Arnold G. York
Hard to understand
What happened, the murders at Virginia Tech, a rural bucolic college in Western Virginia, is the kind of thing that leaves one baffled. The contrast between this quiet country setting in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and the unexplainable outburst of violence that occurred has left us all sickened and unsure how to respond. Something of this magnitude and horror isn’t supposed to happen at a college campus in the peaceful countryside, or at least that’s the myth.
Well that myth was shattered, with more than 30 killed by someone who many people had probably seen around campus but, apparently, no one really knew. The police identified the shooter as a 23-year-old young man in his senior year at Virginia Tech, who came from South Korea at age of eight in 1992 and had lived in the United States ever since. Although some had an idea that he might be a troubled young man, many had no idea what was going on in his mind.
It sets you to thinking about all the people you’ve gone to school with, sat next to and have never known. By your senior year we’ve all had 40 or so courses and sat next to hundreds of people, and in most cases you nod, say hello and occasionally borrow some notes, but mainly you never know what’s going on inside their heads.
From all reports, this young man, the shooter, was like a ghost. At Virginia Tech, a large school of 25,000, which is about the size of UCLA, it would have been easy for someone to pass through without being noticed.
I thought back to memories of my own education at Brooklyn College, a campus of 15,000 or so, and some of the people I saw all the time, and realized we had our share of strange characters as does every campus. College is a troubling time for so many young people, trying to figure out who they are and who they want to be. On the smaller campuses you stand a better chance that someone will notice your pain and intervene. But on a large campus, if you don’t make a fuss, you can just pass through unnoticed, anonymous, and, in the case of this young man, with no one noticing that he was seething with anger and pain.
There is going to be a great deal of soul searching by the school administration, the student body, the parents of the dead and injured students, and the politicians, but, in the final analysis, I doubt there is much anyone could have done. I suspect that, at any time, 10 percent, if not more, of students at any college campus are deeply troubled, and all you can do is hope to spot them before they do harm to others, or, more often, harm to themselves.
There is criticism flying around that the administration and police did not shut down the campus early enough after the first shooting in the residence hall. Perhaps the school administration could have responded more aggressively after the shooting of the first two people, but it’s almost impossible to shut down a large campus, and this one is 2,500 acres, probably physically bigger then UCLA.
For all the students who attend this college, the reality that the killings were done by someone they might have known, someone they went to class with, who lived in one of the dormitories, who they might have sat next to, or passed in the halls has got to be agonizing. You begin to ask yourself questions. How could I have not seen it coming? Unfortunately, there is no satisfactory answer to that question and about all they can do is to join together and share their grief, and we can do the same. My heart goes out to the parents of the children killed, the families of the faculty members murdered. You send your child off to college with high hopes for their future, and I can’t think of anything more tragic than to have your child’s life cut short by such a senseless act.
If what comes out of this is a feeling on the nation’s campuses that more aggressive outreach is needed to connect with some of these troubled young people before they pass the breaking point, then maybe something positive can come out of this. We live in a world that pretends that bad mental health is just a matter of character. It isn’t. It really is a disease and we have to treat it as such or there will be more Virginia Techs.