Where Knowledge Rules

Politics, News & Issues:

News

Get a Widget for this title

Reflections: Virginia Tech school shooting

More so than usual, the way the media is portraying the Virginia Tech shooter, Cho Seung-Hui, disturbs me. In the days after the shooting, we learned that in the 2 hours between when Cho took his first two victims and the absolute massacre during which he claimed 29 others and ended his own life, he managed to mail video recordings to NBC. Now NBC and other media are portraying Cho's final communications as the ramblings of an incoherent lunatic.

But he was anything but that. Cho's story is one that has become familiar now in North America. Cho was alienated by his peers in school. He had particular difficulties fitting in because of his ethnicity and English as a second language issues. Yes, in his final months at Virginia Tech a number of roommates and classmates tried to reach out and include him, but this was not until he had spent years feeling horribly unwelcome and alien.

I do not condone for one second the appalling choices Cho made leading up to the Virginia Tech massacre. I grieve for the victims and with their families. But we have to stop acting surprised when we hear that someone who has been bullied and excluded lashes out in the way that we have seen at Virginia Tech, Columbine, Dawson College and more places in North America than are now easily recounted in one space.

We will not see an end to these brutal mass slayings that seem to surface every 18 months or so, until we manage to construct a society in which everyone respects the otherness of the people they meet and live with. We also have to ensure that people like Cho, who are mentally unwell, do not slip through the cracks because they move around, change schools, or belong to institutions that are too large to identify and respond to their illnesses.

As people, we can put a stop to future massacres like these just by doing what we should have been doing in the first place: accepting people's differences, reaching out to those who seem antisocial and finding out just what factors may be making them so odd in the first place. Imagine the difference in the lives of both Cho and his victims had someone helped him at an early stage direct his passion for writing in a more positive way.

Learn more about this author, Russell Dawson.
Contact this writer Click here to send this author comments or questions.


Below are the top articles rated and ranked by Helium members on:

Reflections: Virginia Tech school shooting

  • 1 of 106

    by Vanessa Nelsen

    I felt it like the beat of a drum or a thunderclap rip through my body from head to toe, and everything went black. Everything

    read more

  • 2 of 106

    by Ryan Ely

    I want to start this note by saying that my thoughts and prayers are with all of those who have been affected by the tragedy

    read more

  • 3 of 106

    by Charles Q Blair

    On Tuesday I awoke here in Australia to the radio and the story that a gunman had killed 32 people in a University in Virginia.

    read more

  • 4 of 106

    by Andrew Nostvick

    A dark cloud hangs over Blacksburg, Virginia, as a school and a nation mourns the death of 32 people.

    Virginia Tech has suffered

    read more

  • 5 of 106

    by Can Tran

    In only a day's time, the mass shooting at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia that claimed the lives of 33 people including

    read more

View All Articles on:
Reflections: Virginia Tech school shooting

Add your voice

Know something about Reflections: Virginia Tech school shooting?
We want to hear your view. Write_penWrite now!

Helium Debate

Cast your vote!

Should the US war crimes trial at Guantanamo Bay be held while we're at war?

Click for your side.

87020

Featured Partner

The Overbrook Foundation

The Overbrook Foundation has partnered with Helium, giving you the chance to write for a cause. Browse Overbrook...more

What is Helium? | Buy Web Content | Contact Us | Privacy | User agreement | DMCA | User Tools | Help | Community | Helium’s Official Blog | Link to Helium

Helium, Inc.
200 Brickstone Square Andover, MA 01810 USA