Virginia Tech - Why the massacre?

Source: The Straits Times

Link to article:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6564653.stm

British Broadcasting Corporation

Summary:
The article is about Cho Seung-hui’s massacre of 32 of his fellow college mates and teachers as well as possible reasons on why such a horrendous act could have taken place.

Comments:
Cho Seung-hui was described by many as a loner who seldom talked at all, choosing to spend his time downloading music instead of socialising with his classmates.

Nothing much however, was done to correct Cho’s behaviour. And one day, during the early hours of April the 16th, Cho went on a rampage on the Virginia Tech campus, leaving 33 people dead, and many more severely injured.

Till today, many questions still remain about what caused this bloodbath. Many have blamed gun ownership laws. However, many also fail to look at what could have been done to prevent such a manifestation of anger and hate.

Based on the sufficient warnings that something very wrong was happening inside Cho, from him identifying himself as “question mark”, to the gory plays he wrote, many of which involved arsenals of weapons, I feel that the Virginia Tech administration could have done more to help Cho overcome the conflict brewing within him.

Indeed Cho was sent for counselling by a professor, although I guess he went for it a little too late, since by that time, the anger in him had probably already manifested to an unstoppable level. Aslo, as the professor had walked Cho to the counsellor in full view of the public, counselling might have even done more harm than good to Cho since it might lead to him being labelled as a “problem kid”, which might result in more people detesting him.

The action taken by the professor to tutor Cho one on one is also comparable to that of teachers making students stay behind for extra lessons, something very evident in the Singaporean school system, which has overwhelming consequences when it comes to the way the student, is treated in class and out of school.

As a student, I observed that such a student would be branded as an outcast, leading to behaviour similar to that of Cho, the only difference being that of the scale of such conduct.

I would no doubt be treating such a person in the same manner as well. If I feel that the “problem” student is behaving in an immature way, I would probably give up after failing in attempts to make contact with him. This would result in the student segregating himself from the rest of the student community, which might lead to the materialization of harm to self and harm to those around the student.

Perhaps, schools here in Singapore can learn from this incident and find alternative solutions to dealing with such students instead of pointing out their flaws in front of everyone.

Observations on how teachers in school deal with cases of self-harm have also led me to conclude that most teachers are only capable of dealing with academia.

Schools should thus train teachers to spot troubled students, offer them preventive advice and do whatever they can to ensure easy accessibility for students to counsellors, including giving some room for privacy and allocating the counselling room away from public view.

(499 words) – Excluding the summary