Diffusion of Responsibility

The problem: blaming a murderer who offed himself doesn't work too well... he isn't around to take the heat. So somebody else must be at fault, right?

My opinion is that clearly the first two deaths were unavoidable. But the other victims? There could certainly have been more done to warn them. I know if I had a 9am class one morning, and on my way to school turned on the radio to hear a killer was at my school on the loose... I'd go grab a coffee, or go back home. So somewhere along the line, there was an employee of the college who made a choice to allow the day to continue like any normal day would, and not send people into a panic with reports of a murder suspect at large. Or maybe it was up to the police to make that call and they didn't, who knows. Regardless, clearly the wrong choice was made, and the end result could not have been any worse, ever. Someone, somewhere along the line, has the blood of 32+ victims on their hands.

I agree i think that it was in some way the fault of school administrators and police that this guy wasn't stopped after the first to murders. But to say that besides that its anyone or anything else's fault besides just the guy being completely fucked up is ludicris. It has made me so mad watch tv or listing to the radio about this, because people just see it as a way to advance their opinions. I've heard people say "it wouldn't have happened with stricter gun laws", or "if someone else would have been carrying a gun it would have stopped him." It is the biggest douchebag thing in my mind to try and use a terrible tragedy like this, so soon after it, to try and advance your own personal political agenda. Its sicking that people have to blame everyone and everything, but how sick and twisted this kid was.

yea the first murders happened in the dorm too...youd think some people would hear that. im very supprised that someone out of the many people in that dorm didnt phone the police when they heard gunshots. i think the police could have arrived and restrained him in 2 hours...

I go to Michigan State University. One of our dorms here has a particularly bad reputation. There has been at least one shooting recently, I believe it was 2-3 years ago, and last year 2 kids went into the dorm, doused a kid in gasoline and threatened to throw a match on him. Pretty haneous crimes. After these events though, they did not lock down campus. Why? Because 99% (just throwing out a figure to represent my point) of the time when some form of shooting/murder/hate crime, whatever occurs, it is specifically targeted at one person or a very small group of people and is an isolated event. No one, at all, expected him to reappear, hours later, on the complete other side of campus, and open fire. You can't blame the cops or the administration for what he did.

Secondly, I don't think anyone quite realizes the difficulty of closing down a campus of that size. Here at schoolw e have like 45000 students, 2nd or 3rd biggest campus in the country. So ya, it is bigger than VT but even still, a campus half our size would be nearly impossible to shut down. There are thousands of kids, and no way to get ahold of them. Not everyone is carrying a blackberry they can whip out and get their E-Mail on. What are they going to do? Send text messages to every student and staff on there way to class? Also, there are hundreds of buildings, which hundreds of people inside. Even if they did get the lockdown out to EVERYONE, some of the buildings are a 30 min walk across campus. That means there would be crowds of people on a few main roads/paths walking back to parking lots and dorms. That would be MUCH easier for the gunman to open fire on and hit tons of people, it would be like shooting fish in a barrel. If they took a different procedure and tried to keep everyone inside the buildings and away from the windows, that would be nearly impossible as well. There are thousands of doors on campus, many are open 24/7. If the shooter wanted to get in, he could get in no problem. He also could very easily put the guns in a backpack, which would look the same as every other single student on campus. Picture this situation: Teacher is standing at the door, student runs up, acting like he is trying to seek shelter from some rampage gunman, Teacher lets the student in, they obviously would. They aren't going to tell a student to leave. He goes into the bathroom or something, 20 mins later, 32 dead people. It was a nearly unpreventable series of events and its horrible that they occurred, but you can't blame the administration and the cops for not doing their job.

The other thing is that an event like this isn't like CSI on TV, everyone seems to get that picture into their head because of that TV show. Forensics takes TIME, sometimes months if not years just to process evidence. Shootings happened at 7:15 am, police roll in at 7:30 am. I can garuntee it took them at least an hour to assess the situation, start checking the room for evidence, find out if it was one shooter, if it was a suicide, among many other things. That means they are only down to one more hour (or less) before they realize what they are dealing with. One hour to get 30,000 students to safety? Good luck. I really wish people would stop laying the blame on the cops and the administration, it wasn't their fault and they acted as best they could in a state of panic.

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