Tuesday, April 17, 2007

they say hindsight is 20/20

unlike some, but like many others, i haven't lost what sense of security i had. what happened wasn't because virginia tech has an unsafe campus. it happened because an individual decided to do something horrible.

i can't say for sure, since i don't actually know what information was available before the second shootings, but i don't think that, in steger's situation, anybody would have made a different decision.

virginia tech is huge. at 2,600 acres, and with a student population of more than 25,000 (that's full-time students, not total students), shutting down the campus would be akin to shutting down a small town. and shutting down a small town in response to what looked like a domestic disturbance gone horribly wrong just doesn't make sense. and it's difficult.

what *did* bother me was the delay between the initial incident and the first email. did. not does. i don't think i am bothered anymore. if, as has been reported, they believed the gunman fled campus, then the focus *should* have been on tracking down the gunman, getting care for the injured student, and contacting the families of both victims. in priority, notifying the student body would fall after all that. the situation, as presented, would not imply a sense of urgency to get the word out.

of course, knowing what we know now, we feel that word *should* have gotten out. classes *should* have been canceled. but in all honesty, we don't know what would have happened if information had been disseminated and classes had been canceled. it seems that the police were chasing down a bad lead (or at least investigating someone other than the now infamous gunman), so i doubt cho would have been apprehended in any short order. his rampage, then, would possibly have just been rescheduled and/or relocated. imagine the scene had he been unable to attack students in class, and instead opened fire in a dining hall, or perhaps a gathering to mourn the first victims. there may not have been doors to close, windows to jump out of. the bullets spent on doors may then have been earmarked for flesh-and-blood humans.

they say hindsight is 20/20. but even with perfect vision, or better-than-perfect vision, there are things that can be obstructed, things we can't see. i, for one, am not willing to claim i know what's behind the other door.

what can i even add?

i didn't wear black today. i didn't know any of the victims. i didn't wear maroon and orange today. i'm not in blacksburg. wearing maroon and orange in a sea of mundane wouldn't show solidarity. wearing either would not make me feel better. all i would accomplish by wearing symbolic support, would be to garnish sympathy, or worse, pity. i need neither. those who need my support (my specific support) know i'm there for them. those who need the support of a nation, already have it.

don't take this the wrong way. i don't look down on those who outwardly showed their support today. it is not petty to show that you care. there just would have been very little point in me, specifically, doing this.

i feel that my job now isn't to cry. it's not to be depressed. it's not to be outraged. and while i'm shrouded in sorrow for those directly affected by this, i don't think my job is even to mourn. who or what do i have to mourn? i don't know, as far as i know, any of the victims. my job now is to be there for those who need me, to support those who are affected more profoundly than i am.

but there's no shame in crying.