Opinion: Virginia Tech horror story demonstrates frailty of schools

The most conspicuous example of the assault on student safety is the recent shooting at Virginia Tech University.

I don’t always pay much attention to labels the news media applies to events; however, in this case, the media rightly called it a massacre. When 32 people are killed and others wounded inside university buildings before the shooter turns a gun on himself, massacre is an appropriate description.

If the Virginia Tech incident was an isolated event, we might not have recognized it so quickly as such. If it were a new occurrence, we might hope it was an anomaly. Not so.

Rather than being an isolated horror, the VT shooting occurred almost to the day of the eighth anniversary of the Columbine High School shooting in Colorado. Other school shootings have become too frequent.

When referring to the VT shooter, Seung-Hui Cho, I didn’t use a kind and gentle label describing a mentally ill person. What he did qualifies him as a madman. Anyone bringing a gun into a school intent on shooting students and faculty has gone beyond sympathetic labels.

The VT shooting set off a bunch of reports of threats of school violence from all across the nation, including the Ozarks. Some may have been real, others from jokers who thought it would be fun to call in threats just to see what would happen. These pranksters are what they are: knuckleheads. In light of deaths and injuries in school shootings, anyone foolish enough to make a joke out of anything so appalling is a knucklehead.

Regarding knuckleheads, when they are caught creating fears of classroom violence as a joke, make an example of them: Charge them with the maximum penalty allowed by the law. Either that or tattoo “KNUCKLEHEAD” across their foreheads.

Much has been made about what to do about these madmen.

According to reports, privacy laws make it difficult to inform others about people with symptoms that could produce one as unbalanced as the VT shooter.

Having spent much of my life in the classroom as both student and teacher, mass carnage on a university campus strikes close to my heart. Despite all that has been written about the subject, I feel compelled to add my own.

The ramblings and writings of the VT shooter reveal his hatred of rich students. He specifically mentioned their money and Mercedes cars.

I’m pretty confident that a large percentage of students on that campus are on academic achievement or need-based scholarships and are burdened with student-loan debts.

Being weird isn’t a reason to be denied access to a high school or university campus. It’s truly a shame that we can’t remove from the classroom those so weird they are potential madmen. The classroom is no place for them to vent their frustrations with society.

In the wake of so many school shootings, the time has come to find ways to spot likely perpetrators before it’s too late. As well, we must develop safer and more efficient ways to deal with these situations when they occur.

Experience can be a good teacher. The classroom is a place for learning. It is sacrosanct.

It must be free from violence.

Campus Security Task Force

Following the tragic Virginia Tech University shooting, Gov. Matt Blunt organized Missouri’s first Campus Security Task Force charged with reviewing campus safety. The group held its first meeting May 3 in Jefferson City. Director of Public Safety Mark James and Commissioner of Higher Education Robert Stein are co-chairmen. For more information about the meetings, call (573) 751-4819.

Joe McAdoo is former chairman of the communication department at Drury University.