Posts Regarding What drove Cho
I am finding so many comments regarding this Cho issue. some of them state that teasing was a problem and they felt that if people could have been kinder to Cho this would have never happened. I subscribe to this to a point, but the bottom line is the Guiding Light is always the authority figure and the buffer zone. One of the reasons Cho never had an incident in High School was probably because of the buffer of his parents and the teachers and adminstrators around him. However when teachers and administrators join in with the unkind voices there is no place to go. I wrote the above after reading the following post which made me cry:
http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=108717944&blogID=255996017
Here is another post that I just read that examines how Cho could have been treatedon that campus: http://fortheloveofpeace.blogspot.com/2007/04/virginia-tech-killer-cho-seung-hui.html
This blog lead me to question what type of place this campus was? I definitely don’t think this young man belonged there, “not he did not belong” but he did not belong there.
Shalom CeeJay,
When I think of Cho, I think of Ralphie in A Christmas Story and how he finally snaps and beats up the bully. Today, Ralphie might steal his fathers revolver.
B’shalom,
Jeff
You want to know what kind of campus this was? It was, and still is, simply WHAT YOU MAKE OF IT.
I’ve been treated for mental illness for the past 11 years, during which time I was an undergrad, graduate student, part time, and full time staff member at VT. I’ve been teased and shunned by students; an entire department full of them, in fact. I’ve been taken advantage of by faculty who were too busy using my talents to further their own agendas, recounting their divorce during my advising sessions, and trashing my fellow students – directly to me – immediately following class. I’ve been overlooked, devalued, and mistreated by my boss and department. Worse yet, I’m sure I have it better than many, many other people here. During my time at VT so far, I’ve mastered a great deal of academic concepts. But more importantly, I’ve learned a hell of a lot about dealing with people. And through all of this, like so many others, I’ve managed not to kill one single person.
And shame on you for blaming the English Department and specifically Nikki Giovanni (referencing a previous entry of yours). How dare you criticize her work, and the risks she takes in creating it. By judging her this way, you’re completely defeating your own point.
If you want to call yourself “thoughtfulwoman”, please consider being a great deal more thoughtful about what you say in public venues.
First of all as I read your comment the first word that comes to my mind is liberal as in liberal arts. I can tell by the way you and the previous commenter who are “hokies” dialog that you all have not come from a liberal arts college or a liberal arts background, second of all and if you do, something was not gotten across to you in the “core” of your education. I say this because both of you evidently do not know how to dialog without name calling and don’t know how to respect the opinions of others. I come from a liberal arts background in terms of higher education and one of the universities I attended boasted of the highest student Republican population in the United States. As Liberal Arts majors we had to express our opinions often and many times had to listen to opinions we did not agree with, however not one time in my extensive educational background at several colleges did I ever hear one name or insult called in any of my classes. It was straight dialog about the issues.
As for your comments I have several issues to address and I think I have the breadth and the depth to respond to you. My background is I have been to several colleges along the eastern seaboard and in the midwest, they have been tiny, extremely large, and medium sized and all of them different with their own characters. I can honestly say that if there is not a college, neighborhood, or town that’s working for you my best advice is there is one that will, and to get out, and get out now before you end up not living the life you were not meant to live. As far as colleges are concerned and Cho, as all of the details about the incident come in, one can not help but see that Cho had a mental illness, as for whether he had one prior to coming to that campus I don’t know. However one can very easily see Cho planning a massacre while reading the following poem or challenge issued by Nikki Giovanni:
“Nigger
Can you kill
Can you kill
Can a nigger kill
Can a nigger kill a honkie
Can a nigger kill the Man
Can you kill nigger
Huh? nigger can you
kill
Do you know how to draw blood
Can you poison
Can you stab-a-Jew
Can you kill huh? nigger
Can you kill
Can you run a protestant down with your
‘68 El Dorado
(that’s all they’re good for anyway)
Can you kill
Can you piss on a blond head
Can you cut it off
Can you kill
A nigger can die
We ain’t got to prove we can die
We got to prove we can kill
As for Cho, he is not an African American, he is an Asian American and they are victims of discrimination also, so if he saw this poem he could have very well hatched a plan based on this poem alone.
As for the problems of Cho, I have come across several Cho’s along the way and at the colleges I went to they were never made fun of or made light of, as I remember they were always embraced, and as I’ve read in the papers the students of VT did try to reach out to him. However I honestly don’t think that the students were his problem. I think that someone in the English department caused this by making people afraid of him. Ex. Cho goes to visit a girl, knocks on her door and introduces himself; my name is question mark, she slams the door in his face and is not interested which is fine, he comes back to the room, tells his room mate in trust what happens, says I want to kill myself. “The room mate calls the police. I don’t think the room mate just called the police out of his own head I think that the English department had had someone talk to every person Cho came in contact with and warned them about Cho and warned them heavy and hard and literally created the killing monster CHO.
As for mental illness, I am very familiar with the area you are from and know and know of several people who have committed suicide in the area. I can not speak for the University but I can speak for the type of communities that are around and can say that I was saying just yesterday about another subject not related to this issue; “these are the type of people who will talk about your momma and your grandma to you in your own face, and I have personally witnessed it on several occasions, as well as everybody knows what’s happening in your life. I say this to say if you have been treated for mental illness for seven years you probably need to move. Since I admonished you for failing to be liberal, let me say that the people in the area are also the type of people who will give you the shirt of their backs, have very low divorce rates, and raise strong families, and go on to produce children who raise strong families they are the salt of the earth.
As for Nikki Giovanni and her poetry, it is a good poem it illicits strong emotions one can see the drums beating as she writes it, but it can illicit emotion and maybe even action and what is one to do with that. What was in Cho was once in Nikki, and not one person has mentioned that Cho could have been the victim of psyops.
As for killing, I know that Cho is not the first VT student that has murdered someone while being a student. Cho murdered 32 people which is terrible and deserves no sympathy and can in no way be justified, he planned this massacre for months according to the news, this is clearly a mentally ill person. However as for those other students who killed someone while being a VT student. VT is going to have to examine themselves and question, what are they not doing? why are some of our students violent? What can we do with are core to make our students more in depth more liberal, less prone to violence and more into their futures and life. While Cho is ultimately responsible for his own actions, a man did state on the Oprah show that by his words he has prevented action such as this. VT must ask themselves, what actions or words could we have taken to have “possibly” made this young man different. Again I can honestly say I think the students did their part from what the media has been reporting, what did the school not do in terms of broadening Cho in a positive way. The media has stated that in his manifesto he rambled on about Christianity and how this place was not Christian, as the person who has been to many schools I have heard those rants many times, however it was from the Christian clique. It disturbs me that he never found his clique. It disturbs me that his parents did not take him out of VT after the first incident of being sent to a mental hospital. Folks if a college sends your child to a mental hospital do not send them back to campus, he needs to go somewhere else, there is a lot of mental illness on college campuses. I went to one campus where I saw the art professor after a recent rain, drunk in the middle of a busy street looking down and talking about the beautiful rainbows he saw in the street. I kept walking. On another campus for some reason, an English professor I had would spend the whole class period attacking one guy and I could never figure out why, I came to the conclusion that maybe he looked like one of her ex-lovers or got her hot. However in my Republican school we had none of this but I say this to say that there is a place for everyone and some campuses know how to redirect madness into productivity. #####I hate editing, please forgive me if something does not come together completely or a thought is not completed.