2008 Woodie Awards
'College Columbine' preventable
Media must report on why school shootings persist, not just how
Zach Blom
Issue date: 4/17/07 Section: Editorials
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In the grainy video footage you can make out several dark figures-armed police officers-scrambling outside Norris Hall.
Shots ring out.
Fear and confusion abound.
This video, shot by a student on his cell phone, is the chaotic scene on the campus of Virginia Tech on Monday, where the most recent in a long line of school shootings took place.
This one was the worst in U.S. history: at least 33 are dead, 22 are injured or wounded. Students, professors and staff were all victims.
Schools are supposed to be places of education, aren't they? How could things have gone so wrong? How could Virginia Tech go from a peaceful rural campus to this bloody nightmare of terror and murder?
The answers to these questions aren't in yet, and may never be. What we do know is that the alleged shooter, reportedly looking for his girlfriend while dressed in a Boy Scout-like outfit, chained some of the doors shut at the science building and opened fire inside at about 9:15 a.m., killing at least 30 students and staff members before taking his own life. Two hours earlier, a shooter went from dorm room to dorm room in a campus residence hall, killing two.
While police are still investigating whether those two events are connected, one connection is for sure: the horror of the school murders indelibly connects us here in Denver to those in Virginia.
In an eerie correlation, this week marks the eighth anniversary of the shootings at Columbine High School. DU students living in Colorado on April 20, 1999 likely remember that day all too well, and as CNN and Fox News anchors report on "yet another senseless tragedy," and refer to Monday's killing spree as the "College Columbine," we must realize that it is time for us to make sense of these school shootings before another Columbine or Virginia Tech happens.
And that's the challenge that we are now presented with. As immensely tragic and overwhelmingly devastating as Monday's carnage was, we cannot change what has happened. We can only work to prevent it from ever happening again.
Shots ring out.
Fear and confusion abound.
This video, shot by a student on his cell phone, is the chaotic scene on the campus of Virginia Tech on Monday, where the most recent in a long line of school shootings took place.
This one was the worst in U.S. history: at least 33 are dead, 22 are injured or wounded. Students, professors and staff were all victims.
Schools are supposed to be places of education, aren't they? How could things have gone so wrong? How could Virginia Tech go from a peaceful rural campus to this bloody nightmare of terror and murder?
The answers to these questions aren't in yet, and may never be. What we do know is that the alleged shooter, reportedly looking for his girlfriend while dressed in a Boy Scout-like outfit, chained some of the doors shut at the science building and opened fire inside at about 9:15 a.m., killing at least 30 students and staff members before taking his own life. Two hours earlier, a shooter went from dorm room to dorm room in a campus residence hall, killing two.
While police are still investigating whether those two events are connected, one connection is for sure: the horror of the school murders indelibly connects us here in Denver to those in Virginia.
In an eerie correlation, this week marks the eighth anniversary of the shootings at Columbine High School. DU students living in Colorado on April 20, 1999 likely remember that day all too well, and as CNN and Fox News anchors report on "yet another senseless tragedy," and refer to Monday's killing spree as the "College Columbine," we must realize that it is time for us to make sense of these school shootings before another Columbine or Virginia Tech happens.
And that's the challenge that we are now presented with. As immensely tragic and overwhelmingly devastating as Monday's carnage was, we cannot change what has happened. We can only work to prevent it from ever happening again.
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