On Wednesday of the trial testimony became
argumentative. Andy zeroed in on the contentious exchange between the
plaintiff’s attorney, Bob Hall, and two Virginia Tech employees—Ralph Byers,
Tech Government Relations Director, and Kim O’Rouke, Chief of Staff to
University President Charles Steger. To Andy, Byers’ hostility appeared
defensive, as if he might be pushed into areas he did not want to discuss.
Byers was clearly agitated; it was as if he thought that he might be forced to
deviate from his rehearsed remarks and inadvertently say something that would
reflect negatively on the school and its president.
Two emails were brought up that made Byers
particularly uncomfortable and defensive. These emails were sent very early in
the process, long before the Policy Group had had a chance to discuss much. The
first was sent to Laura Fornash, who worked as the university’s General
Assembly lobbyist in Richmond and later became Virginia’s Secretary of
Education under Governor McDonnell. Byers directed Fornash to email the
Governor’s office that Virginia Tech police had “one (student) dead and one
(student) injured and a gunman on the loose.” He further directed Fornash to
convey that the information should not be released to anyone outside the
Governor’s office.
Byers feebly tried to back away from the phrase
“gunman on the loose” because it deals a mortal blow to the school’s defense
for not warning the campus. While other defense witnesses had problems
remembering the actions of school officials, Byers had no problem in saying
that no one on the Policy Group—convened to handle the crisis and with the
authority to urge President Steger to issue a warning—used the phrase, “gunman
on the loose.” Those words were, Byers contended, were shorthand for “the
perpetrator has not been apprehended yet.”
A question that was not raised in the courtroom, but
that needs to be answered, is why Byers went through a lobbyist and did not
directly contact the governor’s office? Bad judgment again seems to have reared
its ugly head. Byers had used Fornash in the past as a front person giving
Fornash message control, and that appears to be the motivation in this case.
Common sense, however, given the gravity of the crime, would seem to dictate
contacting the governor directly and then the lobbyist.
The second email Byers sent was to his administrative
assistant to lock the door to her office, where she sat alone while the Policy
Group met nearby in Steger’s boardroom. This time, Byers explained his actions
by saying he wanted to protect his assistant from inquiries about the shootings
once word got out. Pressed by Hall, he did admit that he was being cautious.
Byers emphasized the importance that members of the
Policy Group placed on student safety. But his answer to Hall’s question of how
do you keep the students safe by keeping them ignorant about a possible threat,
he could only give a limp response: “You do what we were doing. You try to do
the best you can with information you have at the time.”
Andy Goddard could only shake his head in disbelief as
he listened to Byers. Goddard remembered watching his son struggle to recover
from his four gunshot wounds, he remembered the blood-soaked sheets, he
remembered wanting to help his son but not knowing how—that was a battle Colin
had fought on his own, and continued to fight through his recovery. Andy
Goddard had felt so helpless and so vulnerable. He put his head in his hands
thought, “If this is the best you school officials could have done with the
information you had at the time, you should never hold any position of
responsibility.” (To be continued)
No comments:
Post a Comment