Posted by
Bert Chapman on Tuesday, April 17, 2007 9:23:07 AM
I share the horror others feel at yesterday's Virginia Tech tragedy and my prayers are with the victims, their families, and friends. Additional details about this tragedy will undoubtedly be revealed in the days and weeks to come. It's clear the university's administration did an abominable job in informing students of the first incident. Relying on email to communicate to the student body and community is absolutely pathetic! Were university administrators stupid enough to think that all members of their community are looking at their email 24/7? A campus wide system of loud speakers would have been a much more intelligent and effective warning mechanism. Va. Tech's president has now revealed that it was a student who was the perpetrator. It's to early to say what are the best procedures to implement to prevent the occurrence of other tragedies on campuses.
Some things are clear. University students, faculty, and staff need to recognize that a college cannot be a completely safe environment. These same individuals need to recognize that life is a precious gift from God and can be revoked at any time. Human beings are not indestructible! Two often at secular universities, the reality of God is dismissed or relegated to the sideline. The appearance of unadulterated evil is dismissed as being a psychological or sociological aberration curable by secularist multicultural socialization. My biggest prayer is that this will cause university students and faculty to confront the reality of their own mortality, our need to cherish every moment of our lives, and our absolute dependence on God for life and health. Counseling sessions by ignorant secularist psychologists or vapid quasi religious platitudes by university administrators will not comfort the moral fragility Va. Tech students are experiencing at this time.
Va. Tech university administrators and administrators at other university campuses need to take a long hard look at their souls as they seek to develop truly effective responses to this tragedy. Relying on technology alone to reduce the possibility of such events occurring won't cut it. The profound moral implications of this tragedy must also be addressed. Universities need to quit treating students as customers and resume the role of in loco parentis as they seek to educate their students.
Students themselves need to come to grips with their own mortality and be aware of their surroundings at all times. Quit yakking on your cell phones all the time and get over your pathetic baby need to be in 24/7 electronic contact with other people! Build genuine, effective, and enduring relationships with your fellow students that are not restricted by cell phones, email, or text messaging. Know your fellow students and what makes them tick and care about them.
If reports are true that the perpetrator of the Va. Tech tragedy was of Asian ancestry, this should also cause university administrators to do more to assimiliate non-American students into American cultural mores. If true, this incident should also cause university administrators to not be so uncritically accepting of any international student who wants to study at their universities. These administrators need to look at the mental and emotional stability of these students and weed out any who show tendencies toward using violence to resolve their problems. Such administrators need to get over their cultural relativism and accept the reality that acceptable behavior in some cultures is not acceptable here in the U.S.