3 of 100 DOCUMENTS The Boston Herald April 20, 2007 Friday ALL EDITIONS Op-Ed; Society, heed the warning signs BYLINE: By JACK LEVIN SECTION: EDITORIAL; Pg. 019 LENGTH: 575 words In the aftermath of the horrendous mass murder at Virginia Tech, Americans are asking what lessons we might learn to prevent a similar tragedy. Two conclusions seem clear from the materials sent by the killer to NBC News. First, as he is portrayed in photographs brandishing his firearms, Cho Seung-Hui wanted desperately to be seen as a strong and powerful figure and, second, he was not a Ted Bundy-type sociopath lacking in the capacity for remorse. Otherwise, he would not have felt a need to justify his crimes by producing a lengthy manifesto. Instead, Cho saw himself as a victim of injustice and the people he shot as villains who were responsible for all of his personal miseries. Are there warning signs from which we can predict who will turn out to be a mass murderer? Clearly, school shooters including Cho share characteristics. They are chronically depressed and frustrated, blame everyone but themselves for their personal problems, are socially isolated, and have access to and training in the use of firearms. Yet we cannot predict, based on this profile, who will and will not turn out to be a mass killer, because hundreds of thousands of students fit the profile but would never kill anyone. Are we to lock away countless people for the sins of a few. There is, however, a way for warning signs to help. We should be using them to identify troubled students long before they have become troublesome - not to punish them, but to give them a helping hand. If you wait until a student has murderous intentions, there is really little if anything we can do to stop him. Recognizing that he was a potential threat to the students, one instructor at Virginia Tech tried to get Cho into therapy, but he refused to go. From Cho's viewpoint, why should he get counseling when he is the only sane student on campus. Cho reasons: Let my instructor get therapy; give it to my classmates. They are all crazy, not me. If someone had intervened much earlier, however, the killer might have been willing to take the help that he needed. Yet, until Cho looked threatening, he was pretty much ignored. We Americans are suffering from an eclipse of community. Many states - especially California, Alaska, Illinois, New York, Florida and Texas - have an abundance of strangers; individuals who have moved hundreds, perhaps thousands, of miles for the sake of a new beginning or a last resort. Not coincidentally, these states also have more than their share of mass killings. Moreover, when they arrive on campus for their freshman year, most college students are strangers to one another. Some make the adjustment with ease; others remain isolated. And it is not just students. Growing numbers of Americans do not have their support systems in place. Some have relocated to find a better job and are strangers in their new community; others are simply shy about making friends or getting to know their neighbors. Whatever the reason, they have no place to turn when they get into trouble; they lack family and friends to give them encouragement and support. Some of them solve their problems through the barrel of a gun. Warning signs are effective, but not to identify a mass murderer. We should use them to intervene as early as possible because we want to improve the quality of life for all of our students. In the process, we might even prevent the next mass murder. Jack Levin is the director of the Brudnick Center on Violence at Northeastern University. LOAD-DATE: April 20, 2007 LANGUAGE: ENGLISH PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper Copyright 2007 Boston Herald Inc. |