Blacksburg on our minds
In Charlottesville, the massacre that took place today on the Virginia Tech campus is heavily on our minds tonight. For the St. Louis audience, Blacksburg is about 2.5 hours away from here. Our community is full of VT grads and parents of students currently enrolled at the school. We’re glued to CNN tonight, trying to make sense of it, trying to understand what happened today.
It’s hard to know what to tell kids when these kinds of tragedies occur. The boy knew all about it before he got home from school. A junior in high school, many of his classmates have friends and relatives at VT. The girl watched CNN for awhile, by my side, trying with me to grasp what could have, what did, happen.
I’m watching the press conference with a critical eye, both feeling terribly sorry for the police chief and the university president to be in this position yet wondering why they are so clearly unprepared to address this crisis situation.
This tragedy will extend so far beyond the school and the state.
Our hearts go out to the families and the entire community.
April 16th, 2007 at 9:30 pm
There’s a fine balance between being sympathetic to the administration, and also wondering why the hell they didn’t cancel classes. It could be because they did so just last week because of bomb threats. It could be bad policework, because they seemed to be certain that the first shooting was wrapped up. We won’t know for a while until Chief Wendell Flinchum can tell us more details.
Virginia Tech really is an open campus. It’s absolutely huge, and getting bigger every year. I barely recognize it when I go back to visit. It’s almost impossible to simply shut it down. Yet, they’ve done it before.
I can imagine people there thought this couldn’t happen again. After all, they just went through this last August. At the second press conference, Larry Hincker said something about they were still working on ways to get SMS text messages to students in case of emergency. Shouldn’t that have been in place by now?
April 16th, 2007 at 9:35 pm
Absolutely! I think even still in this post 9-11 era that we still can’t believe the tragedy is occuring, even as the shots are fired. There’s something of denial, the “this couldn’t happen in Blacksburg” factor that slows the process, that stalls the action.
While these occurrences are never perfectly handled by spokespeople, it’s always clear who knows how to handle communications efforts and who doesn’t. The press conference I saw tonight was a great example of how not to handle the press.
April 16th, 2007 at 10:04 pm
Which one? One, or two? The second one seemed much better. Steger began with a timeline, and Flinchum seemed to have better answers. I think there’s only so much information to give out when you have something as big as this. There’s only so much information to give out.
Then again, I listened to two on the radio. These guys aren’t used to having a hundred reporters asking them questions. Who is?
Having said that, I predict that someone’s going to have to leave their position over this. I’m weighing my own judgment until all the facts are in, but I don’t understand why classes weren’t canceled.
April 18th, 2007 at 12:34 pm
I had a dream about the Boy and you last night. I was in some strange house and you walked in. I said, “Oh! I was so glad to read your blog because I was thinking about the Boy and I thought maybe VT was one of his choices. I was so worried about him!” Then, this voice behind me said, “Hey, I wouldn’t do that to you!” It was the Boy and he had his grin on his face. I floated in the air over to him and hugged the life out of him.
Oh, and BTW, he was about 5′6″. So, I don’t know what happened to his height there. 
Anyway, obviously you were in my thoughts yesterday. I am still reeling from the thoughts of how nowhere is really safe once your kids have left the house. Crazies are everywhere.
April 18th, 2007 at 12:34 pm
Yes, I do float in my dreams. a lot. very cool feeling.