Thursday, April 19, 2007
Thoughts on Virginia Tech
I think the thing that bothers me the most about this whole incident is the media saturation. All you could hear about on Tuesday was about the murders, and all you could hear about yesterday were the tapes that he made about it. The media bombarded us with the same handful of images of Virginia Tech, the same interviews with students who survived saying they didn't really know what was going on at the time, and they same misinformation about the murderer. Some said he was South-east Asian, Chinese, Korean, and some said he was a student others not a student. It is the responsibility of the media to report facts, not speculation and hearsay. And then playing his videos to the world legitimized this guy. He was a disturbed young man who felt that he was a victim of some horrible wrong. He was not a victim, though! Once you take the life of another, you forfeit any right to the title "victim." I has a roommate at college who had all the same signs as Cho: he was socially awkward and constantly teased. He was manic-depressive and would skip class and spend entire days laying on his bed in the dark. Should I have notified school counseling and had them hold him because he fit the profile of a potential suicidal school shooter?? Sure, it was sad that he was teased, but that does not give him the right to kill 32 people and then himself.
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5 comments:
I just get annoyed that all the news channels are talking about NBC and how they should not have released the tapes, but then they are all playing them to show us what tapes they are talking about. So frustrating!
Oh... and I do think that you should have notified the school counselor... =)
He was completely and disgustingly the villain in this case. He was a victim for many years by people. He must have had some kind of illness because he was diagnosed by the mental institution as unsafe, but then was just released. It's that kind of treatment that makes me think of him as a victim. I'm not saying that he isn't guilty or responsible, but I'm just saying that the first tragedy wasn't on Monday. It was years before that awful day. It's not the fault of the people shot, as if to say, "if you were nicer than you wouldn't have been killed." Not at all. It's just that this guy wasn't just ignored by the system or missed by the system. He was examined, diagnosed, and dismissed by the system. That is a tragedy.
But can (or even better, should) the system hold people who are only potentially dangerous? We have an applicable situation at our place right now, where there is a mentally unhealthy man who used to live in an apartment in our complex, and who now sits on the stairs in front of the apartment asking to see his wife who divorced him several years ago. He hasn’t done anything wrong, but he certainly makes the woman who currently lives there alone feel uneasy. The police have told the landlord that they can't do anything because he hasn’t done anything against the law yet. I feel that for an authority to step in (whether it is the government or a psychiatrist or whoever) and punish someone for potentially committing a crime is one of the most egregious infringements of a person's natural rights. It’s kind of like Minority Report. Should someone be punished for something they haven't done yet?
Freedom has a cost. There is delicate balance between freedom and security. I use to err on the side of freedom but lately with my family in mind I am tempted to vote for safety. I want to allow phone tapping, random searches, and other abuses of privacy and freedom to keep my family safe. However, to say that either the governemnt steps in or people will get hurt is reductionistic. If society did not tolerate so much, as we have been indroctrinated to do, perhaps Cho would never have made it to college. If guns weren't banned at college perhaps we would have a hero who lived. It is ironic that the greatest hero of this tragic event was part of a small number of the survivors of the holoucuast that may have never happened had the innocent fired back. I doubt a massacre like this would happen during a Texas rodeo. Society use to censor wierdos. We now try to heal them and accept them. This divorced man should not be allowed on the premise. The landlord should have the right to determine who is on his property. Perhaps some strong men should stand by the side of this women who feels uneasy and send a clear message that the ex-husbands behavior is no longer acceptable. Society needs to take more responsibility for protecting its own.
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