Virginia Tech officials still refuse to accept any blame for not warning students and staff soon enough on April 26, 2007, that a killer was on the loose on campus during the deadliest mass shooting by an individual in U.S. history. Instead, the university plans to appeal the pitifully small $55,000 fine levied by the U.S. Department of Education for failing to issue “a timely warning” during Seung Hui Cho’s bloody rampage on the Blacksburg campus, which left 32 people dead.Tech officials insist they followed all internal procedures in place at the time, which supposedly gave them 48 hours to sound the alarm — an assertion roundly refuted by the feds. They also claim they acted appropriately “based on the best information available to them at the time.” More than two hours after the bodies of Cho’s first two victims were found, Tech officials finally got around to sending a vague email about a “shooting incident” on campus that did not mention any fatalities. By that time, Cho was already chaining the doors in Norris Hall shut. If they really believed the early morning double homicide was an isolated incident, why did they cancel scheduled bank deposit pickups and trash service, notify the governor’s office and the board of visitors, and then lock down several offices — including Tech President Charles Steger’s?
In a harsh rebuke addressed to Steger, federal officials pointed out that “The facts that an assailant had not been identified, a weapon had not been found at the scene and bloody footprints led away from the bodies strongly indicated that the shooter was still at large.” Yet a second campuswide warning was not sent until it was too late.Although an independent investigator hired by Tech exonerated the university, a state commission came to the same conclusion as the feds and the commonwealth reached an $11 million settlement with most of the victims’ families. However, relatives of slain students Erin Peterson and Julia Pryde refused to settle and filed $10 million lawsuits for gross negligence, which will go to trial this fall.
Federal education officials acknowledge that the fines are woefully inadequate for an institution with a $1.1 billion annual budget, adding that “the violations warrant a fine far in excess of what is currently permissible.” But Tech officials would rather continue the cover-up than finally admit they made some terrible mistakes.
