I live less than 2 hours away from VT, and I happen to work for a huge college in my town (James Madison University). You can't even imagine the uproar it caused at work on Monday and Tuesday. Students were still freaked out, knowing it could have just as easily been our campus. We never, ever have drills, etc for anything to prepare students for this type of thing. We do have a lot of foreign students as well, ones who arent even citizens. I guess you cant ever know, yet you cant judge certain students by one bad example. Try to tell that to 18-20 year old students. I work in a building where the walls are made of huge panes of glass. There is no protection, the doors are open to the building from 6am until 11 or 12 at night. There are times when I am the only one in the building (I am catering manager, so my hours suck). In all reality, with all that glass, there is no way to hide quickly or be protected from much of anything. Lockdown in my building would be horrible, considering there are more than 15 entrances, and each door must be locked individually. I know the entire campus took a moment of silence yesterday at 2pm. We all feel their loss. However, now its put Administration into action, and they want to prepare students and staff for these situations now. Too bad it takes a huge tragedy to wake up an entire campus. Hindsight is always 20/20, of course. I also happen to know that right now in VA, all colleges are open and touring potential students, in huge groups. I am sure enrollment is going to drop for VT now, as well. Its a shame that it took one sick individual to do so much damage. One of the victims lived less than 5 miles from me, although I didnt know them personally. According to what I have heard, the way that he killed his victims, was they way the Koreans used to do it during the war. I forget the term for it, but to put it briefly, it consisted of locking the building down yourself, killing all that you can, and then finishing yourself off. He was definitely one f****ed up individual.
