VTech nightmare compounded by media
It was simply a massacre at Virginia Tech, and the blame has to be placed somewhere, and since the gunman killed himself, I guess folks need to find another scapegoat. I can tell it's already going to fall somewhere on the administration. The media is picking up and running with the "couldn't you have done something sooner to warn the students?" line. I think that's simple irresponsible thinking. What's done is done, if they made mistakes they, and every other campus administration can learn from it, but how can they plan something when the initial attack seemed personal and domestic disturbance in nature?
A couple of facts:
There are over 100 buildings on the Virginia Tech campus map.
Giving over the administrative and sports facilities, around 70 of those buildings would be ripe targets any school day.
Blacksburg is about 38 miles southwest of Roanoke (not a huge city, but the largest/closest city).
Given this information and some edumacated guesses about the police force in and around the surrounding area, I'm guessing they could have mobilized maybe 200 officers at any one time, and it would take a little over an hour to do so, in the face of an issue such as this. If that's the case, that's a little under 3 policemen for each building. Not nearly enough to cover all the entrances and exits to every building. Also, they sent an email out around 10 am, and most students would either be in class, or on the way to and from class, not necessarily checking email. The administration DID shut down the classrooms and bar the doors, at around the same time the assault on the second site was taking place. Personally, the first shooting would have just been a singular incident to me. Unless the guy ran away from the first shooting saying, I'm going to kill all these people in X hall. How would they have had any indication that the second part of the attack was taking place, and even knowing that he may strike again, I think they did what they could, under the circumstances. The had NO clue where to find him, and were running under the assumption the gunman was leaving the campus. After making an irrational mistake like blowing the girlfriend and RA away...would you expect a shooting rampage? Most shooting rampages in the past at schools were planned, there were indicators prior to, etc...
Here's the thing folks. Any person could take a gun, bring it to school, and start shooting. Period. Death toll would be high. Period. Unless you took the steps to have metal detectors on every door and a guard to check each one of those metal detectors, there is no possible way to stop this kind of thing from happening. That is so cost prohibitive. Now you could simply gate up, and ivory tower every single campus and basically make them inaccessible to the public and search everyone coming in and out. But even then, if someone wants to get through...they will.
I just can't believe the media in this situation, they always focus on the controversial, but now it's getting to the point that they're putting the doubt into people's minds about the capability of the campus administrations and that's horrible, there is only so much security force that can be put into place until your campus becomes a military state.