RSS Feed |
|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
There are no do-overs Monday's news of the shootings at Virginia Tech grew worse as the day progressed. For the families, students, faculty and others associated with Virginia Tech, it had to be downright horrifying. I picked up my coverage from the Internet and later from a round-the-clock news channel.Watching the televised coverage, I was once again reminded why 24 hour news is a bad idea. I watched the first video of the "actual shooting." It turned out to be a cell phone video of a dumpster and the sidewalk with the sound of gun shots in the background. It was pretty darn amazing. Then I listened as the finger pointing began. Why didn't university officials do this? Why didn't they do that? Why didn't they wrap everything up in a pretty little package and prevent this from happening? At one point, a so-called anchor even asked a student, "Are you upset you weren't warned? Aren't you wondering why no one locked down the school?" He probably wasn't until someone asked him that. He was too busy being glad he didn't have any bullet holes in him. A news conference by Virginia law enforcement and university officials pointed out that 9,000 students live on campus. In all, 36,000 people either work or go to school at Virginia Tech each day. If you add in visitors, there are even more. The daily population of Virginia Tech is three times the population of Early County. The campus of Virginia Tech is 2,600 acres. That's more than twice the size of Kolomoki Mounds State Park. How could anyone in their right mind think that any law enforcement agency, any school, any anything of that size could immediately communicate with everyone on the campus. As the accusing nature of questions at the news conference and later comments by so-called news anchors continued, I couldn't help but think how we have all come to expect everything to be prevented. We expect our law enforcement, our government, our schools to have extrasensory perception and to be prepared for anything. At the same time, we expect no interference with our lives by any kind of authority. "We," after all, aren't the ones doing the bad things. The aforementioned ESP is supposed to separate the good from the bad. But, if that ESP doesn't kick in and someone shoots up an entire university, we all sit at home on our sofas, prodded by rabble rousing news anchors and expect the crime to be solved in 60 minutes. Members of the media, unlike those embroiled in a tragic situation, have the benefit of hindsight. Unfortunately, there is no rewind button on life, no doover, no chance to re-record.
Life isn't television. Television isn't life. Thank heavens.
|
for larger version       |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
