Overreactions from Virginia Tech

How do university campuses respond to a tragedy like the one at Virginia Tech? In general, at WestConn, the response has been very well thought out. We have been informed of our security procedures, reminded of our counseling center, and memorials have been set up. These are all good steps.

But there is also evidence of more dangerous steps being taken. In and around the campus, what has been on people's minds the past few days has been "is there a Cho Seung-Hui in our midst"? Some conversations have occurred and even some actions taken to make sure that there are no psychologically troubled people in or around WestConn who might contemplate the same actions. In general, the conventional wisdom emerging from Virginia Tech is that the school there did too little to head problems off at the pass, and that more should be done to remove potentially dangerous people from a university setting.

Universities know how to do little better than to have a witch hunt. And that's the issue: what's lost in these discussions of how to prevent people from acting like Cho did is that these kinds of discussions (and the persecution complex that subtly undergirds them) are precisely the reason why people like Cho feel they have to act. It has always amazed me that while incidents like Columbine or Virginia Tech spark heated discussions about gun control and campus safety, the discussions almost never get to the obvious heart of the issue: why some people on America's high school and university campuses feel so ostracized and excluded in these environments as to feel they need to take to terrible and bloody violence to sort it out.

Perhaps people don't raise this issue because the minute anyone voices any concern about the social structure of a university campus as a potential cause of these violent acts, it takes the onus off of Cho. Or perhaps people with this point of view are afraid to raise it lest they get carted off to the paddywagon themselves. Yet raising this question does not excuse his actions or apologize for him. What Cho did is horrible, and I fervently hope that nothing like it ever happens again. Yet it is ironic that when it comes to identifying "problem behaviors" or "problem students," I'm convinced that what universities like WestConn do only further ostracizes the already stigmatized students and staff and makes such attacks more likely rather than less likely in the future. The focus on university campuses needs, rather, to be on making people feel more included in their environment.