University Repeatedly Warned About Gunman

A report in the New York Times "Two-Hour Delay Is Linked to Bad Lead ":

make it startling clear that at least one of Cho's teachers warned the University repeatedly:

Ms. Roy said Mr. Cho’s writing, laced with anger, profanity and violence, concerned several faculty members. In 2005, she sent examples to the campus police, the campus counseling service and other officials. All were worried, but little could be done, she said.

Hey, how about kicking the guy out until he gets his head together.  I bet you'd do that if he were smoking pot!   But being a homocidal maniac is a freedom of speech issue, I guess.

Most of the rest of the NYT report spends it covering for the university. That includes on the title issue of the false lead causing them to do a shitty job of protecting their students. (Universities buy a lot of ad space in serious print media don't they?)

A BBC report "University 'warned about gunman' " notes:

Some students have complained that they received no warning from the university until an e-mail more than two hours after the first incident.

They also said that the university should have locked down the campus immediately after the shooting at the dormitory.

Stratfor (link wouldn't work for you and was dead for me this morning -- apparently Google passes only last so long.  You might be able to get a pass yourself from Google by searching via Google domain search on Virginia Tech at Stratfor.com if you feel you want to read the article for yourself) that even the email system crashed leaving many of the students without any warning from the university of what was and had happened there. They recommended that emergency plans in the future have a back up communications plan. They site the fact that the VT library had a PA system that was not used.

Stratfor said that many students didn't know whether to go into buildings or remain outside until the police returned to the campus and started using their own public communication system.)  Stratfor does recommend emails and text message as a secondary etc attempts to contact loved ones in case of clogged mobile systems in a disaster because they work under tougher to get through conditions than regular mobile speech contact.

 Australia's Daily Telegraph says that Cho posted a warning on the Virginia Tech online forum:

According to school officials, after killing two people in a dormitory, Cho, 23, had time to post a deadly warning on a school online forum.

"im going to kill people at vtech today," they said he wrote, American network ABC reported.

And the above linked BBC report also relates:

A former classmate of Cho's, Ian MacFarlane, has also posted on the AOL news website two plays he says that Cho wrote.

In an internet blog, he described Cho's work as "like something out of a nightmare", with "really twisted, macabre violence".

"When I first heard about the multiple shootings at Virginia Tech yesterday, my first thought was about my friends, and my second thought was 'I bet it was Seung Cho'," he wrote.

Once again Bush gets to play 'Consoler in chief' says the Washington Pos t and sidestepping the political problems his administration has earned by trying to get US Attorneys to help push the Republican agenda.  They note times in the Clinton and Bush administrations in which the president took on the role that, before TV, was relegated to the clergy (their words).

One instance that the forget is Bush's grandstanding after the Columbia disaster.  I guess it's because that's a little too embarassing for the Bush administration, seeing as how in the summer of 2001 Bush derided calls for "frivolous safety features" on the Shuttles and reports surfaced that former NASA engineers had tried warning the Bush's patrition NASA chief and even made an effort to contact the president himself with similar warnings when NASA wouldn't listen to them.

Now Bush essentially says STFU about gun control until this all settles down (and people forget once again like after the Amish school killing).  So just STFU Americans.  Bush doesn't want to know what you think or feel about keeping children and young adults safe.

Another Post report says that Democrats will wait for Bush (who has told us before that Americans want him to lead), to take the lead adding another click to the political Russian roulette game over gun control, knowing that if they act alone, the Republicans will use it against them in the next election.

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