The report, then, falls short of what it needed to do: make clear
that everyone in a position of responsibility must be held to the highest
standards of safety, and that failure to meet those standards will result in
stiff penalties. Instead, the reader is left wandering from page to page in an
effort to tie ends together and make his or her own conclusions.
There are structural flaws in the report centering on the Key
Findings and Recommendations. Most people who
look at a report this size will only read those two parts. Professional writers
are taught to put one or both of these sections at the beginning of the
chapters or the report itself because it is a well-known principle among
professional writers that the Key Findings and Recommendations are the meat. By
placing them at the end, and by watering them down, the writers are weakening
the significance of the key findings and recommendations. In other words, the
report is written more as an on-going investigative report, rather than an
analysis of a major crime. TriData Corporation employs professional writers who
presumably know this.
Now, let’s take a look at the specifics that typify errors found
throughout the report. A major concern is the apparent selection of words in
the report to downplay failings and mistakes. For example, the topic sentence
on page 18 in the paragraph in the middle of the page needs to be
replaced:
|
Original
Sentence
|
Reasons
for Replacing
|
My
Replacement Sentences
|
|
“Shootings at universities are rare events, an average
of 16 a year across 4,000 institutions.”
|
Reason: To correct the report’s downplaying of the
seriousness of the threat and to be factually correct. Site: The
Journal of College and University Law, a peer-reviewed journal published
by the Notre Dame Law School, Professor Helen de Haven, “The Elephant in the
Ivory Tower: Rampages in Higher Education and the Case for Institutional
Liability,” —the citation for the article is 35 JC&UL 503, 2009.
|
“Shootings at universities are becoming more and more
frequent and now average 16 a year across 4,000 institutions. Even before the
rampage at Virginia Tech, a growing body of legal opinion held that the
nation’s colleges and universities have a legal and moral responsibility to
protect students, faculty and staff.”
|
Another
example is found on page 52—here, The Key Findings need to be rewritten
to accurately reflect the magnitude of the school’s failings. These failings
are documented on pages 46 through 52:
|
Original Sentence
|
Reasons for Replacing
|
My Replacement Sentences
|
|
“The lack of
information sharing among academic, administrative, and public safety
entities at Virginia Tech and the students who had raised concerns about Cho, contributed to the failure to see the big picture.”
|
Reason: vague
language, inaccurate reflection of the magnitude of the failings and over use
of platitudes such as “big picture.”
|
The numerous failings
of Virginia Tech to respond to warning signs that Cho
was a serious threat to himself and others should not, and cannot, be glossed
over. Members of the school administration and campus police failed to heed
the warnings and take the initiative to head-off what became the nation’s
worst school shooting. There were at least five complaints about Cho’s
threatening behavior that reached the ears of campus police and or school
administrators. Overly strict, and at times incorrect, interpretations of
federal and state privacy laws combined with bureaucratic ineptitude to make
the shooting rampage possible.
|
There are also discrepancies in logic and reasoning that need to be reconciled. For example on page 43 the reader will no doubt be confused over what constitutes a threat. In the left hand column, first full paragraph, third sentence through the end of the paragraph reads: “She (Dr. Giovanni) contacted the head of the English Department, Dr. Roy, about Cho and warned that if he were not removed from her class, she would resign. He was not just a difficult student, she related, he was not working at all. Dr. Giovanni was offered security, but declined saying she did not want him back in class period. She saw him once on campus after that and he just stared at the ground.” Here is the problem: if a professor is threatening to resign because she feels threatened, then Frances Keene, Judicial Affairs director, needs to give a better explanation of why Cho’s threatening behavior was not actionable under the abusive conduct-threats.
In fact, all of page 43 is confusing and is intellectual mumbo-jumbo—it
may have been intentionally written that way to hide the shortcomings and
failures of the school to act.
The report’s excessive use of
passive voice sentences appears to be intentional and meant to obscure. Passive
voice sentences are the preferred sentences of members of the legal profession
because they allow for greater courtroom interpretation and argumentation. In
an historical document such as this, passive voice sentences should not be
used, unless the writer has no other choice.
Let’s take a look at a couple
of examples. Look at page 43 and how the passive voice is intended to hide who
knew what: “However, it is known that the university did not contact the family
to ascertain the veracity of home town follow-up for counseling and medication
management.” Known by whom? Was the individual or department responsible
for this failure ever questioned?
Professor Lucinda Roy, in her
book “No Right to Remain Silent,” gives an excellent example of passive voice
sentences obscuring information. When referring to Vice Provost of Student
Affairs David Ford’s statement to the panel on May 21, 2007, she writes, “As
Ford revealed in his prepared statement, the president and the Policy Group
were advised by the police that a suspect was being tracked—slain student Emily
Hilscher’s boyfriend.” The prepared statement reads:
“Information
continued to be received through frequent telephone conversations with
Virginia Tech police on the scene. The Policy Group was informed that
the residence hall was being secured by Virginia Tech police, and students
within the hall were notified and asked to remain in their rooms for
their safety. We were further informed that the room containing the
gunshot victims was immediately secured for evidence collection, and
Virginia Tech police began questioning hall residents and identifying potential
witnesses. In the preliminary stages of the investigation, it appeared to be an
isolated incident, possibly domestic in nature.” (Pages 81and 82 of the Review
Panel Report.)
In
commenting on the above, Roy writes, “It’s difficult to know why this last
assumption was made, though there is little doubt that the term ‘domestic
violence’ has connotations which can lead people to assume that the violence
has somehow been contained within the domestic sphere and is therefore less
likely to be visited upon those outside it.”
Roy then adds, “When the
passive voice is used in sentence construction it is hard to pin down who the
subject is. In the first sentence of the above quote, for example, we would
normally say ‘So-and-so continued to receive information,’ but instead we have
‘Information continued to be received,’ which makes it hard to know who was
actually receiving it. Although this description begins as what appears to be a
first-person, eyewitness narrative, it seems to dissolve into an account of an
event viewed at a considerable distance. The phrase ‘The Policy Group was
informed,’ for example, raises the question of who did the informing. It seems
by the end of the paragraph as though everyone is receiving all the information
at the same time, but given how chaotic the situation must have been,
this seems somewhat unlikely. Usually teachers of writing try to dissuade
students from using the passive voice construction because it tends to result
in accounts that lack specificity and removes a subject from his or her own
action, as it does in this case.” (To be continued)
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