CHESAPEAKE STYLE Winter Edition
Virginia Tech: Make Sure It Doesn’t Get Out, a new
book due for publication in the new year, pulls no punches in its investigation
of the April 16, 2007 shootings at Virginia Tech that claimed 33 lives. Author David
Cariens delivers blow after blow in his look at systemic failures before,
during and after the worst school shooting in the nation’s history. In 14
chapters, Cariens hammers away at dozens of key points from different
perspectives – his own, drawing on both personal and professional experiences;
through the eyes of family members of the shooting victims; in a scathing critique
of the Governor’s Review Panel reports of the tragedy, and in discussions on
gun control and American culture. He also gives an account of the lawsuit filed
by two families, the trial, the verdict in favor of the plaintiffs and the
pending appeal.
There are, regrettably, a lot of
points to hammer home. They surface in summary fashion in the timeline of
events that introduces most chapters, in more detail in the narratives that
follow, and are reinforced by those affected directly by the tragedy.
The book’s first timeline is a
sobering account of 35 school shootings; males with guns and mental health
issues are all-too-common denominators. The timeline sets the tone for what
follows. It also implies that lessons which come out of such tragedies are not
learned universally or well, or with any staying power.
The first four chapters of Make Sure It Doesn’t Get Out give a
detailed accounting of the Virginia Tech shootings, including the background of
the shooter, Seung Hui Cho, and the warning signs that even when duly reported
seemed to fall through the cracks – cracks that too many in authority fail to
acknowledge. This lack of accountability is the theme for the remaining ten
chapters. Recurring issues are how school administrators and law enforcement handled
– or didn’t handle – the events that day, how they interacted – or didn’t –
with family members, and how the official reports that followed blurred facts
and skated around issues central to improving school safety.
During the Virginia Tech tragedy, 2
½ hours elapsed without a campus lockdown between the double homicide in a
dormitory, which was under investigation, and the mass shooting in Norris Hall;
two students were even allowed to leave the dorm and attend classes, fatally,
in Norris Hall. Cariens notes that a precedent already had been set for a
lockdown; that word had gotten out to select individuals, and that some
departments had locked down independently. He writes that a flawed timeline covered
the failure to issue a warning, and that the official report glossed over
pivotal facts, and in some cases erred altogether. Questions of conflict of
interest in the reporting, and possible ulterior motives, also abound.
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