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.