By Mary Best
Opinion and Advisory editor
While I’ve had my qualms with e2Campus texts in the past, I couldn’t be more thankful we have them. Besides the convenience of being informed about important school and weather information, it makes me proud to go to a school that prioritizes student safety. Until a few days ago, I was naïve enough to believe all schools were as cautious as ours.
The Virginia Supreme Court overturned the previous verdict in the wrongful death suit which two of the victim’s families filed against Virginia Tech University after the April 16, 2007 shooting spree. The Oct. 31 decision stated the school had no official duty to warn students of third-party criminal acts, according to a Nov. 1 Boston Globe story. While the August 2012 decision from U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan rightly fined the school in violation of the Clery Act, which its requires schools to issue timely warnings of threats to students and staff, this new decision is a huge misstep by the court.
On the day of the shooting, the university waited two hours to send the first campus-wide bulletin about the attacks, which also neglected to mention that the shooter was still on the loose. This left the entire campus susceptible to an armed and dangerous man who took the lives of 32 people by the end of the massacre.
Feeling nauseous yet?
Virginia Tech officials made a grave mistake in not warning the students sooner. They didn’t pull the trigger, but they endangered the lives of everyone on campus by withholding that information. Without the court’s penalty of their choices, other schools won’t think they have to do anything differently when it comes to this kind of situation.
If college officials know of something suspicious on campus, students need to know. Period.
Just a few weeks ago, there had been a suspicious package left behind in to the Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts. It ended up not being dangerous, but students were notified right away and the nearby area was evacuated. If something had happened, a minimal number of people would have been affected simply because many knew about it, and the university was taking preventative measures.
The real problem lies in the vagueness of the Clery Act, which the court to overturn the previous decision. Simply going off the basis of whether or not something is “timely” is far too vague and doesn’t offer any specific guidelines in determining what an appropriate amount of time is to spread information.
Granted, officials may have wanted to avoid widespread panic and might not have wanted to act on the little information they had. The student gunman, Seung Hui Cho, had already shot two people before the warning was sent out.
Carl Tobias, a professor at the University of Richmond School of Law, said in an Oct. 31 Washington Post story that under Virginia tort law, “there usually isn’t much of a duty to protect someone from third-party criminal acts,” unless the criminal acts are foreseeable.
If Cho had already committed a double murder in the dormitory, how can you argue that him continuing his shooting spree wasn’t foreseeable?
No matter what, students go to college to receive an education, which they deserve to do at a place where their safety is a priority. This new court ruling downplays the responsibility of a college to look out for the safety of its students. If it goes unchallenged, students’ safety will continue to be jeopardized by vagueness.
bestmk10@bonaventure.edu
