Apr 17, 2007
You’ve Got Mail
Why you should check your email frequently.
“A gunman is loose on campus. Stay in buildings until further notice. Stay away from all windows.”
I don’t know if the university was to blame, but the first email came out 2 hrs after the first shooting. Of course, I don’t think they knew they had a rampage at that point.
I have been notified of many things via email: births, deaths, all sorts of variants of good and bad news, but never that I was being pursued by a gunman. How many students do you think thought it was spam? Can you image some of the SMS messages that were sent back and forth between them?
Perhaps registering students cell phone numbers to send out SMS messages in case of emergencies would be slightly more direct in the event of emergencies.
Update: boing boing talks about the SMS notification possibility here, obviously following my lead. Although it may not accomplish much I do think it’s a step in the right direction, and not at all difficult to implement. The world needs more real time!
The lingering question I have is how could Cho, a lousy playwright and stalker, who had done time in a mental institution, have bought a gun so easily? You would think ‘mental institution’ might flag a background check?!?
I’m an idiot. What’s an SMS message? Is that fancy talk for texting?
Yeah. Fancy for “short message service.”
I’ve been watching the coverage on this stuff for the past 2 days and everyone is ragging VA Tech for not getting the word out. All I can think is: what could they have done? Think if this happened on UGA’s enormous campus? There is no reasonable way to get info to all people in a timely manner. Even SMS messages are limited to people checking their phones. When I’m on campus, my phone is off the whole time. Teachers require you to turn them off.
True. But they could have gotten Tom Cruise to read his plays and predict the crime in advance.
That shit is seriously twisted…
Gun laws are definitely going to become a big issue once again. Philadelphia, aka “Murder City,” does something incredible. All confiscated guns get melted down and except for the occasional playground that’s made, they are turned into tanks and other military devices. Yes, that’s right children, guns and violence are bad, unless the government is at war killing those other kinds of people, you know poor, dark ones.
Philly even had a “no-questions asked day” where you could bring in your “pistols, Saturday Night Specials, sawed off shotguns, rifles, semi-automatics and other firearms.”
Which what’s a “Saturday Night Special?”
http://www.phila-tribune.com/channel/cityregion/fattahticker.asp
http://www.philasafesound.org/news/pr_060305.php
I can’t believe nobody took this guys situation more seriously. It shows how fucked our mental health system is. Those plays are pretty hardcore.
e.- A saturday night special is a killer Skynerd song.