Keep Steger at Tech to Champion Reforms

Aug 31, 07:42 AM

Current Headlines: Charles W. Steger's tenure as president of Virginia Tech will be forever defined by the tragedy that occurred there on April 16, 2007.

Fair or not, that is the reality.

A powerful argument can be made - and some parents are making it forcefully - that Steger should step down in recognition of the errors that occurred before and during the fateful day when 32 students and faculty died at the hands of a deranged gunman, student Seung-Hui Cho.

Steger's departure would provide a symbolic sacrifice, an honorable recognition that - even if he was not directly to blame - something horrendous occurred on his watch.

Simply put, Steger failed to imagine and adequately prepare for the worst.

Aside from symbolism, however, there would be no discernible benefit in Steger's taking the fall for a catastrophe rooted first in the madness of a mass murderer and, second , in legal and cultural norms that extend well beyond the Tech campus.

The most specific error attributed to Tech officials by a comprehensive, four-month review ended Thursday was failure to promptly spread word of two shooting deaths that occurred early on the morning of April 16.

Thinking that a lover's quarrel was at fault, and that the perpetrator had left campus, officials waited about two hours to inform the broader community. By then, it was only a matter of moments before Cho let loose a barrage of gunfire that resulted in dozens of deaths.

"It is the panel's judgment that, all things considered, the toll could have been reduced" by an earlier warning, the Tech review panel concluded. But members also said, and reasonably so, that "none of these measures would likely have averted a mass shooting altogether."

Beyond that, it is heartbreaking to review the series of missed opportunities to intervene with a clearly troubled student. Faculty, students, campus counselors and police all glimpsed Cho's problems at one point or another, but no one ever connected the dots. Existence of a risk-assessment team, bringing mental health, security and legal experts together for regular assessments of potentially dangerous students, might have brought the picture into focus before it was too late.

The larger context for the tragedy, however, is a culture of confusion about the privacy rights of college students, a mental health system too overextended to provide meaningful follow-up on court orders and gun availability that resists even minimal efforts to keep weapons out of the wrong hands.

None of those was of Charles Steger's making, and none is within his power alone to remedy.

Steger could take the lead, however, in pressing a host of recommendations involving student privacy and mental health treatment. In Virginia, no more than nationally, the pendulum has simply tilted too far away from professional and parental involvement in troubling situations.

Careful reading of privacy laws makes clear that personal rights do not trump community safety in every instance. More can be done to tweak those laws, without unduly jeopardizing student confidentiality. The Tech report offers a blueprint to how.

Who better to lead the way than a college president who has lived the nightmare others might just as easily have faced?

Charles Steger's resignation or firing might satisfy an understandable urge to assign blame for an unfathomable event. His continued service might accomplish something much larger.

(c) 2007 Virginian - Pilot. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.