Students first?

Virginia Tech fumbling of Cho massacre ‘excusable’? Examiner.com

Virginia Tech’s new addendum to their original report on the Seung-Hui Cho mass murder documents how authorities mishandled the crisis, possibly enabling Cho to kill more people. But malfeasance like this is just campus business as usual.
The Associated Press reports that campus authorities saw fit to warn family and protect the Virginia Tech president, but didn’t consider students’ lives valuable enough to give them the same warning:
At least two officials with a crisis response team called their family members after the first shootings at a dorm and about 90 minutes before the all-campus alert was issued at 9:26 a.m.. The president's office was locked down at 8:52 a.m. and two academic buildings were also shut down before the general alert.
CNN confirms this by reporting an 8:45 AM email from one campus employee:
" 'Gunman on the loose,' the e-mail read, and then 'This is not releasable yet,' " the report states about the message from an unnamed staffer.
This person told a colleague “'just try to make sure it doesn't get out.” In other words, this is serious enough to tell another to protect his family, but not to warn the students.
From AP:
Gov. Timothy M. Kaine said the findings that some school officials called their own family members about the initial shootings in a dorm before an all-campus warning was issued were "inexcusable."
Actually, Governor Kaine, this malfeasance is entirely excusable.
The U.S. Supreme Court case, Deshaney v. Winnebago, shows that all government agencies enjoy blanket immunity from prosecution for failing to provide the protective services. In Deshaney, social service employees failed to protect a child after multiple notices that the boy was beaten by his father. Eventually, the boy “suffered permanent brain damage and was rendered profoundly retarded.” The Supreme Court concluded that despite prior knowledge of the child’s situation:
(a) A State’s failure to protect an individual against private violence generally does not constitute a violation of the Due Process Clause, because the Clause imposes no duty on the State to provide members of the general public with adequate protective services.
(b) There is no merit to petitioner’s contention that the State’s knowledge of his danger and expressions of willingness to protect him against that danger established a “special relationship” giving rise to an affirmative constitutional duty to protect.
While Virginia Tech settled a civil case for $11 million, no criminal charges have been filed against university employees.
The question with civil suits is who pays the settlement in the end. The Roanoke Times reported:
Virginia Tech and Radford University passed relatively modest tuition increases Thursday, thanks in part to federal stimulus money designed to hold down costs of in-state students.
The executive committee of the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors voted to increase tuition and fees for in-state undergraduates by 5 percent next year, the lowest percentage tuition and fee raise at the university since 2002.
This means that American taxpayers, and Virginia Tech students and their parents, ended up balancing the university’s bottom line, which includes the additional expense of the settlement.
But the Virginia Tech massacre is only one symptom of a far greater problem that leaves our college-aged children at risk.
The Austin American-Statesman recently reported that federal law requires postsecondary institutions to “maintain a daily crime log open to inspection by anyone and update it within two days of learning about an incident.”
But many Texas colleges aren’t in compliance:
In a report last year, the state auditor's office concluded that 17 of the state's 35 public universities did not include all the required information in their annual security reports. Two schools did not produce the reports at all. And two of six universities whose daily crime logs were examined by the office did not track the date and time of crimes and the disposition of complaints as required.
Despite the fact that these regulations “have the force of law,” there was no mention of criminal charges against college employees.
Meanwhile, the Colorado State University board of governors just voted to ban concealed carry on campus.
Postsecondary institutions appear to have the right to protect their own and leave students at risk. At the same time, they forbid students the right to value their own lives.
No self-reliance, no responsibility, no accountability.
This is what universities teach our children.
(Hat tip to Thomas for this ABC video, which states that it took 90 minutes to warn students, after school officials had already taken steps to protect themselves. ABC concludes that all school officials "still have their jobs.")\\