There were problems, to be sure, with the way state and local authorities responded to the shootings at Virginia Tech nearly one year ago.
Ideally, authorities would have stopped the tragedy from ever happening. Whether they had the ability to do so, however, is another discussion -- one that will likely never happen, at least in a court of law, if victims' families accept cash settlements from the authorities in exchange for waiving their right to sue over the crisis' handling.
Though university and first responders' actions before and during the shootings were far from ideal, this settlement offer wrongly implies that grieving families should hold them responsible -- a dubious idea.
The offer, announced last Wednesday on the Web site of The Virginian-Pilot, would provide each victim's family with $100,000 in addition to any future medical and counseling expenses associated with the attack. The only catch would be that the settlement bars the families from suing Virginia Tech, the city of Blacksburg or the commonwealth of Virginia for any negligence on their part, the report states.
Though the settlement itself shows that authorities are concerned enough about their handling of the crisis to offer it, we still wonder what argument victims' families would have to stand on if they sued them for negligence.
The shooting rampage by troubled Virginia Tech senior Cho Seung-hui that killed 32 people, though tragic, was not the kind of crisis universities face regularly.
Since then, several more shootings on campus, including a Feb. 14 shooting at Northern Illinois University that killed five people, have brought grief to students nationwide. Virginia Tech was not the scene of the first violent campus rampage in the nation's history, either.
Though first responders could have acted quicker to notify Virginia Tech students of the immediate danger -- a fact that colleges have since recognized -- ultimately, the responsibility for negligence lies with the gun seller who provided Cho with the weapons he used to kill 32 people, the most ever in a school shooting.
Even if Virginia Tech officials had recognized its student's propensity for violence, it could not have prevented him from returning to campus with the intention to commit mass murder.
As painful as the subject is for those likely still grieving for loved ones, all parties involved should save their accusations for the real culprits: murderers and their enablers.
Written by the staff of the Daily Free Press at Boston University
