Political Communication blog

I don't know the reasoning behind opening the school back up to the students. That was really a dumb move and the staff probably feel the same way. Hindsight is 20/20. I don't want to be critical of someone in that position because that is a really tough decision to make and in this case it turned out to be fatal. Obviously closing down the school would have been the right thing to do and I can only pray for the families that lost loved ones in this terrible tragedy. I too hope that Mississippi State and all other colleges and schools take note of these actions and come up with some type of contingency plan of action if something like this happens at their campus.
 

Hello Brooke,

You're so correct. The Virginia Tech shooting was a tragic incident that no reasonable or unreasonable person could have imagined ever to occur. To address your main concern or question about why did they resume classes after the 7:15 a.m. shooting I refer you back to, "Tragic incident." Neither the university administrators nor the law enforcement personnel had any idea about what was going on. From my understanding, initially law enforcement personnel had taken a wrong suspect into custody. Basically, the student gunman did not provide the university administrators or law enforcement personnel a program/agenda of his planned events (He probably didn't know himself); therefore, no one knew what to expect. From my perspective, both the administrators and law enforcement acted correctly with treating the initial shooting incident as an isolated incident. According to my understanding of law enforcement operation, their standard operating procedures are to:
(1)Respond to the scene.
(2)Simultaneously secure the scene
and care for the injured
(3)Locate and identify witnesses
and, or suspects
(4)Began investigation to gather
evidence for invoking judicial
process

These are the basic steps to try to complete amidst the chaos and disorder.

(5) Restore the order and peace

In a nutshell, the initial shooting was enough to confuse the proper authorities well in excess of two hours. During their preliminary response and investigation, they had not apparently acquired any evidence or suspicions to believe another shooting was imminent. Therefore, the need to make immediate notification to the student body and lock-down the campus was non-existence. Nevertheless, for argument sake, let's explore that option for a moment. Now, let's notify the student body of the initial shooting. What do we tell them about the incident just responded to; who, what, when, where, how, and why. Especially, what is to be said about the gunman? O.K., we've locked down the campus. Now, what do we do without any solid leads to follow up on? Nothing, the only thing accomplished is a possible gunman may be trapped like an animal with no other alternative but to fight his way out and maybe take some hostages in the process (That may be just what took place). This in itself creates an ugly situation. My point is, "The administrators and law enforcement's personnel focus was restricted to the initial scene until reasoning to suspect otherwise. With that said, the administrators and law enforcement didn't have any reason or belief to lock the campus down until the second shooting spree began. At that point, the campus was definitely locked down and the order was eventually restored. Than again maybe they did according to your statement,” They closed doors and told students to stay inside for a few hours and then re-opened campus then the shooter began to shoot again." So, what is the proper course of action? To stay shut down for three hours, a day, two weeks, three months, until the shooter turn himself in to the proper authorities? As far as Mississippi State University having a better way to let us know if a tragedy occurs, if my memory serves me correctly, MSU administrators have been preparing for a tragic such as this for a good while now. Our university’s president is a retired general from the air force. I think he use to practice for situations such as this on a monthly basis.

Thomas
 

This is one of those events like the oklahoma city bombing and columbine that you just can't understand or make sense of it, i feel sorry for the families of those killed and the students that witnessed it. I guess the only thing we can do is try to figure out how it could have been prevented and initiate a plan on college campuses to prevent something like this from happening again, and devise a better plan for how to react if it were to happen again
 

I feel bad for the families affected by this tragedy. I hope they will get closure soon. I will pray for the shooter's family as well. No one ever understands why tragedies happen they just seem to.