Posted on October 8, 2007
Poor Virginia Tech. It just can’t seem to catch a break. Last April, a nutjob walked onto campus and killed 31 students and teachers. Now, families of seven deceased students are considering suing the school for not protecting the students, according to an April 22 article in The Roanoke Times.
You know, the families have a point. Tech officials probably should have checked their depraved lunatic radar to see if any potential crazies were lurking close to campus.
Why wasn’t campus closed after the first shooting? Because, as stated in the report released on the tragedy, police had valid reasons to believe it was an isolated incident and were looking for an identified suspect – the first victim’s boyfriend.
Tech officials could have done more. There is the obvious solution: Tech locks every door, everyone wears bullet-proof vests, and Tech’s president stands at the gate of a thirty foot fence surrounding campus, keeping all the crazies outside.
This could be a great opportunity to teach students about Israel’s West Bank. The West Bank is a part of Israel under military occupation, with an 8-foot-wall surrounding it. But bullet-proof vests are expensive when supplied to 25,000 people.
Couldn’t gun control have prevented the tragedy? No — in the United States, nine guns exist for every ten people, according to the Small Arms Survey 2007 by the Geneva-based Graduate Institute of International Studies. So anyone who really wants a gun can get one.
Gun control will do a great job at stopping John Deere from buying his next rifle, but won’t stop people who are out of their gourd from buying a Glock out of the trunk of a car. So in light of recent events, there are better alternatives.
What do these parents think they will get from this lawsuit? They want money – and they’ve already got it. According to an Aug. 15 New York Times article, each family will be paid by the state up to $180,000for their loss. But the families want more money, which sounds like an inappropriate response to me.
I don’t know what it’s like to experience the death of a child. Still, I can’t understand how more money is going to help alleviate the pain from the loss of a child. The professors’ families need more, since they have lost a source of income, not the students’ families.
Several weeks ago The Breeze ran an editorial about Europeans’ view of Americans. In general they don’t like us. One thing Europeans say is Americans sue each other too often. I hate to give the America-haters any credit — but they have a point. Americans love suing each other like squirrels love nuts, like Sunny loved Cher (at first) and like Hillary Clinton loves laughing at strange times.
These families think they can get more money from the commonwealth by suing because they have watched ridiculous suits win before.
Big tobacco loses and pays billions because someone died from smoking, a New York Times article said American Airlines owed uninjured passengers $2 million after some scary turbulence, and a Houston Chronicle article said an ambulance driver tried to sue the city he worked for after he was fired for stopping to get doughnuts while transporting a patient to the hospital.
Enough with the alarmism response to an isolated incident. When a shark attack happens, we don’t wear chain mail into the water and place an underwater fence several miles out to sea, we simply understand that not all sharks are crazy and want to eat us, but there are some out there who are going to attack us whether we like it or not. If we want to go swimming in the ocean, it’s a risk we have to take. Living in a world where people choose their actions means that some will make very bad decisions.
Bad things happen everywhere, but we shouldn’t assume that money is a panacea. We need to stop suing each other at the drop of a hat. Americans like the Tech families need to realize that no amount of money can replace a human life.
Elizabeth Daniel is a senior English major.
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