Massacre On The Campus In U.S

[indian_blues]

Everyone is not selfish, that's nonsense. What you mean is that every act has a benefit. The difference is subtle and essential.

Its vague for you, but not vague. Neglect and selfishness leave social injustice unsolved on purpose, which naturally and justifiedly many take to heart, with some going nuts.

When you are doing injustice and can do something about it, but because of prejudice and selfishness you sustain the injustice, you are guilty of the result.

first when i meant everyone it means majority of people.

second when i said it is vague it means that ur explanation didn't convinced me.

I think a government cant satisfy everyone needs...even a rich govt...coz humans never satisfy. No govt has a policy of neglecting ppl with reasons. IMO blaming govt is not at all right. These incident are sporadic and this maniac act should be blamed who done it.

Peace.

[Rasputin]

Should college applicants get background checks?

The Virginia Tech student who went on a shooting rampage Monday before killing himself may have had a troubled past, but it's not yet clear whether he had a criminal one. Even so, the tragedy has prompted some calls for background checks on college applicants.
"It's an idea whose time has come," says Catherine Bath, executive director of Security On Campus, a national advocacy group based in Pennsylvania that has pushed for federal legislation aimed at keeping students safe.

A number of colleges, including Virginia Tech, ask applicants whether they have been subjected to any disciplinary action by a high school, college or university; whether they have been convicted of a violation of any state or federal law, other than a minor traffic violation; and whether they are on probation or suspension. Applicants are asked to explain any "yes" answers. Similar questions were added this year to The Common Application, a form accepted by 298 colleges and universities.

But formal background checks are another story. Many colleges don't want to be accused of "profiling" or discriminating against students who have records. And checks probably would find little on students whose juvenile court records are sealed.

"It's a difficult, imperfect process and not one that yields obvious benefits," says Ada Meloy of the American Council on Education, a non-profit Washington-based umbrella group for colleges and universities.

Even so, the idea appears to be gaining steam. Three years ago, Certified Background, a company in Wilmington, N.C., was doing background checks on students for fewer than a dozen colleges; today it does student checks for about 500 colleges, says Joseph Finley, vice president for sales.

In most cases, it conducts routine checks on students in health fields as required by hospitals or clinics. But schools are "moving in the direction of doing (checks) at the admissions level," Finley says. Among key reasons, he says: to protect schools' reputations and "to cover themselves" legally.

After the shooting death of basketball player Patrick Dennehy in 2003 — former teammate Carlton Dotson eventually pleaded guilty to murder — Baylor University began conducting criminal background checks of some potential student athletes in 2005. The University of Oklahoma also began checks of all potential student athletes in spring 2005. Others, including Kansas State University and the University of Kansas, also have begun screening some student athletes.

Recently, some states also have tried to tighten the reins. Virginia passed a law last year requiring colleges to provide information to police on incoming students, who are then cross-checked with sex-offender lists.Meanwhile, the North Carolina Legislature recently considered whether to require that college students be fingerprinted.

That didn't go anywhere, but last fall, the 16-campus University of North Carolina system began ordering background checks on certain students, usually because they had unexplained gaps in their applications or admitted involvement in a crime.

University of North Carolina officials developed the policy after two students on its Wilmington campus were killed in unrelated incidents in 2004. In both cases, the killers were or had been students, and both had failed to disclose past records to the university. Last year, the father of one of the slain students sued the university.

The system asks six questions on its application form, including whether criminal charges are pending or whether the applicant has ever pleaded no contest to a crime. It also has created a database that enables system campuses to find out whether a student had been expelled or suspended for violent behavior on another UNC campus.

Based on the checks, 101 applicants were denied admission, 30 of whom had applied to Wilmington.

Kemal Atkins, director for student academic affairs for the North Carolina system, says the decision to do the checks came only after a number of "tough conversations."

"There needs to be consistent application of this (and) a due-process mechanism," he says. Another concern, he says, is finding a "balance between trying to keep people off our campuses who may be a threat and also maintain the openness of a college or university campus."

Louis Hirsch, director of admissions at the University of Delaware, agrees. "Our instincts are to be cautious and to exercise due diligence," he says, noting that Delaware's application asks about a student's discipline or criminal history. "The problem is this: How do you distinguish between students whose behaviors present a current threat from students who have merely done something stupid in their teenage lives that they now regret? How serious was the crime? How long ago did it happen? Are we talking about a single offense or something that is part of a recurrent pattern?"

Rob Killion, executive director of The Common Application Inc., the non-profit group that provides The Common Application, says the discipline-related questions are designed not to weed out all students with a record but to help admissions officials build "a cohesive campus community."

"It doesn't mean (admissions officials) don't know the difference between an alcohol violation and a felony," he says.

Says Karl Stumo, associate vice president for admission and financial aid at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Wash.: "Our process evaluates academic preparedness as well as personal character."

That's why, two years ago, the school began asking students who had been convicted of a felony or gross misdemeanor, or who had a case pending against them, to identify themselves and explain. If necessary, Stumo says, his staff will gather additional information. Since then, he says, the school has admitted some of those students and denied some. "It's not the only thing being evaluated, but it's very important," Stumo says.

Bath, of the campus safety group, says she is not advocating that colleges deny admission to applicants because of their record. "We're not saying don't admit felons, we're saying just know that you have them on campus."

[Rasputin]

Virginia gunman was accused of stalking

Cho Seung-Hui, who killed 32 people at Virginia Tech university, was taken to a mental health facility in 2005 after his parents worried he might be suicidal, police said today.
The referral followed complaints from two female students in 2005 who felt stalked by Cho, the Virginia Tech university police chief Wendell Flinchum told reporters. Both students declined to press charges.

Police also said they were poring over the writings of Cho, searching for further clues to why he went on the deadliest shooting rampage in modern US history.

Police searched Cho's room yesterday and recovered, among other items, a chain and combination lock, according to documents filed today. The front doors of the classroom building, Norris hall, had been chained shut from the inside during the shooting rampage.
Other items seized include a folding knife; two computers, a hard disk and other computer disks; documents, books, notebooks and other writings; a digital camera and CDs.

Meanwhile, more details emerged about the killer from staff and fellow students at Virginia Tech.

The poet, Nikki Giovanni, who teaches at the university, told CNN she had insisted that Cho be removed from her class in 2005 because he had intimidated other students by photographing them and by writing obscene, violent poetry.

"I was willing to resign before I would continue with him," she said. "There was something mean about this boy. There was a real mean streak."

Lucinda Roy, an English professor who taught Cho one-on-one briefly, was so concerned that he might be dangerous that she set up a code with her assistant; if she said a certain name, her assistant would call for help.

In the weeks before the killings, Cho's already-strange behaviour became even less predictable, his roommate said.

Cho, who rarely talked even to the students with whom he shared accommodation, started waking up as early as 5.30am. instead of his usual 7am, his roommate, Joseph Aust, told ABC television." One day he came home and fell asleep around 2pm, sleeping through the night."

As details of the shooting emerged on Monday, including the description of the shooter as an Asian male in his 20s, Mr Aust became convinced the gunman was Cho.

"I tried to make conversation with him earlier in the year when he moved in," Mr Aust said. "He would just give one word answers and stay quiet. He pretty much never looked me in the eye."

Cho used two handguns, which police confirmed he had purchased legally, and stopped only to reload. Police have stopped short of saying he was responsible for the shooting deaths of two other people two hours earlier at a dormitory but said tests showed the same gun was used in both incidents.

ABC News reported that one of the guns, a 9mm Glock, and ammunition were purchased on March 13 for $571 from a shop about 30 miles from the Virginia Tech campus.

The US president, George Bush, in an interview on NBC yesterday, refused to answer questions on the gun control issue. "Now is not the time," he said. "I'm more interested in helping people heal right now. And that's why we're here."

In Seoul, the South Korean president, Roh Moo-hyun, expressed shock and anguish over the shooting rampage.

"I and my fellow citizens can only feel shock and a wrenching of our hearts," Mr Roh told a news conference Wednesday, expressing his condolences to the victims, their families and the US people. "I hope US society can get over such immense sadness and find a sense of composure as soon as possible."

Adding to jitters at Virginia Tech, armed police responded to a security alert at a campus building after the university received a threat to the president, Charles Steger, amid criticism of the way the authorities handled the shootings on Monday.

But the security alert turned out to be a false alarm.

Corinne Geller, a state police spokeswoman, said there had been a telephone call reporting suspicious activity at Burruss hall, next to the building where most of the victims died in the shooting rampage.

"The suspicious activity was unfounded," she said.

[Rasputin]

World's press shocked by shooting

Newspapers from America to India, South Korea and the UK have expressed shock at the killing of 32 students and faculty at Virginia Tech University.

South Korea's Korea Herald has published an editorial expressing its deep condolences. It expressed shock and dismay that the killer was of South Korean origin.

"The slayings were a crime committed by a member of the Korean community, one rotten apple. But the savage act was not sponsored by the Korean community or the Korean state. Nonetheless, there is no denying that the shocking incident will taint the good image that the Korean community and the Korean nation have strived to build among Americans."

The paper goes on to suggest moves the Korean government should take to minimize the political fallout from the tragedy.

"It would be a good idea to send a delegation to Virginia Tech to express the condolences of the nation. It will also do well to consult closely with the Korean community in the United States on what they can do together to improve relations with the host country and avert another outbreak of racial conflict like the L.A. riots back in 1992."
The Economist points out that this will re-ignite a debate over gun control laws in a country filled with 200 million guns.

"Gun advocates are daring to say that if Virginia Tech allowed concealed weapons, someone might have stopped the rampaging killer. To gun-control advocates, this is self-evident madness... Though gun laws may be tweaked after the Virginia massacre, there will be little significant change to come. The Columbine killings of 1999 failed to provoke any shift in Americans' attitudes to guns. There is no reason to believe that this massacre, or the next one, will do so either."

The International Herald Tribune says the killings are a reminder of how some of the greatest dangers Americans face come from killers at home.

"Our hearts and the hearts of all Americans go out to the victims and their families. Sympathy was not enough at the time of Columbine, and eight years later it is not enough. What is needed, urgently, is stronger controls over the lethal weapons that cause such wasteful carnage and such unbearable loss."

In the UK, The Times newspaper says the power of lobbies like the National Rifle Association has prevented a systematic examination of gun control laws in the U.S. It adds that that mood may be about to change.

"As America simply becomes more crowded, it is one thing to defend gun rights when the sentimental image of the pioneer still has some truth, if only in the north woods of the Appalachians. It is another when the pioneers have carved up the country into small suburban lots and cannot escape the neighbors."

In India -- which sends hundreds of students to U.S. colleges such as Virginia Tech -- the interest in the killings hit home further when it emerged one of those killed was an Indian professor. Calcutta's Telegraph has cautioned against profiling the killer as an example of a minority community.

"Profiling of school or campus killers does not really work. All kinds of typical backgrounds -- from Healthy All-American to Dysfunctional Gothic -- seem to fit.

"So, wondering what it is about America that fosters such acts of violence is the other way of trying to make sense of Blacksburg or Columbine... The schoolboy with a gun inhabits the same kind of space as, say, his 'peacekeeping' father does in Iraq, who, in turn, is doing something essentially similar to a computer-generated character in a brutal video game.

"Classrooms, armed forces, occupied territories, cyberspace, cinema and human fantasy all become interlocking and intersecting spaces in which to kill is simply to kill."

[abadani69]

Midway through his murderous rampage, the Virginia Tech gunman went to the post office and mailed NBC a package containing photos and videos of him brandishing guns and delivering a snarling, profanity-laced tirade about rich "brats" and their "hedonistic needs."

"You had a hundred billion chances and ways to have avoided today," 23-year-old Cho Seung-Hui says in a harsh monotone, in an excerpt shown on "NBC Nightly News." "But you decided to spill my blood. You forced me into a corner and gave me only one option. The decision was yours. Now you have blood on your hands that will never wash off."

NBC said the package contained a rambling and often-incoherent, 1,800-word video manifesto, plus 43 photos, 11 of them showing him aiming handguns at the camera.

He repeatedly suggests he was picked on or otherwise hurt.

"You have vandalized my heart, raped my soul and torched my conscience," he says. "You thought it was one pathetic boy's life you were extinguishing. Thanks to you, I die like Jesus Christ, to inspire generations of the weak and the defenseless people."

The package, which arrived at NBC's headquarters in New York two days after Cho killed 32 people and committed suicide in the deadliest one-man shooting rampage in modern U.S. history, bore a Postal Service stamp showing that it had been mailed at a Virginia post office at 9:01 a.m. Monday, about an hour and 45 minutes after Cho first opened fire.

That would explain one of the biggest mysteries about the massacre: Where the gunman was and what he did during that two-hour window between the first burst of gunfire, at a high-rise dorm, and the second fusillade, at a classroom building.

"Your Mercedes wasn't enough, you brats," he says, apparently reading from a manifesto. "Your golden necklaces weren't enough, you snobs. Your trust funds wasn't enough. Your vodka and cognac wasn't enough. All your debaucheries weren't enough. Those weren't enough to fulfill your hedonistic needs. You had everything."

Some of the pictures show him smiling; others show him frowning and snarling. Some depict him brandishing two weapons at a time, one in each hand. He wears a khaki-colored military-style vest, fingerless gloves, a black T-shirt, a backpack and a backwards, black baseball cap. Another photo shows him swinging a hammer two-fisted. Another shows an angry-looking Cho holding a gun to his temple.

The package was sent by overnight delivery but did not arrive at NBC until Wednesday morning. It had apparently been delayed because it had the wrong ZIP code, NBC said.

An alert postal employee brought the package to NBC's attention after noticing the Blacksburg return address and a name similar to the words reportedly found scrawled in red ink on Cho's arm after the bloodbath, "Ismail Ax," NBC said.

"I didn't have to do it. I could have left. I could have fled," he says. "But now I am no longer running. If not for me, for my children and my brothers and sisters that you (expletive). I did it for them."

He also refers to "martyrs like Eric and Dylan" — a reference to the teenage killers in the Columbine High massacre.

NBC News President Steve Capus said that the network received the package around noon and notified the FBI. He said the FBI asked NBC to hold off reporting on it so that the bureau could look at it first, and NBC complied, finally breaking the story just before a police announcement of the package at 4:30 p.m.

Capus said it was clear Cho videotaped himself, because he could be seen leaning in to shut off the camera.

State Police Spokeswoman Corinne Geller cautioned that, while the package was mailed between the two shootings, police have not inspected the footage and have yet to establish exactly when the tape was made.

[indian_blues]

[Rasputin]

Gunman sent package to NBC News

Sometime after he killed two people in a Virginia university dormitory but before he slaughtered 30 more in a classroom building, Cho Seung-Hui mailed NBC News a large package including photographs and videos Monday morning, boasting, “When the time came, I did it. I had to.”

Cho, 23, a senior English major at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, killed 32 people in two attacks before taking his own life.

NBC News President Steve Capus said the package arrived in New York late Tuesday night and was delivered to NBC headquarters about 11 a.m. Wednesday. The letter carrier noticed that it bore a return address from Blacksburg and alerted NBC security officers.

Cho’s name was not on the package; instead, the return address said it came from “A Ishmael.” Investigators said Cho’s body was found Monday with the words “Ismael Ax” scrawled on his arm.

There was no indication why Cho chose NBC News to receive the package, which was immediately turned over to FBI agents in New York. Capus said NBC News was cooperating with Virginia State Police and the FBI, which is assisting the state police.

The package included an 1,800-word manifesto-like statement in which Cho expresses rage, resentment and a desire to get even. The material is “hard to follow ... disturbing, very disturbing,” Capus said in an interview late Wednesday afternoon.

The material does not include any images of the shootings Monday, but it does contain vague references. And it mentions “martyrs like Eric and Dylan” — apparently a reference to Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the teenagers who killed 12 students and a teacher at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., eight years ago this coming Friday.

The material is deeply angry, crying out against unspecified wrongs done to Cho in a diatribe laced with profanity.

“I didn’t have to do this. I could have left. I could have fled. But no, I will no longer run. It’s not for me. For my children, for my brothers and sisters that you f---, I did it for them,” Cho says on one of the videos.

“When the time came, I did it. I had to.”

Uneven but carefully produced materials
Cho apparently took time out of his rampage to send the package to the network. It bore a U.S. Postal Service stamp recording that it had been received at a Virginia post office at 9:01 a.m. ET Monday, about an hour and 45 minutes after Cho shot two people in the West Ambler Johnston residence hall on the Virginia Tech campus and shortly before he entered Norris Hall, where he killed 30 more people.

“We probably would have received the mail earlier had it not been that he had the wrong address and ZIP code,” Capus said.

Among the materials was a DVD with 27 QuickTime video files, totaling about 10 minutes, showing Cho talking directly to the camera. He does not name anyone specifically, but he mentions “hedonism” and Christianity, and he talks at length about his hatred of the wealthy.

“You had a hundred billion chances and ways to have avoided today,” Cho says. “But you decided to spill my blood. You forced me into a corner and gave me only one option. The decision was yours. Now you have blood on your hands that will never wash off.”

The production of the videos is uneven, with Cho’s voice so soft that at times it is hard to understand him. But they indicate that Cho had worked on the package for some time, because he not only “took the time to record the videos, but he also broke them down into snippets,” Capus said.

At times, Cho can be seen leaning forward to turn off the camera, suggesting that he shot the videos himself.

Karan Grewall, one of Cho’s roommates, said Wednesday night that Cho appeared to have shot the videos in their shared home.

It looks exactly like our common areas where we hang out every day,” Grewall told MSNBC-TV’s Joe Scarborough. “I can’t be sure, but the walls look exactly like our suite.”

Chilling photographs
The package also includes 43 photographs. Cho looks like a normal, smiling college student in only the first two. In the rest, he presents a stern face; in 11, he aims handguns at the camera that are “consistent with what we’ve heard about the guns in this incident,” Capus said.

[Rasputin]

Like most of you, the senseless loss of life in Blacksburg both saddened and sickened me. It is especially sad for me, as I spent some time there in the mid 1980s visiting friends who attended Virginia Tech. The warm memories I hold from more than 20 years ago cannot and will not be destroyed by the violent actions of this parasite. Blacksburg and the surrounding areas are among some of the most beautiful in this sometimes zesht place we call "Amrika".

Given what I know of the area, I don't know if they could have been better prepared to deal with such violence any more than they were. Frankly, you just don't have these things happening there. But, it did happen, and in the midst of the aftermath of April 16th, 2007, several certainties will occur. And this is the part that sickens me.

Blame is spreading faster than a California wildfire already. The police didn't act swiftly. They didn't lock down the school. It was too easy for this kid to get a gun. The gun dealer should have questioned the purchase. The kid was sick in the head. He was on antidepressants. And the worst of all, he was some "poor Korean" kid in the U.S. who had trouble adjusting. WHAT THE F**K?

Here is the bottom line. This piece of trash killed 32 people. Gun laws have nothing to do with that fact. He could have obtained the weapons anywhere. He could have just as easily driven to Richmond and bought one on the street. To respond to Setareh Sabety ["Breeding murderers"], if your children spent time in a Maryland public school, I am sure you are aware that in neighboring Washington D.C., handguns are illegal.

The city has one of the highest murder by firearm rates in the U.S. This idiot went through the legal channels to obtain a firearm because he wanted recongnition. He knew that his name would be on the front page of every newspaper or news website. This little shit just wanted to be noticed. And you call him a poor Korean? That's insulting to decent Koreans. Poor them. Now a bunch of ignorant, clueless idiots are going to trash some Korean owned convenience store in their neighborhood. Same way all Middle Easterners in the U.S. were harrassed after 9/11. And still are.

A little FYI, Setareh. I had to endure school here in the U.S. while that lowlife Khomeini held 52 Americans hostage in Tehran, and Jimmy Carter sat in the White House with his thumb up his ***. 444 days of pure hell for me a 13-14 year old kid. "****ing Eye Rainian" this and "****ing Camel Jockey" that. And that was in between the fistfights, before, during and after school. But did I get a gun and blow away the entire class of 1984 along with select faculty members? NOOOOOOOOO, khanoum, I did not.

Monday's horror was the direct result of one person's actions. Perhaps his parents could have done a better job of raising him. Why is it that EVERY time you another one of these mass or serial murderers get discovered it's the same broken record:

Side 1: The parents were decent people who had no idea of their child's "secret life" as a deranged killer, despite his overt obsession with the occult and Marilyn Manson.

Side 2: Mom and Dad knew that little Johnny liked killing ever since he was four and found him disemboweling the neighbor's poodle, but didn't act on this out of fear for their own lives.

The killer's parents, nice as they may be by accounts, are really the ones who are responsible for the way the product of their 30 seconds in the back seat of a broken down Hyundai in Seoul 24 years ago turned out. Everything we are, everything we do, it's all shaped by how we were raised, and not whether we can buy a Glock 17 in 10 minutes.

Yes, school in the U.S. can be a cold place even in the warmth of spring. Especially for someone who doesn't necessarilty fit in some "category" or "clique". But, if parents do a better job of monitoring their children's daily life and routine, giving them proper guidance and keeping them away from the trash in this morally bankrupt culture, like video games, hip hop/rap and everything else that nurtures this anti-social behavior, the murders at Virginia Tech could have been have been avoided.

[Rasputin]

پلیس آمریکا می گوید دانشجویی که حداقل 30 نفر را در دانشگاه "ویرجینیا تک" به ضرب گلوله کشت در همان روز حادثه بسته ای حاوی عکس و ویدئو را برای شبکه خبری "ان بی سی" آمریکا پست کرده بود.
شبکه "ان بی سی" گفت این بسته پستی حاوی مجموعه ای عکس، ویدئو و نوشته های "آزارنده" است و در فاصله دو ساعتی میان دو کشتار ارسال شده است.

این بسته پستی برای بررسی در اختیار پلیس فدرال، اف بی آی، گذاشته شده است.

در تیراندازی روز دوشنبه 33 نفر از جمله فرد مسلح به نام چو سونگ هوی کشته شدند.

در یکی از عکس هایی که "ان بی سی" دریافت کرده چو با نگاهی گرفته درحالی که دو سلاح دستی در دست دارد دیده می شود.

جوان 23 ساله در ویدئوی ارسالی با خشم می گوید: "شما صد هزار میلیارد بار فرصت داشتید از چنین روزی حذر کنید. اما تصمیم گرفتید خونم را بریزید. مرا به گوشه ای راندید و تنها یک انتخاب مقابلم گذاشتید. تصمیم با شما بود. حالا دستانتان به خونی آلوده است که هرگز شسته نخواهد شد."

وی می افزاید: "لازم نبود من این کار را بکنم. می توانستم اینجا را ترک کنم. می توانستم فرار کنم. اما فرار دیگر بس است."

رئیس پلیس ایالت ویرجینیا، واقع در شرق آمریکا، گفت که این بسته "احتمالا عنصری خیلی تازه و حیاتی در تحقیقات است... ما هم اکنون درحال تلاش برای تحلیل و ارزیابی ارزش آن هستیم."

پلیس همچنین فاش کرد که چو سونگ هوی اواخر سال 2005 در بخش روانی یک مرکز درمانی بستری شده بود.

وی پس از شکایت دو دانشجوی دختر از او برای ارزیابی وضع سلامت روانی به آن مرکز فرستاده شد.

'خیلی عصبانی'

"ان بی سی" گفت مهری که روی بسته پستی خورده نشان می دهد که در فاصله میان دو مورد تیراندازی در دانشگاه فنی ویرجینیا پست شده است.

این شبکه گفت که بسته صبح روز چهارشنبه دریافت شده است.

به گفته ان بی سی این بسته پستی حاوی یک نامه 1800 کلمه ای ملامت بار و توهین آمیز، یک ویدئو و همچنین 29 عکس است که در 11 عدد از آنها چو سونگ هوی درحالی که تفنگ ها را به سوی دوربین نشانه رفته دیده می شود.

استیو کاپوس، رئیس "ان بی سی نیوز" گفت که محتویات آن "به سختی قابل فهم... آزارنده، خیلی آزارنده - با لحن خیلی عصبانی و آکنده از دشنام بود."

چو سونگ هوی ساعت 9 صبح روز دوشنبه وارد یکی از ساختمان های آموزشی دانشگاه فنی ویرجینیا شد و سی نفر را به ضرب گلوله کشت و سپس خودکشی کرد.

دو قتل دیگر که دو ساعت پیشتر در یکی از خوابگاه های این دانشگاه عظیم روی داده بود نیز به چو سونگ نسبت داده می شود اما پلیس هنوز نمی تواند آن را ثابت کند چون کسی عامل تیراندازی اول را ندیده است.

پلیس می گوید در هر دو مورد تیراندازی و قتل از یک اسلحه استفاده شده است.

دانشگاه فنی ویرجینیا در بلکسبرگ 26 هزار دانشجو دارد و به یک شهر مستقل تشبیه می شود.

چو 23 ساله و دانشجوی سال آخر دوره لیسانس در رشته زبان و ادبیات انگلیسی بود. وی متولد کره جنوبی است اما از هشت سالگی در آمریکا اقامت داشت.

پلیس می گوید در سال 2005 دو دانشجوی دختر از نحوه رفتار چو سونگ هوی، به مقامات دانشگاه شکایت کردند.

این دو فقره شکایت در ماه های نوامبر و دسامبر سال 2005 و مقارن ایامی بود که استادان چو سونگ هوی، در مورد نوشته های پر از خشونت و رفتار غیرقابل پیش بینی اش ابراز نگرانی کرده بودند.

مقامات دانشگاه چون سونگ هوی، را برای معاینه به واحد آزمایش سلامت روانی که خارج از محوطه دانشگاه ویرجینیا قرار دارد، معرفی کرده بودند.

دولت کره جنوبی گفته است از این که یکی از شهروندانش 32 نفر را در آمریکا کشته است عمیقا احساس تاسف و شرمساری می کند.

پس از آنکه پلیس آمریکا اعلام داشت که عامل کشتار دانشگاه ویرجینیا، اهل کره جنوبی بوده، رئیس جمهور کره جنوبی برای بحث و گفتگو با اعضای کابینه درباره این تراژدی، یک جلسه اضطراری تشکیل داد.

[Rasputin]

Inside a Mass Murderer's Mind

If you want a sense of just how terrible Monday's crimes were, here's something to try: imagine yourself committing them. It's easy enough to contemplate what it would feel like to rob a bank or steal a car; you might even summon a hint of the outlaw frisson that could make such crimes seem appealing. But picture yourself as Cho Seung-Hui, the 23-year-old student responsible for the Virginia Tech bloodbath, walking the halls of the school, selecting lives to extinguish and then ... extinguishing them. It is perhaps a measure of our humanity that we could sooner imagine ourselves as the killed than as the killer, and find it easier to conjure up what it would feel like to plead for our lives than to take someone else's.

That is where the hard work of trying to make sense of a crime like that at Virginia Tech always hits a wall. We can debate, as we predictably do in these cases, what an incident like this means for our endless national argument about guns and violence and the coarsening of the culture. That's well-mapped ground. What remains uncharted is the unlit places in the minds of the people who are capable of doing these things — and, by extension, in all our minds. What is it that makes individual members of a usually empathetic species turn rogue? How does one of our most primal faculties — the ability to understand that things that cause me pain or fear would do the same to you and that I therefore ought not do them — get so completely shut down? Is empathy optional, at least in some people, and if so, how does that emotional decoupling take place? More important, if we can figure out that part of the question, can we figure out how to prevent such things from happening? "We always ask ourselves, 'Is this a person who has no conscience at all?'" says Stanton Samenow, a forensic psychologist and author of the 2004 book Inside the Criminal Mind. "They seem to have an unfathomable ability to shut off knowledge of the consequences, of the difference between right and wrong. It's critical for us to try to understand that worldview and mental makeup."

For all the ink and airtime that follow an attack like the one at Virginia Tech, mass murder is an exceedingly rare crime. The rate of killings in the U.S. involving five or more victims — one generally accepted definition of a mass killing — represented less than 1% of all homicides 25 years ago, and still does today. Among kids, the overall violence figures are actually plummeting, with the number of children under 17 who commit murder falling 65% between 1993 and 2004. Mass killing, says Diane Follingstad, a professor of clinical and forensic psychology at the University of South Carolina, "is a low-rate-base thing. It just does not happen very often."

When it does happen, the people likeliest to commit the crime fall into a drearily predictable group. They're 95% male, and 98% are black or white — not a big surprise since more than 87% of the population is made up of those two races. Cho, a native of South Korea, is a rare exception. If the killers' profiles are all more or less the same, however, their crimes aren't. The best known — or at least most lurid — of the mass killers are the Ted Bundys and Jeffrey Dahmers, the serial murderers whose crimes often play out over decades. In most cases, people who commit such murders are driven by a dark, even sexual pleasure, and while remorse is often associated with the acts — which accounts for the long lapses that can occur between them — those tuggings of conscience are quickly overcome by the impulse to kill again. "There is a charge and a thrill associated with the murders," says Samenow.

That does not seem to be the case with a mass murderer who kills at once. Few people who are in a position to observe a Dahmer at work survive to talk about it, but plenty of people present at shootings like those at Virginia Tech or Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., in 1999 make it out alive. And what they describe about the killer's mien as the shooting is taking place sounds nothing like a person who's thrilled by — or even much enjoying — what he's doing. There is, survivors report, a cold joylessness to the proceedings, something that in its own way is a lot harder to parse than the perverse pleasure of a serial killer. What makes mass murderers do it? Trying to find the much-looked-for snapping moment — the one inciting incident that pushes a killer over the edge — rarely gets you very far. Cho's lethal outburst, by all accounts, may have been simmering for months, if not years. In 2005, after Cho sent harassing messages to two female students, a Virginia court ruled him a danger to himself and others. His package of angry, self-pitying videos, stills and text, sent to NBC News on the day of the killings, probably took days to prepare.

"Snapping is a misnomer," says Dr. Michael Welner, associate professor of psychiatry at New York University School of Medicine. "These people plan to carry out a mass killing without any indication of when they will do it. Instead of snapping, imagine a cage that someone has the capacity to unhinge. They simply decide that today is the day."

Mass murder, in short, is not a random act. There are things that explain it. Psychosis, for one, can never be ruled out. Russell Weston, a 41-year-old killer who went on a shooting spree in the Capitol Building in Washington in 1998, was a paranoid schizophrenic. Brain injury in an otherwise healthy person can lead to similar violence. Damage to the frontal region of the brain, which regulates what psychologists call the observing ego, or the limbic region, which controls violence, reflection and defensive behavior, can shut down internal governors and trigger all manner of unregulated behavior. "Somebody who had damage to both regions would be a bad player for sure," says forensic psychiatrist Neil Kaye, a faculty member at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia.

From everything we know so far, however, Cho was suffering from none of these things. Any wounds that he carried were deeper, psychic ones — and in all likelihood, he shared them with most of the mass shooters who have gone before him. In many ways, the profile of the mass killer looks a lot like the profile of the clinical narcissist, and that's a very bad thing. Never mind the disorder's name, narcissism is a condition defined mostly by disablingly low self-esteem, requiring the sufferer to seek almost constant recognition and reward. When the world and the people in it don't respond as they should, narcissists are not just enraged but flat-out mystified. Cho's multimedia postmortem package exuded narcissistic exhibitionism, and the words he spoke into the camera left no doubt as to what he believed — or wanted to believe — was his own significance. "Thanks to you," he said in one of his many indictments of his victims, "I die like Jesus Christ."

[Rasputin]

II

Narcissism is not the only part of the psychic stew that leads to mass murder. Among the additional risk factors experts look for is a history of other kinds of emotional turmoil, such as depression, substance abuse or some kind of childhood trauma. After the Columbine killings in 1999, the Federal Government commissioned a study of 37 incidents of school violence from 1974 to 2000 in an attempt to sketch some kind of profile of likely campus killers. In general, the investigators found that more than half of all attackers had documented cases of extreme depression, and 25% had had serious problems with drugs and alcohol. "People will often say that the killer was such a quiet boy," says Follingstad. "Then you talk to the family and find out he's had three previous hospitalizations and was mumbling something he was angry about for weeks."

A less well-documented percentage of mass killers have also been physically or sexually abused. Just a day after the Virginia Tech killings, Cho's graphically awful writings — playlets that deal with the molestation of young boys — began appearing on websites. The writings are not proof that he experienced similar mistreatment, but they certainly raise questions. "These things can percolate for years," says N.G. Berrill, a forensic psychologist and professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. "Quite often there is an early event where they are submitted to violence or are marginalized."

That last feeling can be the real problem. Where there's marginalization, there's a profound sense of powerlessness, and powerless people tend to hit back. More worryingly, it doesn't take grave abuses like molestation to leave people feeling so minimized. Parental or spousal indifference or dismissal — or at least the belief that it exists — can have a similar effect. If the world outside the home seems to be conspiring in the mistreatment, the sense of invalidation grows worse still. It may be true that none of us suffer a lost job, a busted romance or a failed exam easily, but to someone already highly sensitized to such setbacks, they can be intolerable. "These are people who are already angry," says Samenow, "and when things don't go the way they want them to, they personalize it. They take out their rage not on the person who hurt them last, but on the whole world."

Something like this is what appears to have happened with Cho. When he blew, he blew savagely. Not only was the sheer body count on the campus horrific, but so was the relish with which the victims were killed. Doctors in the hospital where the survivors were treated described their injuries as "brutal," with each of the victims sustaining at least three bullet wounds. Of course, plenty of people fail tests and end romances and even suffer unspeakable abuse as children. And while there are a lot of narcissists in the world, many of whom crash and burn in their personal and professional lives, only an infinitesimal fraction of even the most unstable people lash out in remotely as violent a way as mass killers do. So what should we look for in people for whom such a homicidal rage is a real risk?

Age is an indicator, but an imperfect one. Adolescents and people in their early 20s are not famous for good judgment and sober reflection. Indeed, recent neurological studies reveal that the brain doesn't even finish laying down all its wiring until deep into the second decade of life — far beyond the babyhood years in which scientists once believed this basic work got done. "Adolescents tend to take more risks in general and tend to be more impulsive," says psychologist William Pollack, of McLean Hospital in Boston. "Boys [especially] are socialized into the idea that such behavior is O.K."

While teens lack wisdom, however, they're generally spared the long lifetime of frustrations and setbacks that can contribute to murderous rampages in older killers — the fired post-office employee or office worker who suddenly reappears and guns down his former colleagues. "We see people with a job or a relationship that defines them," says Dr. Anthony Ng, assistant professor of psychiatry at George Washington University. "When that is shattered, they decide that they have nothing else." Opportunity and unlucky serendipity play a big role too. People with ready access to guns are likelier to use them than people who have to work to get their hands on a weapon. A household in which problems are settled violently, or at least in a volatile fashion, makes acting out less alien as well. What your culture — national, ethnic, religious — teaches you about how to handle rejection or, worse, humiliation can be critical too.

As these factors accumulate, killers in the making remain surprisingly cool, all the while strolling toward the edge. That is what makes mass murder especially chilling. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold planned the Columbine assault for months, buying guns, practicing their aim, even designing their own shabby bombs that were intended to blow up the building. Cho bought the first of the two pistols he used in his killings on March 13, then bought the second just days before the murders — decorously observing the 30-day waiting period the state of Virginia requires between handgun purchases.

Throughout the slow, deliberate smolder that leads up to the shootings, all mass killers also tend to disengage from the people around them. More and more of their emotional energy becomes consumed with planning their assault and, tellingly, with what often appears to be a newfound fascination with firearms and other weapons. "The quiet is the problem," says Welner. "The anger and rage just get bigger and bigger and seep into a fantasy life, and the person becomes increasingly alienated and isolated and contemptuous."

The fully annealed killer who emerges from this process is a cold and deliberate thing. The time he's spent rehearsing his carnage is a big part of what causes the actual execution of it to appear so disciplined and free of emotion — or even pleasure. That, however, does not mean that mass murder is conducted entirely without feeling. For the killer, the powerlessness that came from a sense of victimization has been replaced by its perfect opposite — a heady experience that may produce an implacable serenity on the one hand, or the eerily jocular banter that surveillance tapes picked up between Harris and Klebold in Columbine on the other. Making the gunman calmer still is the fact that he has long since convinced himself that the world brought the carnage on itself. Because nobody is exempt from membership in that world, nobody's exempt from the line of fire either. "You forced me into a corner. The decision was yours," were among the most disturbing lines in the suicide videos that Cho left behind, but they may also have been the least original.

However long it takes the killing to play out, when the crime is finally over, the shooter almost never expects to survive. Indeed, he typically doesn't want to. Achieving the state of nihilistic certainty that's necessary to commit the killings is one thing; crossing back to the world of the living afterward may be well-nigh impossible. "They are both homicidal and suicidal," says Pollack. "After the attack they are simply waiting for the next step, which they assume is the police shooting them." Most killers don't wait even that long, taking their own lives before whatever killing room they have barricaded themselves inside can be stormed.

If there is a hopeful lesson to be drawn from this week's tragedy, it's that people planning mass murder sometimes seem to recognize the dark place they're headed toward and, even as they're cooking up their carnage, send out warning signals. The federal school study after Columbine found that in more than 75% of cases, at least one person had knowledge of the killer's plans. In 40% of cases, that knowledge actually included detailed descriptions of precisely where and when the attacks would happen. Klebold and Harris went so far as to post their lethal ruminations on the Web. The key, Pollack insists, is for friends and family members to be alert to these and other cues and to act on them — fast. "Connection, connection, connection," he says. "It's through these connections that people in authority, when they hear certain things, can provide the appropriate help."

The larger culture can help as well — particularly the media. It may be uncomfortable for any journalist to admit it, but the flood-the-zone coverage that usually follows mass murders simply confirms a potential killer's belief that what he sees as his small and inconsequential life can end on a large and monstrous chord, even if he won't be around to enjoy the transformation. "We glorify and revere these seemingly powerful people who take life," says Kaye. "Meanwhile, I bet you couldn't tell me the name of even one of Ted Bundy's victims."

Sadly, Kaye's indictment is well founded. But he's also right in his choice of words. People like Cho are indeed only seemingly powerful. In an open culture with cheap and plentiful guns, any fool can kill a lot of people. For all the loss and suffering such a shooting sparks, it is in fact a weak and furtive act, one that masquerades as a gesture of sublime power but is really an act of confusion and cowardice. The very purpose of the murders, Welner explains, is to give the shooter the last word. Unfortunately, what he says when he at last has that chance to be heard is: "I surrender."

[zubin]

first when i meant everyone it means majority of people.

second when i said it is vague it means that ur explanation didn't convinced me.

I think a government cant satisfy everyone needs...even a rich govt...coz humans never satisfy. No govt has a policy of neglecting ppl with reasons. IMO blaming govt is not at all right. These incident are sporadic and this maniac act should be blamed who done it.

Peace.

You bring no evidence for your frame of mind. And who cares if I didn't convince you? That doesn't warrant you saying that it is ACTUALLY vague.

Ofcourse a society can satisfy minimal needs and prevent extreme aggression. There are many societies that do this.

First there is no evidence the person is simply a "maniac". If he was out of control, perhaps this is about 5% of his mentality. The rest is clearly rational. The evidence is seen in the detail of his thoughts and anger: he was clearly going against injustice and it takes someone more than a maniac to realize that.

So your first point is fully refuted. The second point, that we should blame the individual and not society, is itself blameworthy. There is always a social element that can be changed in order to prevent these types of acts. If both childhood and social experiences did not discriminate against this person, this would not have happened. This is a scientific fact. Tell me why you disagree with THIS statement. And because you like to twist things around, I'll write the sentence for you again:

If both childhood and social experiences did not discriminate against this person, this would not have happened.


I can explain every word of this sentence for you. Just tell me which word it is you are having problems with. I am really interested in your perspective.

[indian_blues]

And who cares if I didn't convince you?

right! even i don't care. Don't be rude . Let us have a constructive discussion rather than argument... coz "“Discussion is an exchange of knowledge; argument is an exchange of ignorance”.

Ofcourse a society can satisfy minimal needs and prevent extreme aggression. There are many societies that do this.

I partially agree with this. Every system wants to satisfy the basic needs of people not to prevent aggression from their own people...but for their own survival. Not many society do this but MOST of them.

First there is no evidence the person is simply a "maniac". If he was out of control, perhaps this is about 5% of his mentality. The rest is clearly rational. The evidence is seen in the detail of his thoughts and anger: he was clearly going against injustice and it takes someone more than a maniac to realize that.

He is a maniac im repeating it again a well grown "MANIAC". im sorry to say this u r trying to justify his maniac act. If u say that injustice was done to him i would say this is the funniest joke a person who will hear in third world countries where ppl earn less than a dollar. He is a selfish animal who is jealous of rich..he can't even stand someone driving mercedez or having vodka in bar... wat kinda stupid statements he makes...retard. Come on does his acts is rational? this is how a person show his anger on innocents? IRRATIONAL.

There is always a social element that can be changed in order to prevent these types of acts. If both childhood and social experiences did not discriminate against this person, this would not have happened. This is a scientific fact.

Yes i accept for every henious act a social element involved in this. I don't think these incidents could be prevented unless the Gun laws rewritten. Discrimination will always exist in our society until difference exist... so blaming the society and the system is useless.

I can explain every word of this sentence for you. Just tell me which word it is you are having problems with. I am really interested in your perspective.

thanks. you are too generous sir.

[Rasputin]

Shooter: "You have blood on your hands

Details emerge over the disturbed mental state of the Virginia Tech student who went on a shooting rampage.

The investigation continues into the South Korean student, Cho Seung-Hui, who went on a shooting rampage at Virginia Tech on Monday, killing 32 people before committing suicide. The police chief and university professors have provided more details over troubling signs in the student's past.

Meanwhile, US broadcaster NBC has given authorities a package of photos and a manifesto that was mailed by the gunman. It said it hoped the material would be helpful to the investigation.

Prof. Lucinda Roy, Virginia Tech, said, "I just looked at him and said something like 'You seem so lonely. Do you have any friends?' And he said, 'I am lonely and I don't have any friends.' And then I talked to him about how difficult it is when you're feeling really sad and there's nobody there for you and that I hoped that would be something for him that would change.”

But it seems the sympathy came too late for the young man, who delivered an angry, profanity-laced manifesto about rich kids and hedonism.

Cho Seung-Hui said, "You had a hundred billion chances and ways to have avoided today, but you decided to spill my blood. You forced me into a corner and gave me only one option, the decision was yours. Now you have blood on your hands that will never wash off."

Prof. Lucinda Roy said, "I tried to find out more about his family. He was very, very guarded about that. He was actually quite arrogant and could be quite obnoxious and was also deeply, it seemed, insecure. So there is often that combination in people who are very troubled and he had it to an extreme degree I think."

The 23 year old gunman immigrated from South Korea to the United States with his family in 1992, and was raised in Virginia outside Washington, DC. A South Korean newspaper has interviewed a man identified as Cho's 81-year-old grandfather. He said the Cho's were hard-working immigrants, who had doted on their children.

The young Cho had been accused of stalking two female students and been taken to a mental health facility in 2005.

Wendell Flinchum, police chief, Virginia Tech, said, "Out of concern for Cho, officers asked him to speak to a counselor, he went voluntarily to the police department. Based on that interaction with the counselor a temporary detention order was obtained and Cho was taken to a mental health facility."

[Rasputin]

Cho's high school classmates recall 'kid who never spoke'

Cho Seung-Hui's classmates at Westfield High School in Chantilly, Virginia, had a few nicknames for him.

Some knew him as "the kid who never spoke," classmate Regan Wilder told CNN.

Others who saw him walking to the bus stop called him "the trombone kid," another classmate, John Williams, recalled.

"He was just walking with his trombone, all alone," Williams said on Thursday, three days after Cho carried out the worst mass shooting by a lone gunman in U.S. history.
Cho's former classmates said other students had crueler names for him.

They said he was often picked on and taunted because he was such a loner.

"Such a quiet, shy kid like that is such an easy target," Williams said. "And he took it and took it and took it, and built up all that anger and whatever he felt inside. Someone like that is going to explode -- it's destined to happen."

Monday morning, Cho shot and killed 30 students and professors in an engineering and classroom building on the Virginia Tech campus.

Two hours earlier, two students were killed at a dormitory, and police say the same gun was used in both slayings, although they have not been able to definitively link Cho to those slayings.
Cho was born in South Korea in 1984. His family moved to the United States in 1992, and settled in Centreville, Virginia, where his parents worked at a dry cleaner's.

Fellow students remembered him hanging around a local basketball court, but refusing to join in the games.

Another former high school classmate said he thought he knew the reason for Cho's silence.

"I thought he was pretty normal, other than the fact I just thought he didn't know any English, that's why he never talked to anybody," said Ebram Hakim.
Cho's college roommates and classmates echoed the description of a tightlipped loner. The roommates said he "never spoke more than a couple of words." A student who had a writing class with Cho said efforts by other students to draw him out were rebuffed.

Wilder, who attended middle and high school with Cho, and also went on to Virginia Tech, told CNN she wondered if anyone really knew him.

"You've got to wonder what went so wrong in his life that this was ultimately the decision he made, to get revenge for whatever it was," she said.