Lessons can be learned from Va. Tech mistakes

The state panel assigned to investigate April’s Virginia Tech shootings released a striking… The state panel assigned to investigate April’s Virginia Tech shootings released a striking and somber report this week, criticizing the university for failing to properly communicate information regarding the gunman’s mental health.

Since Seung-Hui Cho took the lives of 32 people this spring, media outlets and government officials have refrained from pointing fingers at university officials, assuming that the scope of the tragedy might not have been preventable at a university as large as Virginia Tech.

Even at Pitt, which is smaller and less secluded than Virginia Tech, it is hard to imagine the possibility (or legality) of keeping tabs on every single person on campus at every moment of the day.

Yet, in Cho’s case, it has become apparent that Virginia Tech made several distinct and alarming mistakes. Yesterday’s report outlined several preventable steps that the university could have taken to lower the death toll – if not prevent the shootings from happening at all.

While the report’s focus was primarily on the university’s failure to exchange any information regarding Cho’s mental health condition, it also reflected on the security measures taken by Virginia Tech on the day of the massacre.

The university didn’t respond to the initial shooting of two students in a campus residence hall for more than two hours after the incident – and even then only relayed the situation to students as a “routine police procedure.” According to the report, if the university would have released a warning earlier or had canceled classes, the death toll could have been lower. Virginia Tech has defended its decision, claiming that it was investigating another lead at the time, and was hesitant to relay a message that could initiate a campus-wide panic.

Unfortunately, we sometimes learn the most from tragedy, and in this case, it’s hard to say whether any university could have been prepared to respond in the correct manner. Hopefully, all universities have learned from Virginia Tech’s mistake and incorporated an efficient emergency-alert system into their security measures. Pitt has made a commendable step in this direction by initiating an emergency text message alert system this semester.

On this issue of Cho’s mental health, however, it is harder to look past Virginia Tech’s mistakes. According to the report, various individuals and departments within the university were aware of Cho’s two-year history of mental health issues on campus – which included violent writings and threatening behaviors – yet never communicated the information or intervened effectively. The university even failed to communicate the information to Cho’s immediate family. Virginia Tech now claims it mistook federal privacy laws as forbidding any exchange of a student’s mental health information, according to The New York Times.

The panel emphasized the precedence of Cho’s mental illness history, warning that in the future, public safety should be prioritized over an individual’s privacy, a recommendation that we hope all universities and government officials take very seriously in the future.

At large universities, students can sometimes slip through the cracks, but we hope that if the warning signs are observed and reported to university officials – as they were in Cho’s case – our university will continue to take the appropriate measures needed to ensure campus safety.