Seung-Hui Cho the Following Case

Seung-Hui Cho

The following case studies examines the motives and actions of not only Seung-Hui Cho, the shooter of the worst-known massacre in an educational institution in United States History, but also those of the various administrative and faculty of that institution, its surrounding law enforcement and campus security, as well as those of the general media at large. The shooter's mental history and its outward manifestations, as well as the documentation and preservation of such records, are carefully examined to gain a more profound understanding into the overt and covert natures of this crime.

Wasn't Meant To Be: A Case Study of the Virgina Tech Massacre.

In hindsight, there are several factors indicating a severe disturbance in Seung-Hui Cho, the killer in Virginia Tech's 2007 massacre. Very few of them, however, may be identified by the young man's upbringing and family of origin. The South Korean native arrived in the United States in 1992 as an eight-year-old accompanied by his parents and his two siblings. The clan quickly moved to the Washington D.C. area to be near other Koreans, where Cho endured a typical lower middle class existence of no considerable magnitude, other than his decidedly anti-social behavior in school. The traces of such behavior, however, can be found in the youngster's early family life as he surprised family members with his aversion to eye contact, lack of affection, and marked reticence (Moran, 2007).

It was in learning institutions that the aggression, conflict, and mental instability that were to typify his existence became manifest. The most obvious manifestation of his pathology was frequently noted by teachers at his refusal to communicate orally in class. His aggression was well evidenced by some of his academic performances at Virginia Tech, particularly in a fictional assignment when the student all but presaged his own actions by writing about a character who planned a mass homicide at school (Horowitz, 2007). Similarly, any of his three stalking incidents while enrolled at Virginia tech cite a history of conflict.

Some of the most significant forms of this conflict may be found in this student's relationship with his professor's at Virginia Tech. One of Cho's specific traits that concerned English professor and renowned poet Nikki Giovanni concerned his intimidation of female students and his excessively violent imagery in his writing (Geller, 2007). Prudently, Giovanni handled the situation by having Cho removed from her class, assuming an absolute authoritative power over which students were privileged to be in her presence. She took further appropriate action by reporting Cho's behavior to Lucinda Roy, who was then head of the English department. Such behavior on Giovanni's part demonstrates sagacious application of authority when faced with a student's impudence.

Such temperament, and its subsequent action, led Cho to be diagnosed with mental health disorders, both before and concurrent to the time of his Virginia Tech belligerence. His proclivity for alarming women on campus (both faculty and students), as well as his preoccupation with violence (if not towards others than towards himself) was instrumental in his mental health diagnosis in December of 2005, particularly after he stalked a student and alluded to his own suicide (Schulte, Jenkins, 2007). However, the record of his diagnosis was not obtained from Virginia Tech until after his death when his family released them to an investigative panel. State law prevented the University from releasing Cho's medical records due to issues of privacy.

In particular, Cho's incidents of stalking, harassing, and frightening female students should ideally have warranted more strict measures of discipline than that which he received, a pair of verbal warnings from campus security. A verbal warning upon initial discovery of Cho's unwanted advances towards a woman (both in person and via the internet) is certainly understandable (Ruane, 2007). A second verbal warning, in little over two weeks time since the initial verbal warning, is not understandable, and ideally should have bee supplanted with stricter disciplinary action. In fact, the most significant intervention Campus security made prior to his massacre was to try to come to his aid, when a student reported Cho's suicidal tendencies and security took him to a mental institution.

In hindsight, several of the decisions made by Virginia Tech's officials seem like mere cursory attempts to either aid Cho or to prevent his symptoms from magnifying. One such example is when Cho's Advanced Fiction Writing and Contemporary Fiction professor Lisa Norris was refused any information about Cho's history, proclivities, and mental health from Liberal Arts and Human Sciences dean Mary Ann Lewis (Schoetz, 2007). The only recommendation these administrators made was to recommend counseling for the student, which was severely limited since it was both not required of Cho nor ever completed by him. Administratively, one would think that with more than one professor and a court order proposing mental health assistance, that someone at the University's counseling center would have treated Cho.

Virginia Tech has made specific changes to its campus security procedures in the wake of its 2007 shooting spree in which 33, including the gunman, were murdered. Perhaps the most recent one occurred on February 1, 2011, when the university announced its deployment of video surveillance measures (no author, 2011). The campus wide video surveillance equipment will be used both as a preventive measure to discourage crime and as an alert system to notify authorities of any illicit (and in particular, dangerous) activity so that the institution will be able to react accordingly in a timely manner. On the date of the announcement the policy had been adopted and was not yet implemented.

Eastern Mennonite University, which is also in Virginia, has also taken active measures to prevent any catastrophes similar to that at Virginia Tech. One of the key facets of its preparation is the implementation of a warning system to notify University personnel of important messages (Galvin, 2008). A cell phone and e-mail notification system known as E2Campus is currently being used by administrators and students alike. With it, students can select a pair of email addresses and a pair of cellular phones to have warning messages sent to them.

One of the most important changes in local and state laws as a result of the Virginia Tech tragedy is the enforcement of Virginia Tech Victims Campus Emergency Response Policy and Notification Act. As part of the Higher Education Opportunity Act, the Virginia Tech Victims Act explicitly states in section 488 of the bill that collegiate administrators are mandated to "immediately notify the campus community upon the confirmation of a significant emergency or dangerous situation….unless issuing a notification will compromise efforts to contain the emergency (Galvin, 2008)." This legislation helps explain Virginia Tech's employment of warning notification measures, and is directly related to its response time between Cho's two shooting attacks.

The nature of Cho's first shooting had significant impact upon the response of campus officials and law enforcement, although it seems as though it could have had even more. Approximately two and a half hours passed between the two shootings, during which time the investigation of the first attack wass led off campus and away from Cho, who had the time to begin his second attack on campus. (no author, 2007).Additionally, school administrators waited until nearly 20 minutes before the second attack to give campus wide notification of the initial murders.The off-campus investigation of the first shooting and the delayed waning certainly advantaged Cho, as he was given both additional time and the necessary space in which to effect his devastating plan.