For the Goddard family, the realization that
something was amiss, that Virginia Tech was hiding something, came early—in the
hours and days immediately following the shooting.
Unlike school officials such as Associate Vice
President for University Relations Lawrence Hincker, whose memory repeatedly
failed him on the witness stand during the Pryde and Petersen families’ trial
against Virginia Tech, Andy Goddard remembers. Monday April 16, 2007 in vivid,
painful detail. He was at home that day getting ready to take his mother-in-law
to the train to return home to New Jersey. When the news of the double
shootings at West Ambler Johnston Hall came over the television he told his mother-in-law
not to worry, that Colin lives off campus in an apartment. But as the news of
the Tech tragedy grew steadily worse, Andy’s concern for Colin’s safety turned
to fear and then to panic. He tried to console himself by saying what are the
odds? On a campus that big, what are the odds Colin had been shot?
He clearly recalls phoning his wife’s office only
to be told she was on another line talking to Colin, who had been shot. All
they knew was that he was in the hospital, was wounded, and apparently would
recover. It was not until they got to the hospital and talked to the doctors
that the Goddards found out their son had been shot four times and had five
wounds—the fifth wound being where a bullet had exited Colin’s body.
The hospital Colin had been taken to was not far
from the school. As Andy Goddard sat watching his son struggle to deal with his
life-threatening wounds, he waited for someone from the school to contact him.
But no one came. This absence on the first day, the day of the shooting, was
not hard to explain. Andy told himself school officials were busy with the
families of the deceased—as they should be. But months later when Andy met with
some of the families of the deceased he was shocked to find out they had not
been the main focus of the school administration’s attention either. By that
afternoon Colin’s friends had found where he was and were at the hospital. Andy
could not help but think if students could find Colin certainly the school
could—surely someone from the school would show up soon. He waited that
evening, yet no one appeared and the school made no attempt to contact the
Goddard family or inquire about Colin’s condition.
Two professors’ wives did come to the hospital,
but it was on their own initiative. As sympathetic and kind as their gesture
was, the two women did not represent the school and had no authority to open up
a line of communication. Their presence only underscored the school’s inaction
and increasingly obvious indifference.
On Tuesday, still no contact with the school, but
again, Andy assumed they were busy with the families of the dead. As the day
progressed, there was no sign of anyone from Virginia Tech—no administrators,
no counselors, no faculty, no one. Andy had sent messages through the hospital director
and the two faculty wives, asking them to relay his concerns directly to Tech
officials. But still there was no word or inquiry from the school, there was no
contact point, and no school official came to the hospital or made any attempt
to inquire about Colin.
For Andy Goddard, an engineer, when something is
broken you spend time analyzing the problem and find out what went wrong and
what needs to be done to fix it. Usually disasters, such as what occurred at
Virginia Tech, are caused by many small things going wrong and by those things
coming together with tragic consequences—a confluence of mistakes, missed
signals, and sometimes negligence. Andy wanted answers and it did not take him
long to realize school officials did not want to talk. Tech officials wanted
minimal contact with the families of the dead and wounded; clearly, he thought,
someone had gotten to Tech and told them not to talk.
By now Andy was not just annoyed, he was angry. He
would later find out that the school had contacted none of the families of the
wounded and that even three days after the shooting, the school did not know
the names of the wounded, where they had been taken, or their conditions. It
was as if once the injured were taken off the campus, the school had no responsibility
or interest in them.
On Wednesday, as Colin was taken to surgery, there
was still no official contact with the school. Again Andy turned to the
hospital director to help open a line of communication to Tech, but once more
the school did not respond.
An increasingly agitated Andy then went to the
phone, called the school and asked when a school representative would appear at
the hospital. The response was that nobody could come because of privacy
issues, and they would not be allowed in unless they were family. The excuse
was out and out false. President Steger did visit at least one wounded student
after hours when the parents were not present. Furthermore, the school official
added that Tech did not know names of those in the hospital, much less what
hospitals the wounded were in or their conditions. Andy was furious. He wanted
to blurt out, but did not, “For god’s sake, Tech has class rosters, the school
knows the names of the dead and yet days after the shooting claims to have no
idea who the wounded are, where they are, or their condition.”
Adding insult to injury, the school official asked
Andy to go around the hospital and gather the names of the other injured and
then report that back to him. A livid Andy Goddard refused.
At this point Andy lost his temper and demanded
that someone representing the school administration come to the hospital. He
said he would be at the front door waiting for someone to show up. And wait he
did. While Colin lay in the recovery room, Andy Goddard stood for hours at the
front door of the hospital, but no one came. What Andy wanted was a contact
point, a name or a number to call; he didn’t want answers, he didn’t want
apologies, he just wanted a line of communication with school officials. He
wanted contact with the people who had been responsible for his son’s education
right up to the point when he was loaded into an ambulance and driven away.
Those people, however, appeared to have washed their hands of Colin Goddard
once he was taken to the hospital.
Finally, late in the day some nurses from Tech did
appear. By then Andy had no patience, he could only respond, “What we want is
an administrator—we have nurses! Has someone told Tech not to find out
information, or does the school just not care?” Andy realized that Tech was a
big school, and this was a crisis, but it stretched all credibility to think
that a school the size of Tech could not find four administrators to send, one
each, to the four hospitals where the wounded were being cared for.
Andy Goddard’s suspicion of obstruction grew. It
was becoming clear; Tech was trying to hide something. It was at that point
that Andy realized that Tech had embarked on a campaign to cover up and hide
incompetence and bureaucratic inertia. He believed there could be only one
explanation for the school’s lack of responsiveness; Virginia Tech had played a
role in Cho’s massacre. It remained to be seen just what that role was, but as
the evidence and facts surfaced over the succeeding weeks and months, not only
would the school’s complicity in enabling Cho to carry out his massacre become
clear, but evidence of the lengths to which the Steger administration would go
to cover up the school’s negligence would become glaringly apparent.
Upon reflection, Andy realized how naïve he had
been. He had thought that everyone was in this together; they were all
victims—the school and the families. He was finding out just how wrong he was.
The school did finally assign a liaison person,
and she contacted the Goddards on Friday, April 20th.
Andy stayed in Blacksburg, in Colin’s apartment to
help him get back on his feet. After a couple of weeks he asked if he could
contact the families of the deceased, or just be given the names, he was told
no. Andy was told those families did not want to talk. Andy soon found out that
was a lie. Just as he was trying to get the names and contact numbers for the
families of the wounded, Joe Samaha, whose daughter had been murdered, was
trying to do the same for those whose children and loved ones had been killed.
Samaha was also intent on contacting the families of those who survived. The
school apparently wanted the families to have as little contact with each other
as possible. Tech officials did not want the families talking to each other and
comparing notes. Their strategy appeared to be to divide and conquer.
When he got back to Richmond, some three weeks
later, Andy again raised the subject of contacting the families of the injured
and those killed. The school offered to take the Goddards’ contact information
and give it to other families, who could then decide if they wanted to talk to
the Goddards. That was the last Andy Goddard would hear on the subject and none
of the families he later talked with remember ever being offered the contact
information. Clearly the school had lied.
Again, Andy Goddard took the initiative. He went
through press reports and collected the names of the families of the dead and
wounded. It took him three or four weeks to draw up a master list of family
names and to make his first contact with other families. One by one he began
contacting other families and one by one he found them all eager to talk. Andy
contacted Joe Samaha and found that he and others were not only anxious, but
eager to talk to the families of the survivors. The picture was clear that
school officials had lied when they said the families of the deceased did not
want to talk to the families of the survivors. There could be no doubt Virginia
Tech was hiding something and had been willing to lie to attempt to keep the
families apart.
For the Goddards then, the defining moment came
soon after arriving in Blacksburg—within the first 24 hours. The school’s lack
of willingness to send a representative to the hospital alerted Andy Goddard to
some sort of nefarious activity on the part of the Steger administration, a
suspicion that was confirmed when Andy Goddard found out he had been lied to
about the families of the dead not wanting to talk to the families of the
wounded. (To be continued)
No comments:
Post a Comment