Virigina Tech, continues

The press conference did not go well. Since there is not a lot of information that is either available or appropriate to transmit and since the masses of reporters and news organizations are yet to be on the ground in Virginia, and since there is no one on the run in a White Bronco, the focus is on the behavior of Virginia Tech and the local police. This is the worst case scenario for the institution: there is a terrible tragedy AND somehow they are caught unprepared or vulnerable. Why didn't the school shut down after the first casualties? Because they thought it was contained. But there was no evidence that it was contained because they did not have the shooter. The institution should have closed its gates immediately after the first shooting. No one should have been allowed in. Local radio stations should have warned commuting students to turn around. Parking lots should have been attended and people sent home. Did they do a "hard target search" or any search at all?

Obviously, no school has a SWAT team on staff. The president said they have emergency protocols (the commuications guy says not), that they practice but there can be no rehearsal for this kind of event. There is some truth to this, of course. But that is NOT the answer you give to the press, because it speaks to your powerlessless. When the question is raised, "How do you contact students on their way to classes?" at the press conference, I can only hope it was not the first time such a question came before the president. Because that is a reasonable question to anticipate and include in an emergency preparedness plan. And there are answers, ideas, strategies. And if you can imagine one gunman killing one student, you can imagine his killing more than one. The evidence on the ground today could not only suggest that the event was over after the first two victims were discovered—as the police chose to assume— but also that it was NOT over. And that is the fatal vulnerability at Virginia Tech: the failure to imagine the worst or even the obvious: That the gunman was still on campus, still armed, and still crazy.

There are too many excuses coming out of the communications guy, the president, and the police chief and the questions are repeating themselves. It is weakening the school. Reporters don't need vague denials. Broadcast emails to 9,000 students on campus or 29,000 total students plus faculty and staff can't just be sent out at the push of a button. They need to be batched or you can crash your system. There are some things that just take awhile to do. That is fair, it has to be. But on other issues the press is not getting the recognition it needs that perhaps mistakes were made, that perhaps lives were tragically lost today unnecessarily. Someone asked if new security measures would be looked at? The president says he needs facts first. I suggest he has 32 facts. When students are jumping out of windows, you might want to take a look at your security measures.