than to protect you from future lawsuits (which there will probably be against the college and/or individual people).
Angie Ulseth

April 18, 2007 at 11:30 PM
Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
April 19, 2007 at 11:03 PM
Anonymous said...

I agree with Alisha. Preventing gun sales with more laws is not the answer. He chose to do something illegal so how does making more laws help anything?

Watching the news, and being an avid firearm collector, the more I realize the news try to push their point of view. There were three different polls I participated in: one on CNN, one on ABC, and one on another site I don't recall. They were asking whether we need tighter gun control laws. The majority in all three polls was not in favor of gun control. Know how many of the polls were pulled within the 24 hours after they were posted? All three. The day after the murders, there is a bill to outlaw any high capacity magazines. The media and some politicians outright blame the freedom to own firearms and not the individual.

I was reading about a bill that was struck down in January that would have allowed citizens to carry a concealed weapon on campus with a proper permit. Had this passed, could it have prevented some of the tragedies? I'm not necessarily agreeing that campuses should allow concealed carry but why doesn't the media focus on this aspect? Instead they choose to focus on that school should have been cancelled. I understand having different opinions and views but the media more and more chooses what we see and hear about.

I guess my point is, take what you hear with a grain of salt and make your own opinions. It seems people are trying to make them for you.

April 20, 2007 at 6:52 AM

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