A portrait is emerging of One Goh, 43, a troubled man who apparently returned to Oikos University in Oakland, Ca., to settle a score, killing six students and a secretary, the Los Angeles Times reports. Goh had been expelled from Oikos this year “for behavioral problems, anger management,” Oakland Police Chief Howard Jordan said. Goh had been teased for his broken English, and he felt bullied and angry, Jordan said.
He arrived at the campus in an industrial section of East Oakland Monday morning looking for a certain administrator, but when he couldn’t find her, he grabbed a secretary and headed to a classroom. He allegedly ordered the students inside to line up against the wall. When some refused, he opened fire, officials said. He had time during the rampage, authorities believe, to reload and continue shooting. “We don’t believe that any of the victims were the ones that teased him,” Jordan said. “We believed he stopped [shooting] because people were able to use the phone. He could have heard people calling 911.” Police spokeswoman Johnna Watson said Goh "has not shown any sign of remorse for his actions."
Read full entry »No matter how shocking and headline-grabbing, shooting rampages on college campuses are extremely rare, says criminologist James Alan Fox of Northeastern...
Read full entry »Virginia Tech did not violate federal law in its email response time that notified students of a shooting before a campus rampage that left 33 people dead...
Read full entry »The jury's finding Wednesday that Virginia Tech was negligent in its reaction to a campus gunman who killed 33 people, including himself, in 2007 could play into the politics of a growing movement to allow college students to arm themselves on campus, reports the Christian Science Monitor. Families were awarded $8 million after the jury found the university waited too long to notify students that a gunman, who turned out to be a student named Seung Hui-Cho, was walking the campus.
The verdict is a point that gun-rights groups say they'll pick up and use to argue for states to allow legal gun carry on college campuses. “It's hard to tell what implications this ruling will have on colleges in the rest of the nation, but I think it does serve to put them on notice that they are liable for student safety,” says David Burnett, spokesman for Students for Concealed Carry, a group founded after the Virginia Tech shooting. “I think it will make it easier for us to point to these financial penalties and say, 'Virginia Tech may be able to assume those liabilities, but can you as a college afford to spend $100,000 per victim if, heaven forbid, you're the target of the next shooting?' ”
Read full entry »A prosecutor's statement that Thomas M. "T.J." Lane III, the Chardon, Ohio, teen who authorities say shot and killed three high school students and wounded...
Read full entry »A third Chardon, Oh., High School student has died in the shooting attack by T.J. Lane, 17, on Monday, says the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Lane, 17, appeared...
Read full entry »T.J. Lane, accused shooter at Ohio's Chardon High School had violence in his life from the beginning, says the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Court records show his father had been arrested many times for violent crimes against women in his life, including Lane's mother. More than once, police or courts warned him to stay away from the boy and his mother. Authorities said the teen walked into the high school cafeteria yesterday and aimed it at several boys. In the end, three students were seriously wounded and two were killed.
T.J. Lane is to appear in Geauga County Juvenile Court today. A statement from his family said, "This is something that could never have been predicted. TJ's family has asked for some privacy while they try to understand how such a tragedy could have occurred and while they mourn this terrible loss for their community." Fellow students said the 17-year-old was quiet. Some said he was sweet; others said he had a simmering temper. His Facebook page, now deleted, had a photo that showed him bare-chested, glaring down toward the camera. In another picture, dated 11 days ago, he is sitting on a bed peering out from behind a giant teddy bear with a heart that says, "Be Mine." He listed his interests as anime and primitive hunting.
Read full entry »In the chaotic minutes after a fatal shooting yesterday, Virginia Tech officials were forced to test emergency procedures put in place after the 2007 campus rampage that resulted in 33 deaths, the Christian Science Monitor reports. Officials used Twitter to send a campus lockdown notice to students seven minutes after the 12:30 p.m. shooting of a campus police officer, who was making a routine traffic stop. The school said the gunman, who approached the officer on foot, fled on foot.
Soon after the shooting, a second person believed to be the gunman was found dead of a gunshot wound in another campus parking lot with the weapon nearby. In the April 2007 massacre, Virginia Tech officials were criticized and fined for waiting two hours after the first bullets were fired before issuing a campus alert. Virginia Tech now is appealing a $55,000 fine imposed by the U.S. Department of Education for violating the rules of an emergency notification policy in the 2007 shooting.
Read full entry »The scandal that ended the reign of longtime Penn State University football coach Joe Paterno is emblematic of a parallel judicial universe that exists...
Read full entry »The U.S. Department of Education has scheduled a December 7-9 hearing on Virginia Tech's appeal of $55,000 in fines for failing to notify campus sooner in a 2007 shooting rampage in which a student killed 32 students and faculty, the Associated Press reports. Virginia Tech officials have denied wrongdoing, saying the department is holding them to higher standards than were in place the day of the shootings.
"The relatively small monetary penalty is not the reason for this appeal," Attorney General Kenneth Cuccinelli said. "The university has already expended millions as a result of the tragedy. The main purpose of the appeal is to compel the federal Department of Education to treat Virginia Tech fairly and to apply a very poorly defined and subjectively applied federal law consistently and correctly." The agency found the university violated a federal campus safety law by waiting more than two hours after two students were shot to death before sending out a campus wide warning. By that time, student gunman Seung-Hui Cho was chaining shut the doors to a classroom building where he killed 30 more and then himself.
Read full entry »With Republicans enjoying more control in statehouses this year, the odds for more pro-gun legislation looked very good. In two gun-friendly states, Arizona and Texas, long-sought gun proposals met a surprising demise, says Stateline.org. In both states, pro-gun activists hoped to authorize the possession of firearms for self-defense on college campuses. Such measures have been a priority for many GOP lawmakers since the 2007 shootings at Virginia Tech, where a gunman killed 32 teachers and students before turning the gun on himself.
So far, only Utah specifically allows guns on campus, says the National Conference of State Legislatures. As many as 15 states have considered guns-on-campus legislation this year, and Arizona and Texas were seen as the likeliest places for such bills to succeed. Until the very end of each state’s legislative session, it looked as though they would. Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer vetoed a bill, saying it might unintentionally allow guns near elementary and secondary schools along with college campuses. In Texas, a plan to allow guns on campus had the support of the governor and two-thirds of the state Senate Even so, the legislation ran into procedural difficulties when the House ruled that it could not be attached to a larger university financing bill. There is talk around Austin that some House members quietly quashed the controversial measure on purpose.
The Arizona legislature gave final approval to a measure that will allow guns on college campuses, although it doesn't go so far as to allow them inside buildings or classrooms, says the Arizona Republic. The final version of the bill requires state community colleges and universities to allow both concealed and openly carried weapons in their public rights of way, which would likely include public roads and adjacent sidewalks.
The original version would have allowed guns everywhere on college campuses, including in classrooms. kSponsoring Sen. Ron Gould said he narrowed the scope to assure the bill's passage. A spokesman for Gov. Jan Brewer refused comment on whether she would sign the bill, but she historically has supported measures expanding gun rights. Arizona and 24 other states allow public colleges and universities to make their own decisions about regulating firearms on campus. None in Arizona allows the public to carry guns on campus.
The U.S. Department of Education fined Virginia Tech $55,000 for failing to warn the Blacksburg, Va., campus quickly after two students were shot...
Read full entry »Community colleges are examining their safety programs as they see more mental illness in their student populations, an issue highlighted by the Arizona-shooting suspect, whose behavior on campus had alarmed school officials, the Wall Street Journal reports. The scrutiny comes as enrollment grows and state funding shrinks for these colleges, which serve tens of thousands of students, who may take just a class or two and almost never live on campus.
“We feel the need to pay more attention to this subject than before,” said Rolando Montoya, provost at Miami Dade College, which hired a consultant to help formalize the procedures it uses to identify and deal with troubled students. Schools that don’t have ”threat assessment” programs are seeking consultants to develop plans, said Brett Sokolow of the National Center for Higher Education Risk Management. “They all want to know how quickly you can set this up,” he said.
Read full entry »A growing majority of colleges nationwide are keeping tabs on students through “threat assessment teams” charged with identifying dangerous students, prompting debate over how much power the schools should have as they try to flag disturbing behavior, reports USA Today. Virginia and Illinois now legally require such teams, and 80% of colleges nationwide have started them since the 2007 massacre at Virginia Tech that left 32 people dead. At Pima Community College in Arizona, a Behavior Assessment Committee identified alleged gunman Jared Loughner as a person of concern months before a weekend massacre that killed six and injured 13 others, and the school suspended him.
Questions are now being raised about the appropriateness and effectiveness of the teams. In the wake of the Arizona shooting, some experts are questioning whether the school could have done more to help Loughner, or to alert authorities beyond campus borders. “There’s a dangerous person put out in the community,” says Stetson University College of Law professor Peter Lake. Since April 2007, news reports show that at least 67 people have been killed and 69 others injured in attacks by U.S. college students. Threat assessment teams, also given softer names such as “behavioral intervention” or “student of concern” committees, spread quickly after the Virginia Tech tragedy, where various officials each noticed red flags but didn’t connect the dots in time to stop Seung Hui Cho from going on a rampage. The number of schools with threat assessment teams increased from roughly 20 before Virginia Tech to about 1,600 today.
Link: http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2011-01-13-colleges-keep-watch-for-violent-students_N.htm
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