VT Epilogue

Many reacted to the recent massacre at Virginia Tech by calling for either more or less gun control. To be sure, the former have been more visible than the latter. The New York Times, for instance, came out with an editorial calling for stricter gun laws the day after the tragedy.

Conversely, the following weekend, former Speaker of the U. S. House of Representatives Newt Gingrich gave a different spin on ABC This Week: “In states where people have been allowed to have concealed weapons—in Mississippi and Kentucky—there have been incidents of this kind of a killer who were stopped, because in fact, people who are law-abiding people, who are rational and people who are responsible had the ability to stop them.”

Meanwhile, in an interview with CNN’s Lou Dobbs that also aired on Sunday, NYU professor Richard Arum concluded that colleges and universities have failed in the “socialization” of their students. “In the past two to three decades, students have had free speech and privacy rights that they never had before,” Dr. Arum explained to Dobbs.

“The family clearly has the responsibility for youth socialization as you note, but for a variety of reasons (discussed in the introduction of my book), families are increasingly struggling with this task,” Dr. Arum stated in an e-mail to me. The letter from Cho Seung-Hui’s sister, though, is written by a level-headed well-socialized girl.

Thus, in that household, the socialization process did not break down, Cho did. Dr. Arum is a professor of socialization and education at NYU.

“Schools also are critically important as they are the first institution where the individual encounters the rules, norms and values of the larger society,” Dr. Arum wrote in his statement to us. “Youth will either internalize these societal norms and values or not, depending on the extent to which school discipline is effective and the moral authority of school actors is accepted.”

“Increased laws and regulations have made it difficult for schools to accomplish these goals at a historic juncture where we need them to do more.”

The Chronicle of Higher Education lists eight shootings that have occurred on college and university campuses over the past 20 years, half of them since the year 2000. Dr. Arum authored a book four years ago entitled Judging School Discipline which, in light of the Blacksburg murders, looks eerily prophetic.

Nonetheless, other trained observers, such as leading psychiatrist E. Fuller Torrey, have pointed out that even within the limits of the law more could, and should, have been done. “The state’s law says the local mental-health agency shall monitor the person’s compliance with treatment,” Dr. Torrey wrote in a New York Post column in which he described Virginia’s statutes as they pertain to the Cho incident. “And yet, when asked, a spokesman for the agency that should have helped Cho said, ‘The matter of the individual actually following up and going to that appointment is his or her prerogative.’”

“Not just untrue, but ridiculous. He also said that the court order ‘can’t actually be enforced,’ despite the fact that the law says that upon failure to adhere to the treatment order, the judge can rescind it and order hospitalization.”

Even on the campus itself, the lessons learned from a local precedent suggest that V-Tech could have kicked Cho off campus although such a move might have entailed hefty legal expenses that, nevertheless, look minor in retrospect. “GW officials came under fire last year after the University removed former student Jordan Nott from housing and barred him from campus after he met with counselors for his depression,” Brandon Butler reported in the GW Hatchet. “About 15 months after Nott filed a lawsuit against GW for what he called unfair treatment of mental patients, Cho-Seung Hui, a student at Virginia Tech, brutally shot 32 students and faculty members in the deadliest mass shooting in U. S. history.”

“The two cases of Nott and Cho have a common thread: both students were labeled as dangers to themselves or others.” Recall that GWU, or George Washington University, is commanded by Stephen Trachtenberg, who famously told the graduating class of 2004, “If anyone has a mortarboard, you can move your tassels from right to left, right to left, which is what I hope happened to your politics in the last four years.”

I also pointed out to Dr. Arum that even legendarily lethargic campus security guards have swung into action when conservative students have attempted to exercise their first amendment rights. “In terms of free speech rights, I believe that schools should respect students’ right to political free speech,” he averred. “Unfortunately I think that these rights are being applied and invoked in ways that are well beyond the intent of Tinker.”

“I think the Bong Hits for Jesus case is illustrative of this as too how free speech rights were invoked in accepting the writings of this troubled youth at Virginia Tech.”

Malcolm A. Kline is the executive director of Accuracy in Academia.