One room Amish
school in Lancaster County, PA
tragedy, and increased security in Connecticut as a result. Demolition, return to the earth here.
Virginia Tech link...and a similarity we noticed; from across
the pond, story of Omaha mall event. Remember
Bernadine Dorne and Bill Ayers, the "Weathermen?" A blast from the past, as it were...opeing the
door for Charter
School debate once again?
Thorny issues schools,
colleges and society at large are facing in the 21st century:
Pa. suspect: Caretaker by day, 'Jihad
Jane' online
YAHOO
By MARYCLAIRE DALE, Associated Press Writer
Thu Mar 11, 8:11 am ET
PHILADELPHIA – Colleen LaRose spent long days caring for her
boyfriend's father in a second-floor apartment in Pennsburg, a small
town north of Philadelphia.
But online, federal authorities say, the devoted caretaker developed a
daring alter ego, refashioning herself as "Jihad Jane" while helping
recruit and finance Muslim terrorists — and eventually moving overseas
to try to kill an artist she perceived as an enemy to Islam.
LaRose, 46, was charged Tuesday with conspiring with jihadist fighters
and pledging to commit murder in the name of a Muslim holy war, or
jihad. The indictment was announced hours after authorities arrested
seven suspected terrorists in Ireland allegedly linked to LaRose, who
has been in prison since her Oct. 15 arrest while returning to the
United States.
In e-mails recovered by the FBI over 15 months, LaRose agreed to marry
an online contact from South Asia so he could move to Europe. She also
agreed to become a martyr, the indictment said.
But perhaps she felt like one already.
Born in Michigan, LaRose moved to Texas as a girl and had married twice
by age 24. Her first marriage came at 16, to a man twice her age in
Tarrant County, Texas, public records show. There are no records or
reports of any children from either union, both of which were long over
by the time she met Pennsylvanian Kurt Gorman in 2005.
LaRose lived with Gorman and his father in Pennsburg, caring for the
older man while Gorman worked at his family's small business in another
town, Gorman said this week.
"She was a good-hearted person," he said Wednesday. "She pretty much
stayed around the house."
But online, she grew increasingly devoted to a loose band of what
authorities say were violent co-conspirators from around the world.
They found her after she posted a YouTube video in June 2008 saying she
was "desperate to do something somehow to help" ease the suffering of
Muslims, the indictment said.
She eventually agreed to try to kill Swedish artist Lars Vilks, who had
angered Muslims by depicting the Prophet Muhammad with the body of a
dog, according to a U.S. official who wasn't authorized to discuss
details of the investigation and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Despite Web images that show LaRose in a Muslim head covering, Gorman
said he never picked up on any Muslim leanings. She never attended
religious services of any kind, he said. Gorman, 47, sensed nothing
amiss in their five-year relationship until the day after his father's
funeral last August.
"I came home and she was gone. It doesn't make any sense," he said
Wednesday outside his firm in nearby Quakertown.
That same day, LaRose had removed the hard drive from her computer and
set off for Europe — federal authorities won't specify where. She had
swiped Gorman's passport and planned to give it to the co-conspirator
she had agreed to marry, the indictment said.
It's unclear how she was able to travel overseas, given that the FBI,
presumably tipped to her online postings, had interviewed her July 17.
According to the indictment, she denied soliciting funds for any
terrorist causes or making the postings ascribed to "JihadJane."
By Sept. 30, she wrote online that it would be "an honour & great
pleasure to die or kill for" her intended spouse, the indictment said.
"Only death will stop me here that I am so close to the target!" she is
accused of writing.
Her federal public defenders, Mark T. Wilson and Ross Thompson,
declined to on the case again Wednesday.
Irish police disclosed, though, that they had arrested two Algerians,
two Libyans, a Palestinian, a Croatian and an American woman married to
one of the Algerian suspects. They were not identified by name.
"I'm glad she didn't kill me," Vilks told The Associated Press on
Wednesday, saying the suspects appeared to be "low-tech." He said he
has built defense systems in his home to thwart would-be terrorists,
including a safe room and electrified barbed wire.
LaRose is scheduled to appear in court March 18 on the indictment,
which was returned March 4 and unsealed Tuesday. The document does not
link her to any organized terrorist groups.
She is unusual in being one of just a handful of U.S. women ever
charged with terrorism, the Justice Department said. And her online
conversations suggest she knew that to be an advantage — as she thought
her blond, American profile would help her move freely in Sweden to
carry out the attack, the indictment said.
The case "shatters the conventional wisdom that somehow the U.S. is
immune to the heady currents of radicalization that have affected
citizens of other Western countries," said Georgetown University
professor Bruce Hoffman, an international securities expert.
LaRose lived in a tidy red brick apartment building on Main Street, a
busy roadway lined with porch-front houses, many decorated with
American flags, and a post office.
"It's a great place. A quiet little town," said Pennsburg real estate
agent Debbie Turner. "But you never know who your neighbors are. You
have to be careful."
LaRose had a few minor convictions in Texas in the 1980s for
trespassing and other misdemeanors, according to online records, which
list her then as 4 feet 11 and 105 pounds. She was also twice arrested
in Texas on misdemeanor public intoxication charges.
"For all intents and purposes, she's the neighbor next door," said
Hoffman, noting that the Internet enables like minds around the world
to meet up, for better or worse.
"You could get all the thrills of participation in an illegal
clandestine act in the comfort of your own bedroom," he said. "This is
someone who, I think, because of the communicative power of the
Internet is able to ... enter into something that is larger than
herself."
FACT
CHECK: Civilian police officers responded
to the incident and a female police officer fired 4 shots into the
suspected terrorist.
I-BBC - Page last updated at 17:03
GMT, Sunday, 8 November 2009
US Senate may probe army
shooting
Flags at Fort Hood and the across the US
are flying at half mast
|
Senior US Senator Joe Lieberman says
he plans to open a congressional investigation into last week's deadly
shooting at a Texas army base.
Mr Lieberman, who chairs the
Senate Homeland Security Committee, told Fox TV that he wanted to find
out whether it was a terrorist attack.
Nidal Malik Hasan, a Muslim army major, is suspected of
killing 13 people.
Mr Lieberman also said he hoped to determine whether the army
missed signs that Maj Hasan harboured extreme views.
The 39-year-old army psychiatrist opened fire at the Fort
Hood base on Thursday. Besides those killed, 29 people were wounded.
Maj Hasan was shot by a
fellow soldier and remains in a coma.
'Rants'
Mr Lierberman said that if Maj Hasan had shown signs of
becoming an Islamist radical, the army should have discharged him.
 |
MAJOR NIDAL MALIK HASAN
Born in US to Palestinian parents
Joined the army and trained to be a
psychiatrist
Treated soldiers returning from combat
zones
Described as a devout Muslim
Said to have been unhappy about imminent
overseas deployment
|
The Associated Press news agency reports that some of Maj
Hasan's
colleagues had expressed concern about his growing anger over the US
wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Another army psychiatrist, Val
Finnell, told AP he had complained to army administrators about what he
considered Maj Hasan's "anti-American" rants.
"In retrospect, I'm not surprised he did it," Mr Finnell said
of the shootings.
Investigators are still looking into the motive of the
attack.
But Army Chief of Staff George Casey warned against
speculation.
He
told ABC's This Week programme on Sunday that focusing on Maj Hasan's
religion could "heighten the backlash" against all Muslims in the
military.
Reports suggested that Maj Hasan, who was due to be sent to
Afghanistan, had been increasingly unhappy in the army.
His cousin told US media last week that he had been opposed
to his imminent deployment, describing it as his "worst nightmare".
Mr Hasan's cousin also said the gunman had been battling
racial harassment because of his "Middle Eastern ethnicity."
Maj Hasan was born in the US of Palestinian parents and has
been described as a devout Muslim.
Ex-Radical
Talks of Education and
Justice, Not Obama
By COLIN MOYNIHAN
October 27, 2008
Over the last several months, as pundits and partisans have debated the
significance of his relationship with Senator Barack Obama, William
Ayers has avoided the limelight, steering clear of political commentary
and public pronouncements.
But on Sunday afternoon, Mr. Ayers, 63, a founder of the 1960s-era
radical group the Weather Underground, a former fugitive, former
Chicago Citizen of the Year and current professor at the University of
Illinois at Chicago, appeared without fanfare at the Stella Adler
Studio of Acting, in Chelsea, to participate in a symposium on
educational justice.
In 1995, Mr. Ayers held a fund-raiser for Mr. Obama, who was running
for a seat in the Illinois State Senate. The two men later served
together on the boards of two Chicago philanthropic groups as well as
on the board of an education reform organization. The two men have been
described as friendly, but not close.
The campaign of his Republican opponent, Senator John McCain, has used
Mr. Obama’s ties to raise questions about his fitness to be president.
On Sunday, after Mr. Ayers was introduced to an audience of about 50
people who had bought tickets to the event, the moderator, the WNYC
radio host Leonard Lopate, asked, “Does this mean I can’t run for
president?”
“It means you can win,” Mr. Ayers said in response.
But Mr. Ayers, who was part of a group that claimed responsibility for
bombing several buildings including the Capitol, the Pentagon, banks
and police stations, seemed to go out of his way to avoid presidential
politics.
When he spoke about a person from his neighborhood — Mr. Obama has
several times referred to Mr. Ayers as simply “a guy from my
neighborhood” — some audience members leaned forward in anticipation.
It turned out that Mr. Ayers was not talking about the junior senator
from Illinois but rather about the poet Gwendolyn Brooks, who was also
from Chicago.
While describing his views on education and social justice, Mr. Ayers
hardly resembled the unrepentant terrorist that his critics have sought
to paint him as while attacking the Obama campaign.
He urged one man in the audience, a principal of a South Bronx high
school, to establish closer ties with parents in his school district.
He praised students at a high school in Detroit who started a farm.
And he called upon educators to establish curriculums that help equip
students to be active in society.
“In a democracy, we educate for citizenship,” he said. “Not for
obedience of authority, but for participation.”
After the discussion, some audience members asked questions.
“What happened to the activism?” one woman asked. “What happened to the
revolution?”
Mr. Ayers at first mentioned the realignment of 1994, in which
Republicans took control of Congress, which some Republicans referred
to as a revolution, and then went on to talk about the Rev. Dr. Martin
Luther King Jr.’s uses of the term “revolution,” and saying that it
would be futile to emulate political models from the 1960s and ’70s.
“Can we imagine another world?” he said.
Deal Reached In School Lawsuit;
Desegregation Fight In Hartford Dragged On For 12 Years
By Associated Press
Published on 4/5/2008
Hartford (AP) — A tentative settlement was reached Friday in the
long-standing school desegregation lawsuit that for 12 years has sought
to remedy the racial isolation in Hartford schools.
The question of whether the city's schools must be desegregated was
settled by the landmark state Supreme Court Sheff vs. O'Neill ruling in
the case in 1996, but the high court left it to the Sheff plaintiffs
and the state to figure out how to do it.
The latest deal requires the state to develop a detailed plan to
address racial disparity, including more magnet schools in Hartford
suburbs and an increase in the number of spots available in suburban
schools for Hartford students.
The agreement also requires that at least 80 percent of Hartford
students who want to attend integrated schools be accommodated by 2012.
The settlement must be approved by a state judge and the General
Assembly.
“This is a watershed day in our ongoing efforts to ensure that all of
Hartford's children are afforded their constitutional right to a
quality integrated education,” said Dennis Parker, Director of the ACLU
Racial Justice Program and an attorney in the case.
Parker said that for the first time in 12 years, the state must follow
a detailed framework to assure racial balance.
Others involved in negotiating the agreement included lawyers with the
NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. and Center for
Children's Advocacy.
The original case was brought in 1989 on behalf of Milo Sheff, who was
then a 10-year-old student in Hartford's Annie Fisher School. Following
the 1996 Supreme Court ruling, the case landed back in lower courts
after plaintiffs complained over a lack of progress.
The two sides reached an agreement on a four-year plan in 2003: It was
left largely to Hartford to implement the terms of the settlement by
building magnet schools and sending students to suburban schools
through the “Open Choice” program.
However, the numerical goals of the 2003 agreement specifying levels of
integration were not met and after the accord expired last year, the
plaintiffs returned to court.
“Equal opportunity to a quality, integrated education is a fundamental
right and for the first time there is a clear structure in place for
the state to follow to ensure that no child is denied that right,”
Parker said.
Some See Connecticut
Reflected In Obama Speech
By RINKER BUCK | Courant Staff Writer
March 19, 2008
In his landmark speech on race Tuesday in Philadelphia, Sen. Barack
Obama pointedly addressed America's long "racial stalemate" in terms
that were bound to strike familiar chords throughout the country.
But Obama's heartfelt ode to a "more just, more equal, more free"
America also was a stark and brutally familiar description of
Connecticut, where geography and neighborhoods are often defined by
race, where Hartford schools continue to be embroiled in the Sheff v.
O'Neill lawsuit and where even major areas of government like the state
police are grappling with racial strife.
Obama scheduled his remarks in Philadelphia, the birthplace of the
Constitution, after news reports on the comments of his friend and
former Chicago pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., on American racism
continued to dog his campaign over the weekend.
In his speech, Obama condemned Wright's comments as "not only wrong but
divisive," yet he did not just issue the politician's standard
distancing from a supporter who has embarrassed him. He instead used
his speech as a springboard for a remarkably candid and perhaps risky
assessment of the continuing problem of race in American society, words
that echoed the theme of challenging the status quo that has marked his
campaign.
"Nutmeggers can really recognize what Obama was talking about in his
speech," said John C. Brittain, one of the lawyers who filed
Connecticut's Sheff v. O'Neill school desegregation lawsuit in 1989.
"Because what he was saying is the story of their home, too."
Despite the Connecticut Supreme Court's 1996 finding that "extreme
isolation" characterized the state's schools, the legislature, the
governor and the parties to the lawsuit are still haggling over
implementing the desegregation order more than 12 years later.
"There has been some limited progress as a result of Sheff v. O'Neill,
where minority kids, say, have a chance to attend better suburban
schools," Brittain said. "But 18 years after the case was filed we
still face the essential issue that Hartford schools are completely
black and the suburbs are white. That's exactly the kind of stalemate
Obama was talking about in his speech."
Obama is significant, Brittain said, because instead of running on the
race issue and appealing only to his own community, his campaign is
about aspirations to go beyond past obstacles over race and offer
genuine hope for change. "The profound mistake of Rev. Wright's sermons
is not that he spoke about racism in our society," Obama said in
Philadelphia. "It's that he spoke as if our society was static; as if
no progress has been made; as if this country ... is still irrevocably
bound to a tragic past. But what we know — what we have seen — is that
America can change."
In a far-ranging speech that attempted to link racial issues from
America's constitutional era to the present, Obama also said the
Constitution "was stained by this nation's original sin of slavery." He
said anger over racial issues is justifiable within both the African
American and white communities, concluding that the country is stuck in
a "racial stalemate."
Obama also said the race issue is distracting the public from other
problems facing America, and he excoriated an American "corporate
culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices and
short-term greed."
"I've certainly never heard a politician use language this blunt," said
Mark Silk, the director of Trinity College's Leonard E. Greenberg
Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life and author of
"Spiritual Politics: Religion and America Since World War II."
Silk said most politicians are deliberately vague on the subject of
race to avoid raising a difficult subject, a stricture that Obama
abandoned in Tuesday's speech. Silk also said Obama might have been
most frank in addressing the assumptions of black Americans, not whites.
"At the core of the Obama campaign is a riposte to the notion in the
black community that American society is irredeemably racist," Silk
said. "Going all the way back to Booker T. Washington, and his doctrine
of self-reliance for blacks, there has been a deeply separatist strain
in the thinking of the black community.
"Because racism was considered so ingrained in America, so the thinking
went, blacks had to go it alone and be apart. But Obama's speech was a
call to move away from this past. It was courageous."
New Englanders should find significance in what Obama said for another
reason, Silk said. He pointed out that he spent 10 years in Atlanta in
the 1980s before returning north, which gave him a fresh perspective on
the Northeast.
"In Atlanta, race just seems to be center stage all the time, while in
Connecticut, because of the way neighborhoods and schools are divided
up, it becomes easy to ignore race issues," Silk said. "For a lot of
white people who don't live down South, the presence of race in life
and society is just not front-of-mind. But Obama has been forced to
deal with this himself, and now he is forcing us to think about it,
too."
Obama joined Trinity United Church of Christ on Chicago's South Side 20
years ago, impressed by the congregation's dedication to economic
revival and community service. The Rev. John Deckenback of Frederick,
Md., a conference minister, or bishop, for the UCC denomination, said
many of the themes in Obama's speech date from historic commitments of
the church. This included the large role the church played in the 1840s
in the case of the Amistad, the Spanish ship that carried slaves who
rebelled and who eventually were freed after standing trial in New
Haven and Hartford.
"You have to remember that in the UCC, the same denomination that
Wright and Obama belong to, we are the religious descendants of the
same people who raised money to return the Amistad captives back to
Africa," Deckenback said. "UCC has in its DNA from its very beginnings
being responsible critics of our society. That's rooted in the Amistad
story, which holds a special place in UCC's teachings."
Deckenback said that after the New England — and largely Connecticut —
founders of the Amistad Defense Committee finished paying for the
return of the Amistad slaves to Africa, money left over was used to
establish the American Missionary Association, which founded schools
for freed blacks throughout the South, including Howard University in
Washington and Fisk University in Nashville.
"These were New England Congregationalists who believed that education
is the foundation of opportunity and that churches play a vital role in
keeping communities together," Deckenback said.
"Obama partly built that speech on those beliefs and on church history."
School
Desegregation Agreement Withdrawn
Courant Staff Report
March 5, 2008
A settlement reached last year to meet the Hartford school
desegregation targets set by the Sheff v. O'Neill lawsuit was withdrawn
Tuesday from the General Assembly, Attorney General Richard Blumenthal
said.
Blumenthal said he hopes to submit a new agreement for ratification by
the end of March.
The decades-long case to integrate city children in schools with their
suburban peers returned to court last fall after the legislature failed
to act on an agreement between the state and the plaintiffs on how to
proceed with desegregation.
The original Sheff settlement, which was reached in 2003 and expired
last year, set a target calling for 30 percent of Hartford students to
be enrolled in racially integrated schools by 2007, but that effort
fell considerably short.
In January, the Superior Court judge hearing the case ruled that the
prior agreement was still technically pending in the legislature and
would take effect March 6 if not withdrawn or voted down.
The two sides are negotiating changes broader than the changes
originally proposed under the multiyear agreement that set annual
desegregation targets, according to legislators with knowledge of the
talks.
Among the ideas now being considered are opening magnet schools for
children in the suburbs and the expansion of the Open Choice program,
which enables Hartford students to enroll in suburban schools.
Suburban Magnet Schools May
Ease
Hartford’s Endemic Segregation Problem
State Eyes A New Tack
By RACHEL GOTTLIEB FRANK | Courant Staff Writer
March 3, 2008
In an acknowledgment that attracting white students to Hartford has
been a tough sell, the focus of court-ordered desegregation efforts in
Greater Hartford may soon be shifting to the suburbs.
State education officials are talking about channeling more than $100
million toward building new magnet schools in Hartford-area towns and
increasing the number of slots for city students in suburban schools
through the Open Choice program. Officials are scrambling to meet
a deadline to either withdraw or
revise an outdated agreement between the state and the plaintiffs in
the Sheff v. O'Neill lawsuit to see if a legislative, rather than
judicial, solution can be found to the problem of unequal, segregated
education in the capital region.
The idea of basing magnet schools in the suburbs, broached last year by
Education Commissioner Mark K. McQuillan, has garnered support from key
legislators. At least three suburban districts have endorsed the idea
for the preschool and early elementary grades, according to state Rep.
Andrew Fleischmann, D-West Hartford, co-chairman of the education
committee. But significant hurdles remain, not the least of which
is that
McQuillan does not have authority to force suburban districts to accept
city children through the voluntary Open Choice program.
"There may be a need for some additional authority for the commissioner
to open more seats. That issue, among others, will need to be addressed
if that option is adopted," said state Attorney General Richard
Blumenthal, who would not discuss the specific proposals under
discussion.
The decades-long case to integrate city children in schools with their
suburban peers returned to court late last year after the legislature
failed to ratify an agreement between the state and the plaintiffs on
how to proceed with desegregation. In January, the Superior Court judge
hearing the case ruled that the prior agreement was still pending in
the legislature and would take effect March 6 if not withdrawn or voted
down.
McQuillan could not be reached for comment last week. But Fleischmann,
who has been meeting with McQuillan, the secretary of the Office of
Policy and Management, other key legislators and representatives from
Blumenthal's office said that McQuillan's ideas are included in written
proposals submitted to the plaintiffs.
To date, Blumenthal said, the only consensus reached is that dates in
the agreement submitted to the legislature last year must be
updated. Other components of the original agreement — including
the funding of
charter and vocational technical schools — remain in the revised
version that the state is hoping plaintiffs will approve and then send
back to the legislature for ratification. The newstrategy
recognizes that suburban parents have been reluctant to
send their children to Hartford.
The original Sheff settlement, which was reached in 2003 and expired
last year, set a target calling for 30 percent of Hartford students to
be enrolled in racially integrated schools by 2007, but the effort fell
short.
A study by Trinity College researchers shows that just 9 percent of the
city's students attend schools that have enough white students to
qualify as racially integrated. Meanwhile, enrollment at many Hartford
schools, including some magnets, remains almost entirely black and
Hispanic. Safety in the city is a concern that holds some
suburban parents back,
state officials have found.
In November, McQuillan conceded that the assumption that suburban
youngsters would be drawn to magnet schools run by Hartford was
mistaken, but said that six or seven magnet schools run by suburban
towns and focusing on children in pre-kindergarten through 3rd grade
could work. Parents who otherwise would pay to send their
preschool-aged children
to day care would find the offer of an all-day public preschool school
program enticing, McQuillan said.
Key legislators support McQuillan in his bid to carve a bigger role for
the suburbs. "Magnet schools in the suburbs — that makes sense to me.
We've tried the Hartford magnet experience and that hasn't worked that
well toward reducing racial isolation," said Sen. Thomas Gaffee,
D-Meriden, co-chairman of the legislature's education committee.
"Parents are extremely reluctant to send their kids into Hartford
except for some of the unique offerings like the school for the
performing arts," Gaffee said. They're concerned about the crime rate
and kids getting killed. I know that would weigh on my mind as a
parent. Suburban parents will feel a lot more secure sending their
children to a magnet school in the suburbs."
"It's a multi-pronged approach that is less reliant on Hartford," said
Fleischmann.
Hartford officials declined to comment. At least three suburban
districts have expressed interest in building
magnet schools for young children, Fleischmann said. Windsor, for
example, formed a task force to examine the potential for building a
magnet school for pre-kindergarten and kindergarten. Students who
live outside Windsor would return to their town's schools
for first grade. Simsbury is also forming a task force to explore the
option of building a magnet school in the town.
The state pays 95 percent of construction costs and contributes to the
operating costs of inter-district magnet schools. Now the
plaintiffs must sign on.
Elizabeth Horton Sheff, mother of the case's first named plaintiff,
Milo Sheff, said magnet schools probably would be more successful in
the suburbs than in Hartford. Waiting lists for successful magnet
schools and for Open Choice slots show that there is demand among
Hartford youngsters, she said. What troubles Sheff is the limited age
group that the magnets would accommodate.
"What happens after third grade? They go back to their neighborhood
schools?" she asked. "You have to talk about the 'what next?' There
should be a path all the way through."
As further incentives for towns to create more room for Hartford
students in their schools, Fleischmann and Gaffee said they would
support increasing state aid tied to children who enroll in suburban
districts. The additional funding, coupled with an emphasis on
enrolling children
beginning at an earlier age, addresses the concerns some districts
express about accepting older urban children who are years behind in
their studies, taking the hit for their low test scores and providing
enough support to help them catch up.
"If you get to educate a child from the age of 3, it's easier to make
sure they progress the way you like them to," Fleischmann said.
Closing
arguments in
latest desegregation court action
Norwalk HOUR
Associated Press
January 5, 2008
HARTFORD — Closing arguments have been made in the latest court action
involving Connecticut's landmark school desegregation case, Sheff vs.
O'Neill.
The question of whether the city's schools must be desegregated was
settled by the state Supreme Court ruling in the case in 1996, although
the high court left it to the Sheff plaintiffs and the state to figure
out how to do it.
The two sides reached an agreement on a four-year plan in 2003: It was
left largely to Hartford to implement the terms of the settlement by
building magnet schools and sending students to suburban schools
through the "Open Choice" program.
However, the numerical goals of the 2003 agreement specifying levels of
integration were not met and after the accord expired last year, the
plaintiffs returned to court.
Attorneys for the plaintiffs argued Thursday that a detailed court
order be issued to specify what the state must do to end the racial
isolation.
"We're not asking for mandatory busing," Dennis Parker, one of the
plaintiffs' lawyers, argued. "We are asking that a comprehensive plan
be put into effect."
A lawyer for Hartford urged Judge Marshall K. Berger Jr. to appoint a
monitor to oversee the desegregation case.
John Rose, Hartford's lawyer, called the 2003 stipulated agreement
between the state and the plaintiffs "a failure.
"We need a plan and it needs to be monitored by the court, he said.
It can take us places where we have never gone before," Rose said.
"This case is about children who are going nowhere fast."
An attorney for the state of Connecticut argued that no order, nor
monitor is necessary or desirable.
Ralph Urban, arguing for the state, opposed any judicial intervention,
saying a court-issued comprehensive plan to desegregate Hartford's
schools would lock resources into specific programs, making it
impossible to move them into areas where the money would be better
spent.
Berger has 120 days from Thursday to issue a ruling.
Desegregation
By Order?
Plaintiffs'
Attorneys In Sheff v. O'Neill Argue For Court-Ordered Plan,
Monitor To Direct It
By RACHEL GOTTLIEB FRANK | Courant Staff Writer
January 4, 2008
Attorneys in the landmark Sheff v. O'Neill school desegregation case
offered sharply conflicting recommendations to a Superior Court judge
who is considering ways to end the racial and social isolation of
Hartford schoolchildren.
In closing arguments Thursday, plaintiffs' attorneys asked Judge
Marshall K. Berger Jr. to issue a detailed order spelling out exactly
what the state should do to integrate city students with their suburban
counterparts. A lawyer for the city urged the court to appoint a
monitor to oversee the task.
An attorney for the state of Connecticut argued that no order, nor
monitor was necessary or desirable. The state education commissioner
can bring about the desegregation goals without judicial intervention,
he said.The closing arguments followed a six-week hiatus in the
hearing. Testimony concluded in November and Berger gave lawyers time
to prepare legal briefs.
If his questions to the lawyers offered any indication, Berger is at
least considering requests that he issue a plan for desegregation or
appoint a monitor to oversee progress.
The question of whether the city's schools must be desegregated was
settled by a state Supreme Court order in 1996, though the high court
left it to the Sheff plaintiffs and the state to figure out how to do
it. The two sides reached an agreement on a four-year plan in 2003: It
was left largely to Hartford to implement the terms of the settlement
by building magnet schools and sending students to suburban schools
through the "Open Choice" program. However, the numerical goals of the
2003 agreement specifying levels of integration were not met and after
the accord expired last year, the plaintiffs returned to court.
In testimony in November, the plaintiffs proposed leaving desegregation
efforts voluntary for parents and children, but imposing stricter
guidelines for the state and the 22 Hartford-area towns in the Sheff
district. They called for doubling the space available for city
children in suburban schools and a heavier hand by state officials to
ensure that every city child who wants a place in a suburban school or
a magnet school is accommodated.
"We're not asking for mandatory busing," Dennis Parker, one of the
plaintiffs' lawyers, argued Thursday. "We are asking that a
comprehensive plan be put into effect." Efforts to date, he argued,
have been ad hoc.
"African American and Latino children of Hartford have earned the right
to question what a constitutional right means," Parker said. "A
declaration of their rights by the Supreme Court has been ineffective
for so long."
John Rose, Hartford's lawyer, called the 2003 stipulated agreement
between the state and the plaintiffs "a failure;" though he didn't
offer a specific remedy, Rose asked for judicial oversight beyond the
role that the court has played in the past.
"We need a plan and it needs to be monitored by the court. It can take
us places where we have never gone before," Rose said. "This case is
about children who are going nowhere fast."
Berger asked Rose who he should name as a monitor if he does appoint
one. Rose suggested that the court ask the parties to suggest
names. At one point, Berger asked Parker what he would think of
appointing the commissioner of education as a monitor. Parker objected
to the idea, saying he doesn't have faith in the state's overseeing its
own progress. Since 1996, Parker said, the state's posture has been
"trust us — we're on top of this."
Ralph Urban, arguing for the state, vehemently opposed any judicial
intervention, saying a court-issued comprehensive plan to desegregate
Hartford's schools would lock resources into specific programs, making
it impossible to move them into areas where the money would be better
spent.
He conceded that the state was disappointed by the number of slots
suburban districts made available for city children and by the number
of white students enrolled in some magnet schools. But, he said, the
state is addressing concerns suburban districts have about admitting
more students through the Open Choice program by increasing the
transportation and educational subsidies and by helping to pay for more
kindergarten slots in the suburbs so districts can work with children
from a young age and avoid having to offer more remedial services for
older children.
"The question is 'What now?'" Berger asked Urban.
Now, Urban replied, the state is still working on achieving the goals
established for the first two years of a plan agreed upon in 2003.
But that's a four-year plan, Berger said. "The only people who signed
on to this plan are the plaintiffs. Hartford has not signed on." The
state legislature did not ratify the plan either.
Last year, a plan negotiated between attorneys for the Sheff plaintiffs
and the state failed to win legislative approval. It would have
required the state to spend $112 million to expand the network of
magnet, charter and vocational schools.
Urban said that the state's education commissioner has agreed to work
on the kind of plan that the plaintiffs have sought.
So "you're not averse to creating a strategic plan?" Berger asked.
"Right," Urban said. "But we don't want to be subject to a court order."
"Are you telling me that you don't want a strategic plan, but you will
deliver to me a strategic plan?" Berger asked.
"We don't think we should be ordered to deliver a strategic plan,"
Urban said. But if the court orders the state to create one, he said,
then it will.
While Urban asserts that the matter doesn't belong in court, the
plaintiffs disagree. They argue that the state Supreme Court previously
ruled that court has jurisdiction and that a second generation of
children is languishing in segregated schools since the Supreme Court
first ruled in 1996.
Berger can craft a ruling that grants the plaintiffs what they're
seeking, he can agree with the state and refrain from issuing an order,
or he can fashion a compromise that he devises himself. He has 120 days
from Thursday to issue a ruling.
A
Shift Of Minorities In Schools; 18
Years After Sheff Suit Filed, Noticeable Change In Suburbs
By MICHAEL REGAN | Courant Staff Writer
December 26, 2007
In the early 1980s, as the state engaged in a school desegregation
debate that would lead to the landmark 1989 Sheff v. O'Neill lawsuit,
Bernice O'Neal's daughter was one of the few black children enrolled in
Manchester's Verplanck Elementary School, where the minority student
population was less than 20 percent.
"There wasn't a whole lot of African American children there at all,"
O'Neal recalls. Today, O'Neal's granddaughter is among more than
220 minority students who make up about 70 percent of the pre-K through
sixth-graders at Verplanck.
And the Sheff case is back in front of a judge, who last month heard
arguments that there has not been enough progress in reducing the
racial isolation of Hartford schoolchildren. But if not much has
changed in Hartford in the 18 years since Sheff was filed, dozens of
schools in the region look much different than they did then.
While the number of minority students in Hartford's schools has
declined slightly since then, the number in the rest of the region has
nearly tripled. Outside of Hartford, school districts within the
36-town Capitol Region Education Council enrolled almost 38,000
minority students in the 2006-07 school year, up from a little more
than 14,000 in 1988-89. And while some schools outside of
Hartford have themselves become overwhelmingly minority, three out of
four minority students in those districts attend schools that would
meet the Sheff goal of having a minority enrollment below 75 percent.
They include schools such as Manchester's Verplanck, where parents like
Lilliam Irizarry, whose son Alejandro is in the fifth grade, say the
diversity makes their children's educations richer.
"He has black friends, he has Spanish friends, he has white friends, he
has Asian friends, he has friends from Pakistan, from India, from
Africa," Irizarry said. "He would be able to deal with any kind of
people."
But with the town's minority population growing steadily, Manchester
officials already are grappling with the issue of balancing the racial
makeup of its elementary schools. Longer term, some wonder if an
individual town can maintain integrated schools on its own.
"Given the small size of suburbs in Connecticut, the suburbs are going
to need regional plans as well if they're going to maintain reasonable
residential stability," said Gary Orfield, co-director of the Civil
Rights Project at UCLA and a witness in the original Sheff lawsuit. "If
you are going to have stable integration, you usually have to have
policies for it."
Moving To The Suburbs
The movement of minority families to the suburbs is a major factor in
the findings of two recent national studies: While Connecticut remains
one of the more segregated states in the country by several measures,
it is one of very few to have made any progress in reducing the racial
isolation of black and Hispanic students. One study, by the Pew
Hispanic Center, found that the proportion of Latino students attending
schools that were more than 95 percent minority fell from 24 percent in
the 1993-94 school year to 18 percent in 2005-06, the largest decline
among six states. Black enrollment in the nearly all-minority schools
dropped from 28 percent to 23 percent, fourth among seven states and
the District of Columbia.
But the other study, by Orfield's Civil Rights Project, used the same
national data to conclude that Connecticut was among the 20 most
segregated states on three measures: the proportion of black and Latino
students in schools that are more than 50 percent minority; the
proportion of blacks and Latinos in schools more than 90 percent
minority; and the percentage of white students in schools attended by
the typical black or Latino student.
Orfield said there's no inconsistency between the studies: The
desegregation effort mandated by Sheff, while "small potatoes" in his
estimation, is better than what's going on elsewhere. "There are very
few places that have any policy encouraging them to think about this
issue at all," Orfield said. "Almost anything that you do can make a
small improvement in the statistics."
What's improved the statistics most, however, is suburbanization, an
analysis of state numbers shows:
•Inter-district magnet schools — the principal means of reducing urban
segregation in Hartford and statewide — first opened in the early
1990s. Since then, enrollment has grown to more than 18,000, including
almost 13,000 minority students.
•In the seven school districts that were more than 50 percent minority
in 1988 — suburban Bloomfield and the cities of Hartford, Bridgeport,
New Haven, New Britain, New London and Waterbury — total minority
enrollment in traditional, non-magnet public schools was about 75,000
in the 2006-07 school year. That represents an increase of about 8,000
— less than 12 percent.
•Meanwhile, the number of minority children attending traditional
schools in the remaining districts increased by almost 60,000, or 156
percent, to more than 98,000. Orfield and Richard Fry, author of the
Pew study, said the growth of minority households outside central
cities is part of a national trend.
"All groups of students are suburbanizing," Fry said. "That's
true both of public school enrollments and of the whole population."
Fry's study noted that in past years the most racially isolated
students nationally have been white, and the same was true of
Connecticut: In 1988, almost half of the state's white public school
children went to schools that were at least 95 percent white. Last
year, that proportion was about 12 percent. The number of
almost-all-white schools — those with minority enrollment of less than
5 percent — has fallen from almost 400 in 1988 to just over a quarter
that number in 2006, almost entirely because of the increase in
minority students in the suburbs. In Wethersfield, for example, where
only one school had minority enrollment over 5 percent in 1988, none of
the schools now has less than 18 percent.
But that "suburbanization" doesn't occur uniformly. Of the 77,000
minority students enrolled in districts that were less than 50 percent
minority in 1988, more than half live in just 12 communities.
"Are those places going to remain integrated, or are we just seeing a
temporary process, a transitional process?" Orfield said. "That's the
billion-dollar question here."
The Right Way To Go
The original Sheff lawsuit was premised on the idea of a largely
minority city in the center of a largely white region, said Jack
Dougherty, an assistant professor at Trinity College who has studied
the Hartford-area desegregation efforts and was a witness in the latest
Sheff hearing.
"It's less clear now if that's the right way to frame things,"
Dougherty said. "There are more suburban communities that have much
more in common demographically or fiscally with the city of Hartford."
"Should the remedy be reorganized to include different suburbs in
different ways? That's the question," he said. "A great opportunity to
make a cognitive shift here is to think about both city and suburban
schools, and to recognize the variety of suburban schools. Not all
suburbs are alike."
Hartford lawyer Wesley Horton, an attorney for the plaintiffs in Sheff
v. O'Neill, said changes in the region are irrelevant to the case. "The
fact that the suburbs are more integrated isn't any use for the kids
still in Hartford," he said. "Certain kids are lucky enough that their
parents can move to the suburbs. That's wonderful. … But what about the
kids that can't?"
And Elizabeth Horton Sheff, a Hartford city council member and mother
of named plaintiff Milo Sheff, said it's too soon to be tinkering with
the settlement. Although the state Supreme Court ruled in favor of the
plaintiffs in 1996, it was another 5½ years before the state
legislature approved a plan to settle the case.
"When we started in 1989, yes, things were different," she said. "But
we didn't really get cracking with Sheff until 2003 — that's four years
ago."
Years before the settlement was approved, though, the two main remedies
of Sheff — development of magnet schools in Hartford and the region and
voluntary busing of students from Hartford to the region — were in the
works. Last year, fewer than 10 percent of Hartford's minority
students attended schools that actually met Sheff's goal of having a
minority enrollment below 75 percent, according to Dougherty's
study. Progress has been "very discouraging," Horton Sheff said.
But, she said, where the settlement's goals have been met, there have
been promising results, like higher test scores.
Still, she said, Sheff is only one means of reducing racial isolation.
Improved economic and housing opportunity would give parents of
minority students more choices of school districts.
"I believe that affordable housing should be on the plate," she said.
But, she added, "if you think that talking about providing quality
integrated education raises hackles, talk about putting affordable
housing in the suburbs and see how far you get."
A Limiting State Law?
Meanwhile, many suburban towns are themselves forced to deal with the
racial makeup of their schools under a 38-year-old state law that
prohibits racial imbalance within any district. The state says a school
is out of balance if the minority student population is 25 percent or
more above or below the district average in the same grades.
Dougherty, the Trinity professor, said the imbalance law is of limited
usefulness in promoting racial balance on a regional basis.
"The state really has no mechanism for dealing with racial change in
suburbs if Sheff doesn't address it and if the suburban racial change
is uniform," he said. "All we have right now is a mechanism that says,
'If one part of your suburb is out of whack with the rest of your
suburb, that's a problem.' But that's a limited mechanism, because that
talks about each box independently."
The most recent list released in the spring by the state
Department of Education says six schools in four districts are not in
compliance with the law because the minority student populations are 25
percent or more above or below the district average. Districts
with schools that are out of compliance have to submit plans for ending
the imbalance.
Another 30 schools are approaching racial imbalance, the department
says, because their minority enrollments are 15 percent to 25 percent
above or below the town average. Of the 13 towns on that list,
Manchester is the most often cited: six of its 10 elementary schools
have an impending imbalance, including Verplanck.
The prospect of coming under state scrutiny doesn't sit well with many
in Manchester. "They sit there and say Verplanck might be out of
balance," said Louise Svalestad, president of the Verplanck PTA and
mother of two students at the school. "You're looking at [a school in
which] 30 percent are Hispanic, 30 percent are white, 30 percent are
black — how much more balanced can you get?"
Diane Kearney, supervisor of equity programming for the Manchester
schools, said the district is looking at options for improving racial
balance in the schools so they reflect the world Manchester's children
will live in.
"School is a microcosm of what it used to be, so from that perspective,
it's important to maintain racial balance. But it shouldn't be forced
on us, that's the problem," she said. "I think it becomes
counterproductive and divisive when the law says, 'You have to do
this.'"
Longer term, though, the district is more concerned with improving race
relations townwide than with counting heads school-to-school.
"It's about building good race relations, so ultimately it doesn't
matter," said Kearney, who also has been a teacher and assistant
principal in Manchester. "If you better your race relations, then
difference becomes healthy and not divisive. Then it doesn't matter if
there's an imbalance."
To achieve that, Kearney said, the town has been engaged in
conversations about race involving students, faculty and parents for
the last several years.
"I think Manchester really is moving in a direction in which hopefully
race doesn't matter, because we are having conversations about race,"
she said. "Once you begin that conversation, I think the rest becomes
easy." "We have an advantage because we have to work together."
Sheff
Case Turns Into A Classroom;
College, Magnet School Students Are Court Observers
By MAGDALENE PEREZ | Courant Staff Writer
November 19, 2007
Before Jared Chase took a course on educational inequalities at Trinity
College, he never thought much about the challenges city students in
public schools face.
Chase grew up in Farmington, where his family of four had a house and
five cars. He went to a good school where the work was challenging, the
teachers supportive, and there was enough money to pay for
state-of-the-art facilities.
But then Chase enrolled in "Cities, Suburbs and Schools," a class
taught by Jack Dougherty, director of education studies at Trinity.
Dougherty is a witness for the plaintiffs in the landmark Sheff v.
O'Neill school desegregation case, which was recently back in court for
a hearing. And Chase — like students from many colleges and high
schools across the area — sat in as a way to learn more about
educational equality and the legal process.
In fact, research by some of Dougherty's students was key in creating a
report on the state's desegregation efforts — and where it falls short
— that Dougherty presented in court earlier this month.
For Chase, what really brought the differences between city and
suburban education home was a book he read in Dougherty's class, "The
Children in Room E4," that chronicled the experiences of fourth-graders
at Hartford's Simpson-Waverly Elementary School.
The book describes a rare field trip the children took out of the city.
Some students were amazed to see the Connecticut River. They pointed
and cheered.
"You get an understanding of the isolation city students experience,"
Chase said. "A lot of things you might take for granted."
Chase was one of several dozen students from Trinity, the University of
Connecticut and other schools to visit Hartford Superior Court over the
past two weeks as the Sheff v. O'Neill case returned to court.
Teenagers, graduate students, city magnet school children and
first-year law students attended the hearings with notebooks in hand.
Even two undergraduates studying psychology sat in the benches.
The reasons behind sending students into the courtroom is simple,
educators said: The case is being fought on behalf of educating every
Connecticut student fairly, and the hearing is an opportunity to give
students an up-close understanding of educational and legal issues.
In the nearly two decades since Sheff v. O'Neill was filed in 1989, it
has been the subject of many a master's thesis, Ph.D dissertation and
high school writing assignment, said Eugene Leach, a co-plaintiff in
the case and history professor at Trinity College.
"It's still a very innovative suit," Leach said. "I think students of
education have a lot to gain by studying it."
A former student at Wesleyan University, Ana Weibgen, wrote her senior
thesis on the Sheff case in 2005. She is now a paralegal for the racial
justice program at the American Civil Liberties Union, part of the
legal team representing the plaintiffs.
The long-running case aims to end the racial and economic isolation of
Hartford children. The plaintiffs, 10 families representing 19
children, first brought the case in 1989. The state Supreme Court ruled
on their behalf in 1996, but left it up to them to reach a compromise
with the state. A decade later, the plaintiffs are still arguing that
the state has not done enough to improve city education and integrate
schools.On the hearing's opening day, so many high school students
filled the courtroom that the judge called a recess to provide more
seating. Among those attending were 23 juniors and seniors from Capital
Preparatory Magnet School, accompanied by their social studies teacher,
Juliet Sullivan.
The trial provided a perfect opportunity for the city magnet, which
engages students in issues of social justice, to teach about a legal
battle that is important to the lives of its students, Sullivan said.
"We want the students to understand how decisions are made," Sullivan
said. "Everything that they were doing there could potentially directly
affect us."
Some educators have made the Sheff v. O'Neil trial a part of their
curriculum. At Capitol Preparatory, Sullivan is following the field
trip with a math and geography lesson that will study minority
enrollment in suburban schools.
And at Trinity, it was student research on the Project Choice program
and other desegregation efforts in the Hartford region that produced
the report Dougherty presented at the Sheff v. O'Neil hearing. Students
interviewed parents, created computer tables and even analyzed data on
the distances children travel to school.
"One thing we're trying to do is get students out of the classroom,"
Dougherty said. "I want them to not just read, but interact with real
people."
And students have appreciated leaving the chalkboard behind.
"It's actually kind of cool to see the things we've been reading about
in real life," said Mari Zigas, a student in Dougherty's class. "We got
to meet Elizabeth Sheff and some of the other plaintiffs. It's like
what we read come to life."
Schools
Chief Makes A Pitch; Adamowski Seeks Regional District
By RACHEL GOTTLIEB FRANK | Courant Staff Writer
November 15, 2007
A regional school district that would craft and run interdistrict
schools could be an effective way to diminish the racial and economic
isolation of Hartford's schoolchildren, the city's superintendent of
schools, Steven Adamowski, testified Wednesday.
The existence of 166 local and regional school districts in 169 towns
has had the effect of segregating minority children, he said in the
final day of testimony at Superior Court in Hartford in the landmark
Sheff v. O'Neill desegregation case.
"All the poor students are bottled up in one place. It is essentially
the reason we have the Sheff case," said Adamowski, whose city is now
party to the case...full
story here.
Open
Dialogue On Sheff
Hartford Courant
Stan Simpson
November 10, 2007
The excuses have certainly mounted about why there hasn't been more
suburban school engagement in Open Choice - an inclusion program that
transports Hartford students to suburbia to get them a better education.
Class size issues. Enrollment increases. Paltry state tuition
reimbursement.
An emerging concern from the 'burbs, usually expressed privately, is
test scores. The fear is that under No Child Left Behind, their schools
will be unduly penalized for taking in city kids, many of whom have
significant academic deficits.
I've heard it all - and I'm not unsympathetic.
The buy-in for Open Choice, now in its 41st year, has been uneven at
best - and particularly disappointing in the last few years. Of the
1,600 Open Choice seats the state set as a goal, about 500 slots are
available, and there is waiting list of 206 Hartford kids.
There's been a slow-go approach with Open Choice and for the
construction of several theme magnet schools, the two primary remedies
agreed upon after the landmark Sheff v. O'Neill desegregation court
ruling 11 years ago. The state Supreme Court ordered the legislature to
remedy the problem of segregated schools.
Well, the 24,000-student Hartford school district is more segregated
than ever. Several of the magnets have not been built. Those magnets
that are up are indeed attracting suburban students, but they are
mostly black and brown kids, not the intended target - whites.
The Sheff plaintiffs and the state were in court again this week. The
plaintiffs say the state is moving at a snail's pace; the state says
it's doing the best it can. This is what happens when a court makes the
right decision, then undermines it by allowing lawmakers to use the
honor system for implementation.
Since the 1996 decision, millions have been expended for new schools
and programs, yet wholesale segregation continues and test scores have
not significantly improved.
Unfortunately, the Sheff case is reviving discussions about whether
integration in education is worth it. Demographers tell us this
reality: Minority workers - black, brown and others - will make up more
than 40 percent of the state's workforce by 2030. A large majority of
that population will come from urban markets. By 2050, the country's
minority populations will be in the majority. Over the years, I've
highlighted a smattering of urban, segregated schools with mostly poor
kids that have defied the odds and produced impressive test scores. But
I believe there's tremendous value to a child learning among peers from
different ethnic, racial and economic backgrounds.
If Open Choice is to work, and magnet schools are to be built in a
timely manner, there has to be Open dialogue. Yes, more magnets should
be built in suburban towns if that will better encourage white parents
to participate. And yes, Hartford's role in running some of these
magnets should be handed over to the Capitol Region Education Council,
which has a record of running quality, diverse magnets. If suburban
schools are concerned about reimbursements and potentially being
punished because they are accepting city students with lower test
scores, then put those issues on the table - and come up with solutions.
Twice in the past 12 months the state education commissioner's office
has met informally with Hartford-region superintendents to discuss the
impediments to Open Choice. It should also meet with white suburban
parents to find out why they are not enrolling in the Sheff magnets.
If we want to promote real choice - then open up the discussion.
Money
Should Follow City Kids To
Suburbs
Hartford Courant
Rick Green
November 9, 2007
We've got over 100,000 seats in public school classrooms in suburbs
around Hartford and there's room for just 1,000 city kids.
One percent. That's so pathetic it's embarrassing to even
say. But as the Sheff school desegregation case is again in
Superior Court this week, it's a failure we have to confront.
Sure, Hartford schools must improve. Perhaps we need more regional
magnet programs. But can't we do better than the 1,070 children
currently in the 40-year-old Project Choice voluntary school busing
program?
Our affluent and middle class towns say they don't have space for more
than this. Fine, but there are consequences here - be prepared for the
day when we can't find enough skilled workers or bunks in our prisons.
There are hundreds of children on the waiting list for this proven
program that disperses poverty and opens opportunity. Suburban
superintendents will tell you these children invariably succeed and end
up in college. Isn't this what the Sheff case - and public education -
is about? As it turns out, there's a reason for this limited
success: Most of the money doesn't follow the kid to the suburbs.
"The grant that follows the child is woefully insufficient," said Bruce
Douglas, director of the Capitol Region Education Council, which runs
Project Choice.
So, for example, the state of Connecticut - which is under a court
order to desegregate metropolitan Hartford schools - gives Avon about
$2,500 for each of the 41 children it takes. The district, however,
spends about $11,000 per child. Meanwhile, Hartford keeps most of
the money it would have spent educating this child. Much of that money
comes from state taxpayers. This is no education crisis, it's a
taxpayer rip-off.
"There isn't enough of an incentive," said Avon Superintendent of
Schools Richard Kisiel, in comments repeated to me by other
superintendents.
There are a million bureaucratic reasons why the legislature set the
$2,500 amount. The idea that taxpayers' money should follow the student
is a radical notion in public education, where failure is almost never
penalized. Meanwhile, because "my parents are screaming about
class size," Kisiel said, Project Choice becomes "an issue I try to
keep it as low-profile as I can."
The Sheff plaintiffs say the state should have the authority to order
districts to take more kids. State Education Commissioner Mark
McQuillan told me he doesn't want to strong-arm districts to take more
Hartford kids, but he has commissioned a study to look at how much
space they really have in their classrooms.
"Some of this is about will," McQuillan told me. But it's also about
hiring teachers and expanding classrooms for children who don't live in
their town - not to mention overcoming worry that city kids will lower
test scores. Just look at the numbers: Glastonbury accepts 42 kids,
while Wethersfield has a woeful 13.
Two decades ago, West Hartford had 267 students coming from Hartford;
now it has 77. School Board Chairman Jack Darcey told me his district
is now 34 percent minority and schools have grown more overcrowded.
"We can probably do a little more," Darcey said. "You send the money
with the kid, you will see a different response."
One percent. We need a judge, a governor or an education commissioner
with the backbone to tackle this.
The Adamowski Gambit
Hartford Courant editorial
October 8, 2007
Controversial though it may have
been, a comment by Hartford Superintendent of Schools Steven Adamowski
at a state Board of Education meeting last week points to an underlying
change in the nature of the Sheff v. O'Neill
dilemma.
In a discussion about quotas of
white children in Hartford's host magnet schools, Mr. Adamowski told
state officials that "there is no research to suggest that minority
students will do better by sitting next to a white student."
The context was money. The state has
withheld operating funds for four of the city's host magnet schools
because they are not in compliance with the requirement that no more
than 75 percent of a student body be made up of racial minorities. (For
schools in operation before 2005, the requirement is no more than 80
percent of students from the same district.)
Hartford can get the funds - about
$1 million per school - if it files an "enrollment management plan" for
each school explaining how it plans to bolster the school and
non-minority enrollment. Mr. Adamowski has signaled that he wants to
cooperate with the state, so presumably he will file the paperwork and
get the funds.
The broader question some critics
raised is whether Mr. Adamowski is settling for some variation of
"separate but equal." His comment brought a sharp response from
desegregation advocates, who aver that minorities and whites benefit
from integrated classrooms. Indeed, most people, Mr. Adamowski clearly
included, see great value in racially integrated schools.
But Mr. Adamowski said in a later
interview that research shows economic integration - a child from an
affluent family sitting next to a child from a poor family - results in
better learning.
That opportunity has been lost at
many Hartford schools.
The Sheff case was filed in 1989 to
reduce both racial and economic segregation in Hartford schools. Since
then, large numbers of middle-class African American and Latino
children have moved to suburban schools, yet Hartford's schools remain
overwhelmingly minority. That suggests that poorer minority children
are being left behind.
The focus of resolving the Sheff
case has been on racial balance. Almost nothing is said of economic
integration, yet that seems to be an increasing part of the
problem. Public
policy should embrace both challenges. The interdistrict magnet schools
should be going after suburban kids, white and minority.
Alan Hadad, dean of magnet schools
at the University of Hartford, persuasively argues that admission
requirements instead of admission lotteries would draw more bright
suburban kids to Hartford. A new state law that allows regional magnet
schools to fill vacancies with students from towns that do not have
formal partnerships with the magnets should also bring more white kids
to the magnet schools.
On the economic front, the state
should stop building so much low-income housing in Hartford, and should
move more state jobs into the city. Perhaps we should stop looking at
schools in isolation.
The magnet schools have left
Hartford with a two-tiered school system that Mr. Adamowski rightly
believes must end. He has proposed a bold program to turn all city
schools into schools of choice. The state should support this effort,
and apparently does. The best of these schools will draw students of
all hues. If a school is "separate but better," it won't stay that way
for long.
A Study of the
Special Education Program
WESTON, CONNECTICUT PUBLIC SCHOOLS
JUNE 2000
BY CLAIRE S. GOLD AND KATE MCGRAW
(NOTE:
This document contains 57 pages of text and 22 pages of appendices;
below
please find only the "Conclusion" section. Copies of the full
document
are available at the Weston Board of Education at no charge.
Also,
please note that the type face and other format characteristics of this
Internet version of the Conclusions of the study are different--but the
text is identical! It is reported that the Board of Education
listened
to public comment about the Special Education Program and discussed
this
report at its June 19, 2000 regular meeting for the first time.
"About
Town" was not present at that meeting.)
Section
IV.
Conclusion
The
findings of this report should
be weighed within a historical context. Weston has gone through
a recent history of much administrative turnover, the superintendent, a
new assistant superintendent, and three new principals. The
superindendency
alone has been in significant transition with at least four different
individuals
holding that position in the last dozen years. This, coupled with
turnover on the Board of Education, has contributed to changing focus
and
ever different policy and decision making. This set of
circumstances
is in part responsible for the pendulum swings so apparent in the
special
education program.
A
rather rigid and cost saving approach
of past years was replaced by one which some view as too permissive and
expensive. It should be clear that it is not the Director of
Special
Education, alone, that establishes policies and practices for special
education.
Weston
shares some of the same issues
that other affluent districts experience. A high powered
curriculum,
without a program of studies and teaching methodologies, broad enough
to
accommodate different rates and styles of learning, will leave average
and/or minimally learning disabled students struggling or
failing.
This issue is now more pronounced because the nature of the student
body
is changing. If it ever was, Weston is certainly no longer the
exclusive
domain of the intellectually gifted. The numbers of children with
a wide variety of cognitive, emotional and physical difficulties has
increased
markedly. The most important mission of a school district is to
assure
that each and every student develops to his maximum potential; the
mission
is not merely getting through the
curriculum.
Although
there are situations when
parents’ aspirations exceed their children’s ability, by and large,
parents
are generally satisfied if they see that every effort is being made to
help their children progress. When that does not happen, parents
will press for academic support and special education services.
Weaknesses
in the reading program,
gaps in remedial services and basic curriculum and the absence of
alternative
programs, particularly at the high school, exacerbate the demand for
special
services.
While
there are significant problems
to be resolved in the special education department, many of the issues
will not be resolved without a holistic approach by the entire school
district.
The Director of Special Education will need the power and authority of
the Board of Education and the Superintendent in order to work out a
complementary
relationship with regular education. The education of one hundred
percent of the students belongs to the entire school district. At
the present time there are students disabled by the curriculum.
Teachers
who see their responsibility as confined to the so-called normal
student
need to be required to broaden their perspective and practices;
building
administrators who may not see these children as their province need to
be brought into a much closer relationship with the special education
department
in planning, supervision, and accountability. Ownership of the
educational
development of special children does not lie only with the Department
of
Special Education.
With
the dollars spent and the general
high quality of much of the staff, Weston should be able to be more
effective.
There is need for further development of a program continuum in special
education, improved communication, and consistency of application of
special
education procedures.
Parents
need to be viewed as partners,
not adversaries. As partners, parents, too, need to keep their
commitments
to fulfill their role in the partnership. The IEP, Individualized
Education Program, is not an end in and of itself; it is a contract
which
should be fulfilled.
Planning
is going to be the key to
rectifying the existing problems. It must begin with clear
direction
from the Board of Education to the administrative team. It must
be
understood that whatever is done in one aspect of the educational
process,
will ultimately effect other aspects of the educational’
endeavor.
Programmatic changes in regular education
will either abate or exacerbate special education problems.
Therefore,
it is imperative that planning be joint and begin with a team effort at
the central office.
Staff
development planning will be
crucial. What is needed is staff development that is prescriptive
i.e., based on the specific instructional needs of students. It
should
be targeted to specific groups of staff, be continuous with good
follow-up.
It needs also to be a requirement of holding a position.
Knowledge
of the education issues associated with various disabilities has to be
the cornerstone of good instruction.
Although
the anticipated retirement
of many staff in the next few years is a challenge, it is also an
opportunity
for rebirth. New teachers require consistent, intensive and
on-going
training. Experienced exemplary teachers should be involved in
mentoring
these new staff members. It will be an excellent opportunity for
the district to reexamine its goals and implement new and strong
programs.
This
report is replete with findings
and recommendations. It is the sincere hope of the consultants
that
it be considered carefully. The Board of Education, the staff and
the school community will have to consider which recommendations seem
to
have the greatest merit. This will require prioritization,
defining
the tasks and laying out a plan for implementation. This plan
must
include the individuals responsible, the resources needed, a time line,
the means by which achievement will be judged, and an assessment of the
potential impact on other aspects of the school system.
The
consultants have appreciated
the opportunity to work with the Weston school community. We hope
to have played some part in helping the district to realize its full
potential.
Report: Special ed needs changes
Greenwich TIME
By Keach Hagey, Staff Writer
Published December 24 2005
An independent review of Greenwich schools' special education programs
recommends splitting the department that runs them in half and
eliminating the heads of two of the district's alternative high school
programs, among other streamlining measures. The report, prepared
by Florida-based management consulting firm MGT of America, contained
18 commendations and 40 recommendations, determined through visits,
surveys and reviews of department data throughout the last six months.
Mary Forde, director of Pupil Personnel Services and Special Education,
the department that now runs the programs, said the district's
leadership has not yet discussed the report's recommendations in
detail, but a few of the suggestions did give her pause.
"I have some questions about the recommendations about the structural
changes," she said.
The recommended structural changes include breaking up her department
into two new departments: one for special education, and another for
pupil personnel services, which includes things like guidance,
psychology and social work. Under this plan, the director of special
education would report to the assistant superintendent of curriculum,
research and evaluation, a position currently held by John Curtin.
They also include eliminating the positions of program associate at the
ARCH School and special education program administrator at the high
school, and converting one of the high school's psychologist positions
into a bilingual position. Such a reorganization would save the
district $36,090 a year, for a total savings of $180,450 over five
years, according to the report.
In order to help reduce the expenses from legal disputes with parents,
the firm recommended that the district conduct a risk analysis of its
disputes to determine those practices that must be changed to reduce
the district's exposure to expensive disputes. For example, the
district paid out $239,346 in 2003-04 and $324,321 in 2004-05 for
mediation and due process settlements, the report noted.
Some progress in this area has already been made, according to the
report. In addition to including a line for settlements in the 2006-07
budget, the district has helped reduce its legal costs in recent years
by hiring the Hartford-based education law firm Shipman and Goodwin for
particularly complex cases requiring specialized knowledge, Forde said.
The report commended the district for its ability to maintain
consistent special education policies, commitment to closing
achievement gaps and Forde's knowledge and expertise in special
education matters. It also approved of the district's inclusive
pre-kindergarten program for children with disabilities, new Data
Dashboard database system to help design intervention strategies and
inclusion of parents through the Special Education Services Committee
of the PTA Council.
Paige Davis, who represents Greenwich High School on the committee, had
not had a chance to look at the report in detail, but said that the
parent group had a good relationship with the district and looked
forward to working with them to improve special education.
"I think educating children like ours is tricky business, and as
parents, we want our kids to make as much progress as they can every
year," she said. "I think that anything that focuses on accountability,
measuring success for our kids and the better integration of special
education with regular education is a good thing. Some of our kids have
really great potential, if the teacher sees that in them and tries to
teach them at their highest level."
Forde said school officials now plan to meet with the consultants to
discuss the report, decide how to best align the report's
recommendations with their own goals for serving students and set up a
series of hearings with stakeholders to determine a plan of action.
"These are recommendations," she said. "We will look at them and decide
where we want to go in terms of outcomes for kids."
Corda wants changes
Norwalk HOUR,
Monday, Jan. 3, 2005
By BRIAN FRAGA Hour Staff Writer
NORWALK
-- School officials brought
up the potentially thorny issue of how the state classifies minority
students
during a recent discussion with state legislators on the racial and
cultural
balances in the public schools.
Schools
Superintendent Salvatore
Corda said current state guidelines that define minority students as
simply
being non-white threaten to put the Norwalk school district -- which
has
a minority population greater than 50 percent -- to be classified as
racially
unbalanced.
That
is because state law stipulates
that racial imbalance exists within minority districts when the
proportion
of minority (non-white) students is less than 25 percent or more than
75
percent of the total school population. According to a recent report
from
the school board's racial balance committee, the school district's
demographic
makeup consists of three main groups: 27 percent black, 34 percent
Hispanic,
35 percent white and the rest Asian.
Although
there is no one dominant
cultural group, the school district is still subject to the 25/75 rule
because blacks and Hispanics together account for more than 50 percent
of the student population. Corda is proposing for the state to identify
racial and ethnic groups based on the characteristics that define them
as groups, rather than lumping everybody who is non-white into one
category.
"A
school which reflects what Norwalk
actually looks like, could be considered by the state to be racially
unbalanced,
and that to me doesn't make a whole lot of sense," Corda said.
"It
would seem to me logic behind
the law was developed when the dominant populations in terms of
minority
was African-American, and Hispanics were very slight," Corda said.
"That
is no longer the case, so there
needs to be a rethinking how groups are characterized... They need to
be
differentiated." Several legislators who were present during the
special
meeting with Corda and the school board, however, warned the proposal
would
be a lightning rod in Hartford, and could go to the heart of the Sheff
v. O'Neill court case that barred unintentional segregation in the
Hartford
school district. State Rep. Larry Cafero, R-142nd District, warned
about
a "suspicious eye" being gazed by other districts at legislation that
would
be perceived as a "Norwalk bill."
"I
would suggest you get some other
support from other like-situated towns so that people in Hartford know
this isn't just a Norwalk problem," Cafero said.
Outgoing
state Sen. Robert L. Genuario,
R-25th District, also warned of a possible rollout effect where certain
schools in the city would have disproportionate percentages of white
and
minority students.
"You
have to consider if it is OK
for Norwalk to have one school that is 90 percent non-white and another
school 50 percent white, and if we are comfortable with that, "
Genuario
said.
"That
could be the roll out. It's
not an easy thing to deal with." The Norwalk Board of Education has
been
dealing with the issue since adopting its policy on racial balance in
the
1960s. The policy calls for ensuring the balance of students from the
different
racial and cultural groups in each individual school mirrors the
community's
demographics. State law requires that school boards formulate and
submit
plans to correct any existing racial imbalances in the schools.
The
Norwalk school board's existing
plan to ensure racial balance is to have the individual schools not
deviate
from the system-wide average for each minority group by plus or minus
10
percentage points. According to October 2003 data compiled by the
school
board's racial balance advisory committee, seven schools were
out-of-balance
based upon the 10 percent deviation guideline.
Those
were Naramake, Kendall, Jefferson,
Fox Run, Cranbury and Brookside elementary schools. The racial balance
advisory committee -- comprised of administrators, parents, citizens
and
teachers -- has been looking into possibilities of implementing new
mechanisms
to ensure racial balance, such as developing magnet schools and
instituting
modified parental school choice.
The
committee will conduct a financial
analysis of the various choices -- which include the existing program
--
in March and is expected to choose a course of action in June. No
changes
would be made before the 2006-07 academic year.
Brian
Fraga covers education. He
can be reached at (203) 354-1045 or by e-mail at education@thehour.com.
N E W J E R S E Y
E D U C A T I O N F O R M U L A R E W
R I T E I D E A
In New Jersey, this issue has been around for a long
time...
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2007/12/11/nyregion/20071212_JERSEY_GRAPHIC.html
Corzine Wants to Change Formula for Local
Aid
NYTIMES
By DAVID W. CHEN
Published: March 28, 2008
LAMBERTVILLE,
N.J. — After listening to weeks of complaining by small-town officials
over proposed budget cuts, Gov. Jon S. Corzine said on Thursday that he
wanted to do away with the state’s 13-year-old multibillion-dollar
formula for municipal subsidies and come up with a new system by the
end of the year.
The proposal would not affect Mr. Corzine’s current $33 billion budget,
which calls for $168 million in cuts to municipalities as part of an
overall reduction of $500 million. Instead, Mr. Corzine said that he
hoped his new plan would be in place by the start of the next fiscal
year, which starts in July 2009, four months before he is expected to
seek re-election.
But the notion of revamping the entire formula, which is based on a
town’s per capita expenditures, suggests that Mr. Corzine is taking to
heart a bipartisan chorus of criticism from legislators and mayors.
The revamping proposal reflects a broader attempt by Mr. Corzine to
change the way the state has financed its public schools and is trying
to alter the way hospitals are reimbursed for costs associated with
caring for the poor, often in emergency rooms.
He said that while the formulas “may have very well served the state at
one point,” they “don’t relate to the realities of the world today.”
“The closer we can get to formulas that people believe are objective
and nonpolitical, I think, the better we are,” Mr. Corzine said at a
news conference, where he recognized the efforts of Lambertville and
West Amwell to share services, a procedure he has been advocating.
When asked about his proposal, mayors from towns large and not so large
said that they were stunned. They offered a guarded assessment, saying
that although they liked the principle, they were worried about the
details.
“I think it could be one of the most significant policy changes in the
past 35, 40 years,” said William G. Dressel Jr., executive director of
the New Jersey State League of Municipalities. “But recasting funding
formulas and trying to achieve fairness in the midst of one of the most
severe fiscal crises in the history of our state makes me a little
nervous, to say the least. There’s going to be large winners and
losers, and that concerns us greatly.”
As Mr. Dressel put it, “If he thinks he’s getting political heat now,
he hasn’t seen it.”
Municipal aid has been one of the most wrenching topics in Trenton this
year, not only because of Mr. Corzine’s proposed cuts, but also because
of the way he wants to achieve them: taking the biggest percentage of
money from the smallest towns, with populations under 10,000, in an
effort to force them to merge more operations with neighboring
communities.
But in budget hearings in recent weeks, many mayors have testified that
they are already sharing, and sharply criticized Mr. Corzine’s proposed
cuts as arbitrary.
As a result, Mr. Corzine said on Thursday that he and Joseph V. Doria
Jr., the state’s community affairs commissioner, would consider factors
like population density, income and special needs in arriving at a new
formula.
Robert Bowser, the mayor of East Orange, said in a telephone interview
that whatever formula is arrived at, he hopes that Mr. Corzine allows
municipalities to get involved early — unlike this year’s budget
process.
“I understand the governor is trying to do exactly what he was elected
to do — fix the whole financial mess of the state,” Mr. Bowser said.
“But he can’t do it by himself. This is not the corporate world.”
New Jersey Revamps State Aid to Schools
NYTIMES
By DAVID W. CHEN
Published: January 8, 2008
TRENTON — After a tense
three-hour stalemate, legislators handed Gov. Jon S. Corzine a dramatic
political victory on Monday night when they approved his $7.8 billion
plan to revamp New Jersey’s formula of financing the state’s public
schools.
Now on the Governor’s Desk (January 8, 2008) After the Legislature
threw in an extra $20 million for special education with his approval,
Mr. Corzine, a Democrat, was able to sway three Republican senators and
overcome opposition from urban lawmakers.
The plan is designed to direct more money to children who live outside
the poorest districts, which now receive more than half of all state
aid.
If the plan survives the scrutiny of the State Supreme Court, which Mr.
Corzine will seek, the state would apportion funds to schools based on
demographics, including family income, population growth, language
ability and special academic needs.
Under the formula, education spending would increase by an estimated
$532.8 million the first year, with all districts receiving at least a
2 percent increase for the next three years, and some receiving as much
as 20 percent more.
But for hours, the fate of the bill — and by extension, a major pillar
of Mr. Corzine’s agenda — was uncertain.
With the legislative session due to close on Tuesday at noon, the bill
stalled initially in the Senate when six Democrats joined 13
Republicans to freeze the vote at 20-19 in favor of the bill, one vote
shy of the majority needed.
So for the next three hours, Democratic and Republican supporters of
the bill surrounded one colleague after another who had initially voted
no, hoping to change minds.
The drama yielded moments of pure political theater and high-stakes
brinkmanship. At one point, at least 15 senators huddled in the middle
of the Senate floor, not unlike the way baseball players, anxious,
huddle around the pitcher’s mound.
At another point, Assemblyman Joseph R. Malone III, a Republican who
was part of a 41-36 majority that approved the bill in the Assembly
earlier in the evening, wandered down the hall to the Senate. He
escorted Senator Martha W. Bark, a fellow Republican who had voted no,
to his office, fueling speculation that he was trying to win her over.
But in the end, it was something much simpler — a promise, with Mr.
Corzine’s approval, of an additional $20 million for special education
in next year’s budget — that compelled Ms. Bark and two other
Republicans, Senator Gerald Cardinale and Senator Joseph A. Palaia, to
switch their votes.
“I’m jubilant,” said Senator Barbara Buono, a Democrat from Metuchen
who was the bill’s sponsor, and who helped to craft the compromise.
“This is the way it’s supposed to work.”
Mr. Corzine said in a statement: “The new law replaces a flawed system
with an equitable, balanced, and nonpartisan formula that addresses the
needs of all students, regardless of where they live. This formula puts
the needs of all children on an equal footing, and will give them the
educational resources they need for success.”
The vote on school financing capped a frenetic final day of the
legislative session. With the two houses meeting simultaneously, the
corridors of the State House teemed with lobbyists, reporters,
educators and other interest groups until 11 p.m.
Among the dozens of measures that passed on Monday, the two chambers
overwhelmingly approved bills authorizing a formal state apology for
New Jersey’s role in slavery. New Jersey, the last Northern state to
abolish slavery, became the first Northern state to apologize for it.
The two chambers also passed bills to increase judicial salaries, offer
tax credits for businesses that invest in urban transit areas and
reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The Assembly also approved a bill, previously passed by the Senate, to
toughen the state’s hate crime and bullying laws.
Those legislators who will continue serving when the next session
begins on Tuesday will not have much time to catch their breath.
A few hours after they are sworn in, Mr. Corzine is scheduled to
outline in his State of the State address his long-simmering proposal
to squeeze more money out of the state’s toll roads. He is expected to
call on the Legislature to approve his idea of selling billions of
dollars worth of bonds that would be backed by higher tolls on the
state’s three toll roads, the New Jersey Turnpike, Garden State Parkway
and Atlantic City Expressway.
But on Monday, the focus was education, which for the last two decades
has largely been guided by a landmark State Supreme Court ruling,
Abbott v. Burke, which found that students in poor and urban districts
were not receiving the same education as their counterparts in
wealthier ones, and therefore deserved a bigger percentage of the
state’s aid to schools.
Those who opposed Mr. Corzine’s bill did so for a variety of reasons,
including the sense that it was being rushed through, or that it
threatened to cut funding to poor urban districts. All six Senate
members of the Legislative Black Caucus opposed the bill.
“They don’t want the middle class suburban schools to examine this
formula, not in terms of what it takes from Abbott, but what it takes
from us,” said Senator Nia H. Gill, a Democrat from Montclair.
After the vote, Senate President Richard J. Codey summed up the relief
felt by the bill’s supporters when he grabbed Joseph V. Doria Jr., Mr.
Corzine’s commissioner of community affairs, who until recently had
been a Senate colleague.
“Joe, it’s like delivering a baby,” Mr. Codey joked. “It’s painful, but
it’s worth it.”
Panels Approve New Jersey School Financing
Plan
NYTIMES
By DAVID W. CHEN
Published: January 4, 2008
TRENTON
— Despite mounting criticism from the mayors of the state’s largest
cities, Gov. Jon S. Corzine’s proposal to revamp New Jersey’s formula
for financing schools cleared two important legislative hurdles on
Thursday.
By comfortable margins, the budget committees in both the State Senate
and Assembly approved Mr. Corzine’s plan directing more money to
children who live outside the poorest districts, which now receive more
than half of all state aid, in accordance with a court mandate. The
plan would also apportion funds to schools based on demographics
including family income, population growth, language ability and
special academic needs.
Over all, the formula would increase education spending by $532.8
million the first year, with all districts receiving at least a 2
percent increase for the next three years, and some receiving as much
as 20 percent more.
The plan will go to the floor of both chambers on Monday, the last full
day of the legislative session. But its passage was hardly assured,
since several of Mr. Corzine’s fellow Democrats, particularly from
urban areas, have promised to reject the new formula for financing
unless substantial changes are made.
Over the last two days, Mr. Corzine has met with two Democratic mayors
— Jerramiah T. Healy of Jersey City and Cory A. Booker of Newark — who
have been among his strongest allies, yet have been sharply critical of
the school plan.
Although Mr. Booker said Thursday that Mr. Corzine had given him some
reassurances on such issues as improving student performance, he
expressed qualms about what he said was the haste with which the
formula was being pushed through the Legislature.
“My preference is more deliberation,” he said. “The more deliberation,
the better.”
These sentiments were echoed by nearly all members of the Senate budget
committee, during the testimony of the education commissioner, Lucille
E. Davy.
State Senator Shirley K. Turner, a Democrat from Mercer County who is
chairwoman of the Education Committee, was especially curt, noting that
all but one of the towns she represents would receive the minimum 2
percent increase.
“They feel that they are being given the shaft,” Ms. Turner said. “I’m
in no position to support this school funding formula today.”
But in the end, she was one of four senators to abstain, and the
committee approved the measure 7-1, with some changes, including more
money for charter schools.
“I really believe this formula is logical, and it’s fair,” said State
Senator Barbara Buono, a Democrat from Middlesex County, who sponsored
the bill.
The measure was approved on a 9-3 vote in the Assembly committee.
But even if the measure is approved by the full Legislature on Monday,
it still requires the approval by the State Supreme Court.
The court has been guiding school financing issues since its ruling
more than two decades ago, Abbott v. Burke, found that students in poor
and urban districts were not receiving the same education as their
counterparts in wealthier ones.
Earlier on Thursday, the proposal cleared another hurdle when Attorney
General Anne Milgram released a letter saying that the new formula
would not violate the law.
Yet that did not prevent Gary S. Stein, a former State Supreme Court
justice who participated in numerous Abbott v. Burke decisions, from
warning legislators in a letter that the bill could be “‘one of the
most costly and counter-productive votes ever cast by the State’s
Legislature.”
Reaction to Corzine Plan Better Than
Anticipated
NYTIMES
By DAVID W. CHEN and WINNIE HU
Published: December 14, 2007
TRENTON
— It could have been a lot worse.
For decades, education financing — one of New Jersey’s most intractable
issues — has tripped up many a governor, thanks to court decisions that
required the state to spend the bulk of its education funds on students
in historically poor urban districts.
So when Gov. Jon S. Corzine began tackling a new financing formula
after taking office in January 2006, the odds were against him. And
early on, the signs were discouraging, as one delay begat another, and
people in Trenton began to whisper that a new formula might never
emerge because of the combustible mix of schools, money and politics.
Then, as word circulated in recent weeks that the financing plan
promised a year ago was ready, Mr. Corzine seemed to lose control of
the issue. Parts of the plan dribbled out to the press, but the
administration delayed releasing specific numbers. Educators and
legislators filled the vacuum by complaining about the formula’s
general tenets. Republicans criticized the timing of the formula, which
came near the end of a legislative session.
But when Mr. Corzine finally released his plan on Wednesday, the
reaction was, with some notable exceptions, not as poisonous as
anticipated. A group of Republicans set to join the State Senate
next month met on Thursday morning with Mr. Corzine, and actually said
that they were encouraged. And though they cautioned that they had
concerns about the fate of special education under the plan, and that
they needed to see an actual bill elaborating on the formula, the
governor had been fair and inclusive in devising the proposal, they
said.
“I think the process that the governor and his team have got has been
very different from previous governors in both parties,” said
Assemblyman Bill Baroni, a Republican from Mercer County who sits on
the education committee. “We may not always agree, but they’re
listening and they’re talking, and that is a fundamental change from
what has happened in the past.”
The proposal, “A New Formula for Success: All Children, All
Communities,” the proposal would steer more state money to poor and
disadvantaged children who live outside the so-called Abbott districts,
which now receive more than half of all state aid. The new approach,
which would increase overall spending by $532.8 million in the first
year, would apportion money to schools based on the characteristics of
the students, including income, language ability and special academic
needs.
Some education advocates contend that if the formula were applied in
full during the next school year, the state would have actually cut its
spending by more than $300 million. But by pumping more money into
education to come out $532.8 million in the black, and promising that
no district would see a reduction in aid for three years, Mr. Corzine
may have quelled some dissent.
As the formula makes its way through the State Legislature, of course,
changes will be inevitable. About two dozen mayors, for instance,
released a report on Thursday recommending alterations, like keeping
the system of allocating special education aid to districts without
regard to community wealth.
“Multiple governors have struggled with this issue, and no funding
formula has been deemed to be both constitutional and sustainable,”
said Jun Choi, the mayor of Edison and a former state education
official. “The fact that we are still struggling with this is an
indication of how challenging and complex the problem is.”
Perhaps the most vocal critics of the Corzine proposal have been
advocates for the Abbott districts, despite the fact that those
districts tend to be heavily Democratic.
“There seems to be a lot of discomfort and uncertainty about aspects of
the plan,” said Jerome C. Harris, chairman of the New Jersey Black
Issues Convention, a coalition of 35 African-American groups. “Not
having access to the details, and not being able to evaluate it whole
cloth, has left people who might have been supporters voicing cautious
optimism, and in some cases, skepticism.”
Yet, if nothing else, Mr. Corzine clearly cares about the issue. At
briefings on Wednesday with legislators at Drumthwacket, the governor’s
mansion, he was very much on top of the specifics of the plan, and
passionate about his goals, according to Assemblywoman Jennifer Beck, a
Republican from Red Bank. Mr. Corzine is so determined that the
formula be enacted before the end of the legislative session on Jan. 7
that he unveiled the plan on two consecutive days in different
districts — on Wednesday in Burlington Township and on Thursday in
Carteret. His education commissioner, Lucille E. Davy, attended both
events, and testified on Thursday for an hour at a hearing of the
Senate budget and education committees.
Some legislators have criticized what they say is the haste with which
the administration is pushing the formula.
But Mr. Corzine, in Carteret, said: “Quite frankly, this concept has
been debated since 2002 — since we’ve stopped using formulas
altogether. This has been the slowest-moving train I can ever imagine.
When people say we are going too fast, I think they are failing to look
at the history of how long this kind of discussion has been happening.”
Mr. Corzine acknowledged that some people had complained about the
delay in the release of the details, but he said that the
administration was waiting for some population statistics to
incorporate into the formula.
Even supporters of the formula, however, noted that the governor could,
by handling the plan’s unveiling more deftly, have gained a bit more
political capital.
“Over all, I’m pleased with the way he’s handled it, because anyone can
be a Monday morning quarterback, and you’re never going to please
everybody with a school funding formula,” said the Senate president,
Richard J. Codey, who is, like Mr. Corzine, a Democrat.
“I only wish that he had announced the formula earlier,” Mr. Codey
said. “He could’ve done that lobbying maybe six months ago, and said,
in general terms, this is what it probably will look like, and try to
work out those kinks ahead of time.”
Increases in Education Aid Range From 2 to
20 Percent Under Corzine Plan
NYTIMES
By WINNIE HU and DAVID W. CHEN
Published: December 13, 2007
Each
of New Jersey’s 615 school districts would receive 2 percent to 20
percent more in state aid next year under a new financing formula
officially unveiled by Gov. Jon S. Corzine on Wednesday, nearly two
weeks after parts of the proposal were revealed by state lawmakers and
state education officials.
The proposed increases represent the largest gain in state aid in more
than a decade for some affluent suburban districts, but they were a
sharp disappointment for many historically poor urban districts that
have received more support in the past. Last year, every district also
received an increase in state aid, with the increases varying from 3
percent for wealthier districts to 10.3 percent for those less well
off.
The new formula would raise overall state education spending in the
2008-9 school year by $532.8 million, slightly less than the $579.1
million increase in the governor’s 2007-8 budget proposal. The state
proposes spending $7.8 billion total on education next year.
The plan, part of the governor’s effort to address criticism that many
districts have been shortchanged in favor of poor schools, will now go
before the State Legislature, where it is likely to be a subject of
intense debate.
The districts that would fare the best are working-class communities
like Carteret, Hamilton and Roselle Park, which have large and growing
numbers of poor and disadvantaged students. In all, 146 districts would
receive the maximum increase of 20 percent; these districts received
far less last year, about 9.6 percent on average, according to budget
figures.
The districts that would fare the worst under the plan are cities like
Newark, Asbury Park and Camden, each of which would receive a 2 percent
increase. At the other end of the spectrum, districts in wealthy beach
communities also would receive the minimum increase. In Cape May
County, for instance, all 18 districts, including Stone Harbor and Sea
Isle City, would receive the 2 percent increase.
Education Commissioner Lucille E. Davy said that the Cape May County
districts had “the worst of both worlds” when it came to calculating
their share under the new formula: fewer students with shrinking
enrollments and greater wealth with rising property values.
“Those are the kinds of things that are likely to impact a district
being a candidate for additional aid,” she said.
Governor Corzine presented the new formula at a news conference on
Wednesday at B. Bernice Young Elementary School in Burlington Township.
He received loud applause when he said that the district would probably
receive the maximum increase in part because it had a high number of
at-risk and special education students. “I knew there was a good
applause line in there somewhere,” he said.
For more than a year, Governor Corzine has made clear that he wants to
send more money to poor and disadvantaged students who live outside the
state’s 31 so-called Abbott districts, which receive more than half of
all state education aid under a court-ordered remedy.
The new formula would apportion money to schools based on the
characteristics of the students, including income, language ability and
special academic needs, regardless of where they live. It would also
reshape the way that the state divides nearly $1 billion a year for
special education by shifting a larger share of the money to special
education students in poor districts.
Preliminary breakdowns of state aid show that about two-thirds of the
Abbott districts would receive the 2 percent increase, though a few
would receive more. For instance, Union City would get a 16 percent
increase, and the City of Orange a 5 percent increase.
To seek support for the new formula, Governor Corzine said that no
district would see a reduction in aid for three years, though after
that a district could receive less if its enrollment were to decrease.
The governor said that he was confident that the new formula would
withstand a court challenge, saying that he and Commissioner Davy had
worked with lawyers “every step of the way to meet our thorough and
efficient mandate.”
Joseph Del Grosso, president of the Newark Teachers Union, which
represents 5,000 teachers in the city’s public schools, said he was
disappointed by the 2 percent increase for the Newark district.
“You
might as well say you’re flat-funding the district,” he said. “I’m sure
the Abbott districts have to pay just as much for operating expenses
like heating oil as the suburban districts, and 2 percent will mean
they will have to reduce educational services.”
New Jersey School Districts Compared In the Orange school district,
Nathan Parker, the superintendent, said that it was not clear to him
how the state aid had been calculated under the new formula. Even
though the district would receive a 5 percent increase compared with 3
percent last year, he said, the money would only partially offset the
district’s increased costs for teacher salaries, health care benefits
and utility bills, among other things.
David G. Sciarra, executive director of the Education Law Center, which
has represented Abbott plaintiffs for years, condemned the proposed
formula. He said that if the formula were applied, the state would
essentially be cutting school aid by $320 million, with the bulk of it
in Abbott districts. Because of political sensitivities, he said, he
estimated that the state was adding $850 million “to minimize the harm
that would occur to over a third of the districts if the formula were
actually used.”
But some suburban districts viewed the proposed formula favorably. The
Glen Ridge district would receive a 10 percent increase in state aid,
to $1.2 million — nearly all of it directed toward special education,
and its largest increase in years. The money would be used to cover the
costs of educating a student population that has grown to 1,795
students this year from 1,497 in 2000.
As part of that total, the district would receive about $250,000 more
for 190 special education students, an increase partially offset by
decreases in other categories of state aid. “I’m surprised and pleased
and hopefully the funding is moving in the right direction toward
equity for funding of all students in the state of New Jersey,” said
Daniel Fishbein, the Glen Ridge superintendent.
Though Governor Corzine had pushed lawmakers to approve the formula by
the end of the session on Jan. 7, Mr. Corzine said on Wednesday that he
wanted a formula in place by Feb. 15 so that districts could plan their
budgets, which are due in April.
Hoboken’s Rebirth Fuels School Aid Formula
Fight
NYTIMES
By WINNIE HU
Published: December 12, 2007
HOBOKEN,
N.J. — In the early 1970s, Hoboken was so broken down that some
residents feared for their lives. Crime and arson were rampant, and
those who could afford to fled to neighboring towns like Secaucus.
But gleaming restaurants and luxury condominiums now beckon affluent
newcomers to Hoboken, like Gov. Jon S. Corzine, who keeps an apartment
there. And the city’s public school system, which once educated Frank
Sinatra, is going through a renaissance, with enrollment growing to
1,874 students this fall, after years of decline.
Hoboken’s rags-to-riches transformation is often cited by critics of
New Jersey’s so-called Abbott system, in which 31 historically poor
urban school districts receive the bulk of state school financing, to
illustrate its shortcomings. Cities like Hoboken, these critics say,
are no longer impoverished enough to merit special treatment.
“Hoboken is exactly why we need a new school funding formula,” said
Assemblyman Bill Baroni, a Republican from Mercer County. “Hoboken has
been blessed by an economic renaissance that a lot of other towns have
not seen. That’s why we need to make a new formula that talks about
kids and not ZIP codes.”
Governor Corzine is expected to officially unveil a new
school-financing proposal on Wednesday that would shift the emphasis
away from the Abbott system — which takes its name from a landmark New
Jersey Supreme Court case — by directing at least $400 million in new
state education money to poor students who live outside the Abbott
districts.
But Abbott districts say that academic achievement has risen
significantly under the system and that they should not be penalized in
an effort to expand benefits to the state’s 584 other districts in
rural and suburban areas. They also say that rising property values do
not always mean more money for schools.
In Hoboken, for example, school officials said that a majority of their
students come from housing projects, not the upscale condos whose
owners often send their children to private or parochial schools.
Seventy-five percent of the district’s students are poor enough to
qualify for free or reduced lunch, the seventh-highest level among all
Abbott districts, according to state statistics. Union City is first,
with 92.7 percent, followed by Passaic (84.7 percent) and Asbury Park
(81.9 percent).
Jack Raslowsky, the Hoboken schools superintendent, said that another
point lost in the political rhetoric is that Hoboken receives far less
state aid than the other Abbott districts. In the district’s $54
million budget, state aid accounted for just $12.4 million, of which
only $4.2 million for preschool programs was tied to its Abbott status.
The local share of contributions was $35 million.
But because it is an Abbott district, Hoboken’s school construction
projects are paid for by the state. This year, an $8.5 million
renovation was completed on the Calabro elementary school. In the last
five years, the state has spent $18 million to bring the district’s six
schools up to health and safety standards, which included repairing
leaking roofs and replacing windows and boilers.
The state has also agreed to renovate the Connors elementary school and
the Brandt middle school and build a new $25 million school complex
that will include high school and elementary school buildings and
athletic fields to accommodate the growing enrollment, particularly in
the preschool and lower grades.
But those projects were suspended last year after the state ran out of
money, and with the current debate over financing for Abbott districts,
their future remains uncertain. Hoboken school officials say they
cannot afford to pay for the new complex without state assistance.
Mr. Raslowsky said that because they are in an Abbott district, his
schools have been subject to more rigorous academic and financial
oversight. In return, he said, he expects the state to follow through
on its commitment to improve the district. “We’ve been promised this
great banquet,” he said. “We’ve finished the appetizers, but there’s
still the meal to go and we’re hungry.”
David Sciarra, an advocate for the children of the Abbott districts,
called the criticisms of Hoboken a “red herring” because the district
receives so little Abbott aid. More important, he said, were the
educational reforms introduced under Abbott to address decades of
neglect and concentrated poverty in urban schools. One such reform is
the focus on preschool programs in Abbott districts. “The Legislature
could remove Hoboken from Abbott, but it must have a plan in place to
continue those educational reforms,” he said.
At the Connors elementary school, which overlooks a housing project,
the 300 students were supposed to move into temporary classrooms this
September while their century-old building was being renovated. When
the renovation was suspended, students stayed where they were and the
building remained in disrepair.
The Abbott money has paid for three preschool classes at the school,
two of which are squeezed into the basement because of a shortage of
classroom space. The free preschool program has helped many families.
Danny LaViena, 49, a repairman, said that his 4-year-old grandson,
Selman Brashaw, was able to attend preschool only because of the Abbott
money.
“We’re low-income people, and we can’t get no money to pay for that,”
he said.
But on Monday afternoon, as a dozen 4-year-olds napped on mats on the
floor of one classroom, their teachers rattled off the things that they
still did not have: their own bathroom, child-friendly sinks or even a
school playground.
Colo. Church Gunman Had Been Kicked Out
NYTIMES
By JUDITH KOHLER | Associated Press Writer
6:40 PM EST, December 10, 2007
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. - The gunman believed to have killed four
people at a megachurch and a missionary training school had been thrown
out of the school a few years ago and had been sending it hate mail,
police said in court papers Monday.
The gunman was identified as Matthew Murray, 24, who was home-schooled
in what a friend said was a deeply religious Christian household.
Murray's father is a neurologist and a leading multiple-sclerosis
researcher.
Five people -- including Murray -- were killed, and five others wounded
Sunday in the two eruptions of violence 12 hours and 65 miles apart.
The first attack took place at Youth With a Mission, a training center
for missionaries in the Denver suburb of Arvada; the other occurred at
the New Life Church in Colorado Springs, where Murray was shot to death
by a security guard. The training center maintains an office at the
10,000-member church.
"Through both investigations it has been determined that most likely
the suspect in both shootings are one in the same," police said in
court papers.
Colorado Springs police said the "common denominator in both locations"
was Youth With a Mission.
"It appears that the suspect had been kicked out of the program three
years prior and during the past few weeks had sent different forms of
hate mail to the program and-or its director," police said.
In a statement, the training center said health problems kept Murray
from finishing the program. It did not elaborate. Murray did not
complete the lecture phase or a field assignment as part of a 12-week
program, Youth With a Mission said.
"The program directors felt that issues with his health made it
inappropriate for him to" finish, it said.
Police gave no immediate details on the hate mail. And the training
center said that Murray left in 2002 -- five years ago, not three --
and that no one there can recall any visits or other communication from
him since then.
Earlier Monday, a law enforcement official who spoke on condition of
anonymity said it appeared Murray "hated Christians."
Investigators have not said whether Murray singled out his victims. But
the two people killed at the church -- sisters Stephanie and Rachael
Works, ages 18 and 16 -- frequented the training center, their uncle
Mark Schaepe of Lincoln, Neb., told The Gazette of Colorado Springs.
Authorities searched the Murray house on a quiet street in Englewood on
Monday for guns, ammunition and computers. No one was home when a
reporter visited the split-level brick home early Monday. Murray's
father, Ronald S. Murray, is chief executive of the Rocky Mountain
Multiple Sclerosis Center in Englewood.
Matthew Murray lived there along with a brother, Christopher, 21, a
student at Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Okla.
A neighbor, Cody Askeland, 19, said the brothers were home-schooled,
describing the whole family as "very, very religious."
Christopher studied for a semester at Colorado Christian University
before transferring to Oral Roberts, said Ronald Rex, dean of
admissions and marketing at Colorado Christian. He said Matthew Murray
had been in contact with school officials this summer about attending
the school but decided he wasn't interested because he thought the
school was too expensive.
Police said Murray's only previous brush with the law was a traffic
ticket earlier this year.
Senior Pastor Brady Boyd of New Life Church said the gunman had no
connection to the church. "We don't know this shooter," Boyd said. "He
showed up on our property yesterday with a gun with the intention of
hurting people, and he did."
The gunman opened fire at 12:30 a.m. at the Youth With a Mission
center. Witnesses said the man asked to spend the night there and
opened fire with a handgun when he was turned down. They described him
as a young man, perhaps 20, in a dark jacket and cap.
Later, at New Life Church, a gunman wearing a trench coat and carrying
a high-powered rifle opened fire in the parking lot and later walked
into the church as a service was letting out.
Jeanne Assam, a church member who volunteers as a security guard, shot
and killed Murray, who was found with a rifle and two handguns, police
said. The pastor called her "a real hero."
"When the shots were fired, she rushed toward the scene and encountered
the attacker there in a hallway. He never got more than 50 feet inside
our building," he said. "There could have been a great loss of life
yesterday, and she probably saved over 100 lives."
Boyd said the gunman had a lot of ammunition and estimated that 40
rounds had been fired inside the church, leaving what looked like a
"war scene."
Jessie Gingrich, who had left New Life and was in the parking lot
getting into her car, saw the gunman get a rifle from his trunk and
open fire on a van with people inside. Gingrich said she cowered in her
vehicle, fumbling with the key.
"I was just expecting for the next gunshot to be coming through my car.
Miraculously -- by the grace of God -- it did not," she told ABC's
"Good Morning America."
About 7,000 people were in and around the church the time of the
shooting, Boyd said. Security had been beefed up after the shootings
hours earlier in Arvada, he said. The church had a total of 15 to 20
volunteer security officers inside at the time of the attack, he said.
Some members of the congregation reacted with compassion and
forgiveness, in keeping with their faith.
Ashley Gibbs was getting into a car with David Harris when they heard
the gunshots. They stayed in the vehicle.
"It was obvious that he was in some sort of pain and going through a
lot," Gibbs told "Today." "I just prayed God would bring him peace."
New Life, with a largely upper middle-class membership, was founded by
the Rev. Ted Haggard, who was dismissed last year after a former male
prostitute alleged he had a three-year cash-for-sex relationship with
him. Haggard admitted committing unspecified "sexual immorality."
The two people killed at the missionary center were identified as
Tiffany Johnson, 26, and Philip Crouse, 24.
Johnson, who grew up in Chisholm, Minn., loved working with children
and wanted to see the world, said family friend Carla Macynski.
"Tiffany was a well-liked, easygoing 26-year-old. She was friendly,
adventurous and a definite leader," Macynski said as she choked back
tears. Johnson had traveled to Egypt, Libya and South Africa with the
missionary group.
Crouse, of Alaska, was a former skinhead who went through a dramatic
spiritual conversion at 18. He had helped build a foster home at a Crow
Indian reservation in Montana, said Ronny Morris, who works with a
Denver chapter of the mission.
"Whenever somebody asks me to give a specific situation where a kid's
life has been changed or transformed, I always think of Phil, because
he had such a radical transformation of life," said pastor Zach
Chandler in Anchorage, Alaska.
Youth With a Mission was started in 1960 and now has 1,100 locations
with 16,000 full-time staff, said Darv Smith, director of a Youth With
a Mission center in Boulder.
The Colorado shootings came days after a 19-year-old gunman opened fire
at a busy department store in Omaha, Neb., killing
eight people and himself.
Site of Amish Schoolhouse
Shooting Razed
DAY
By MARTHA RAFFAELE, Associated Press Writer
Oct 12, 8:18 AM EDT
NICKEL MINES, Pa. (AP) -- Workers with heavy machinery rather than hand
tools moved in before dawn Thursday and demolished the one-room Amish
schoolhouse where a gunman fatally shot five girls and wounded five
others.
Construction lights glared in the mist as a large backhoe tore into the
overhang of the school's porch around 4:45 a.m., then knocked down the
bell tower and toppled the walls. Within 15 minutes, the building was
reduced to a pile of rubble. By 7:30 a.m., the debris was gone, leaving
just a bare patch of earth.
The schoolhouse had been boarded up since the killings 10 days earlier,
with classes moved to a nearby farm. The Amish planned to leave a quiet
pasture where the schoolhouse stood.
"I think the Amish leaders made the right decision," Mike Hart, a
spokesman for the Bart Fire Company, said as loaders lifted debris into
dump trucks to be hauled away.
The Amish are known for constructing buildings by hand, without the aid
of modern technology, but for this job they relied on an outside
demolition crew to bring closure to a painful chapter for their
peaceful community.
A group of 20 to 30 people, many of them in traditional Amish dress,
gathered nearby to watch as the schoolhouse was leveled.
"It seems this is a type of closure for them," Hart said.
The destruction of the West Nickel Mines Amish School came a week after
the solemn funerals of the five girls killed by gunman Charles Carl
Roberts IV. Roberts came heavily armed and apparently prepared for a
long standoff. He held the 10 girls hostage for about an hour before
shooting them and killing himself as police closed in.
The five girls wounded in the Oct. 2 shooting are still believed to be
hospitalized. The hospitals are no longer providing any information
about the patients at the request of their families.
Hart, who has been coordinating activities with the Amish community and
whose company will help provide security, said destroying the school is
about trying to reach some closure.
Hart said private contractors were handling the demolition, and the
debris would be hauled to a landfill.
He has said classes were expected to resume for the school this week at
a makeshift schoolhouse in a garage on an Amish farm in the Nickel
Mines area.
What
Good Looks Like
The lessons the
world can learn from a community that rejects modern times.
By Day Staff Writer
Published on 10/9/2006
The 1985 movie “Witness” starring Harrison Ford presented a gripping
view of the Amish culture, which attempts to isolate its members from
the corrupting influences of modern civilization. The movie speculated
about what can happen when modern-day evil penetrates that insular
world.
Last week, the world saw the same plot in real life, when a gunman
invaded an Amish one-room school in rural Pennsylvania and shot and
killed five young girls. While the event shocked the community of the
victims, the lessons about the nature of good and evil were ours to
learn.
The most striking of these lessons had to do with the attitude of the
Amish toward the murderer and his family. The assailant, who killed
himself after his killing spree, had driven a milk truck serving the
Amish dairy farmers. The Amish not only forgave him, but also offered
to help his family cope with their sorrow. They've even set up a fund
for the dead murderer's wife and three children.
This sounds incredible here in the outside world, where revenge is more
commonplace and if that's not enough, is stirred up on television talk
shows. In our world, children play electronic games about killing in
which there is no pain or consequences. In place of meeting real
people, many in our modern world meet and communicate over the
Internet. It is possible to engage in the “global community” without
coming into direct contact with a real person.
But, as we have seen in the barrage of news coverage following the
killings, the Amish find out what's going on by meeting with one
another, not through text-messaging or cell phone calls.
Their world eschews all modern conveniences, including automobiles. One
of the news photographs from this past week's events showed an Amish
horse and buggy passing a row of television vans with satellite dishes,
vividly illustrating the contrast of cultures and values.
Simplicity seems to characterize everything Amish, from the simple
tools and agricultural implements they use to the wooden caskets in
which the five young girls were buried last week.
They have not escaped evil. They would be the first to admit that's not
possible. But they have rejected the influences that implement it: cars
that pollute the atmosphere and endanger life on earth and all the
noisy electronic messaging that agitates our lives and provides a voice
for bad influences as well as good. The Amish don't rail against that
world, but choose not to live there. They aren't angry at the murderer
who killed their children because they understand the world from which
he came better than most of us.
Our world has benefits, too. Through the eyes of our cutting-edge
electronic communications, we were able to watch this week as the Amish
buried their dead with simplicity and grace and we saw, lest we forget,
what good really looks like.
A
pattern in rural school shootings:
girls as targets; Monday's deadly shooting in Nickel Mines, Pa.,
was the fourth such incident in five weeks.
By Gail Russell Chaddock and Mark Clayton | Staff writers of The
Christian Science Monitor
Wednesday, 10/04/06
NICKEL MINES, PA., AND BOSTON – The scene Monday at the buff-colored,
one-room schoolhouse in the gentle heart of Amish country was
wrenching, but also distressingly familiar. One of four fatal
school shootings to beset rural America in just over a month, the
rampage that killed five young girls raises anew a host of old concerns
- about campus security in countryside settings, access to guns by
unstable individuals, and "copycat" violence advanced by media
attention.
They are startling incidents against the backdrop of declining numbers
of school fatalities. But this premeditated attack, like another one
five days earlier in which a drifter corraled teenage girls, killing
one, at the high school in Bailey, Colo., have an unusual and
disturbing feature: girls as targets.
"The predominant pattern in school shootings of the past three decades
is that girls are the victims," says Katherine Newman, a Princeton
University sociologist whose recent book examines the roots of
"rampage" shootings in rural schools.
Dr. Newman has researched 21 school shootings since the 1970s. Though
it's impossible to know whether girls were randomly victimized in those
cases, she says, "in every case in the US since the early 1970s we do
note this pattern" of girls being the majority of victims.
The two cases are reminiscent of a 1989 shooting in Canada, when a
jobless hospital worker killed 14 female engineering students at the
University of Montreal, accusing them of stealing jobs from men, says
Martin Schwartz, an Ohio University sociologist and an expert on
violence against women. He sees such incidents as related to a culture
of violence against women, "a mutation - something beyond."
In Bailey, an armed drifter walked into Platte Canyon High School last
Wednesday, ordering men out and sexually assaulting some of the six
girls he held hostage, shooting one before killing himself. In this
week's tragedy in Pennsylvania's bucolic Lancaster County, the gunman
ordered boys and adults to leave, bound the 10 girls, and shot them,
then himself.
Small towns are no safeguard
Another similarity between the Pennsylvania and Colorado cases - as
well as two other recent school shootings in Vermont and Wisconsin - is
their rural settings. It is rare for mass school shootings to occur in
cities, Newman says. Despite their safe image, rural communities can be
an especially fertile breeding ground for revenge, she and others agree.
"People think small towns are safer, but in a small community
grievances can fester," says Cheryl Meyer, a professor of psychology at
Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, who has researched
similarities of school shootings in rural and small towns. "It's so
often about revenge. Even if something happened 20 years ago, it
doesn't mean it is gone. People talk about it and everybody remembers.
It just trails after you."
Such a motive may have factored into Monday's shootings in the tiny
hamlet of Nickel Mines, Pa., police say.
Flanked by corn fields and a few white oaks, the Amish schoolhouse
could have been lifted out of the 19th century. With no guards,
chain-link fence, or "drug-free zone" signs - or even a telephone - it
seemed a world apart.
The gunman, Charles Carl Roberts, lived just down the road with his
family in a double-wide trailer. He hauled milk from Amish farms at
night, usually before the next day's milking began about 4 a.m. A
co-worker says he might never have met the farmers he serviced. Then,
he would take his children to school.
On Monday, however, he left suicide notes for his family, then drove
his pickup truck to a school he no doubt passed many times on
late-night milk routes. He brought to the school a semi-automatic
pistol, hundreds of rounds of ammunition, a 12-gauge shotgun, and a
rifle - along with restraints, lumber to block the doors, and a change
of clothing. In a scene that seemed to echo the Bailey shooting,
the gunman ordered boys and school aides out, then bound 10 girls ages
6 to 13. He called his wife on his cellphone.
Police arrived after a teacher ran for help to a nearby farm. They
called him on his cellphone, but no answer. Then the gunman opened
fire, and police stormed the barricaded building, breaking through
windows. Five of the girls died at the scene or at hospitals. At
press time, officials said five remained in critical condition.
Law-enforcement officials, working to unearth Roberts's motive, said
Tuesday that sexual assault seemed the most likely one. In a suicide
note, they said, Roberts recalled an incident 20 years ago when he, a
pre-teen at the time, molested younger children. The note indicated he
had been haunted by dreams about molesting young girls, police said.
"I don't think it was an attack on the Amish community, but a target of
opportunity," Col. Jeffrey Miller, commissioner of the Pennsylvania
State Police, said Monday. "It was almost impenetrable," he said of the
barricaded school. "His goal was to be in there for an extended period
of time. He was hunkering down for a hostage-related siege."
'Copycat' concerns
The apparent similarities between the Bailey and Nickel Mines shootings
- and their close proximity in time - raise experts' concerns about
"copycat" attacks.
News media bear some responsibility for this phenomenon, says James
Fox, a criminologist at Northeastern University in Boston. This is
especially the case when attackers' personalities and grudges are
exposed to high-profile public analysis - as when two teenage attackers
in the Columbine attack were featured on the cover of a news magazine,
he says.
"We've seen with school shootings and postal shootings that the
shooters can become role models for others," Dr. Fox says. "While most
sympathize with the victims, others empathize with the shooters. It's
the publicity they get that turns the shooter into a celebrity that
spawns more of them."
Some see in the latest school shootings echoes of the 1980s, when there
was a spate of carefully planned attacks on students by adults from
outside the schools.
Between 1988 to 1989, there were nine premeditated attacks by adults
targeting schoolchildren, says Fox. In those cases, however, there was
no pattern of girls being targets - a new wrinkle. To him, that year
stands out for its "contagion of adults who got even with society by
killing its most beloved members - schoolchildren."
While national crime statistics show a steady drop in the murder rate,
including violent school fatalities, there seems to be fewer incidents
but "more spectacular stuff going on," Dr. Schwartz says. "Splashy
violence is what's going up, even though crime as a whole going down.
The only thing not going down is fear engendered by these types of
high-profile events."
In Nickel Mines, the news media showed up almost as promptly as police
- within minutes jamming the narrow streets and nearby fields with
satellite trucks, television crews, and crane-high lights.
For grieving Amish families, driving past the crime scene late into the
night or talking quietly in small groups nearby, the fierce media glare
came as a shock to a community that resolutely avoids the spotlight.
"I was irate when I first heard about the school, then the hurt
started," says an Amish fireman, who helped maintain a security
perimeter around the school late Monday night. He says local firemen
and policemen had expected a crush of news media, because of the
intense public interest in school shootings. But, he adds, "we never
expected to have to deal with it here."
"It's unbelievable. We never expected that anything like this would
happen," says Ruth, a Mennonite neighbor who wanted to give only her
first name.
"I don't understand it, but it's not from God," says Fannie Beiler,
another Mennonite. "He wants us to love one another."
There are scores of such schools in the quiet farming communities
around Lancaster County, a center for the Old Order Amish in the United
States. An estimated 28,000 Amish live in the area - of about 200,000
nationwide.
Amish families live simply - no cars, electricity, cellphones, or iPods
- and grieve quietly. A keystone of their faith is pacifism. When a
young Amish boy in the next town of Bart was killed on his way to help
a neighbor with the milking by a hit-and-run driver two weeks ago,
there was no talk of lawsuits. Nor did Amish families join their
"English" neighbors in calling for a new sign cautioning drivers to
slow down.
In Bart, Paula Flinn set up a hand-painted sign on her front lawn for
their Amish neighbors, who drove past the house in closed, black
buggies at a rate of 50 an hour, some late into the night, after the
shooting. Her sign reads: "Our prayers and thoughts are with you."
5
Girls Dead in Amish School Shooting; Police: Gunman at Amish
School Heavily Armed
By MARK SCOLFORO Associated Press Writer
Article Launched: 10/03/2006 08:16:00 AM EDT
NICKEL MINES, Pa. (AP) -- Two more children died Tuesday morning of
wounds from the shootings at an Amish schoolhouse, raising the death
toll to five girls plus the gunman who apparently was spurred by a
two-decades-old grudge.
The toll from the nation's third deadly school shooting in less than a
week rose twice within a matter of hours Tuesday with the deaths of a
9-year-old girl at Christiana Hospital in Delaware and a 7-year-old
girl at Penn State Children's Hospital in Hershey.
Five additional girls were hospitalized.
The Bush administration on Monday called for a school violence summit
to be held next week with education and law enforcement officials to
discuss possible federal action to help communities prevent violence
and deal with its aftermath. State police spokeswoman Linette
Quinn said the two girls who died early Tuesday had suffered "very
severe injuries, but the other ones are coming along very well."
"Her parents were with her," hospital spokeswoman Amy Buehler Stranges
said of the 7-year-old. "She was taken off life support and she passed
away shortly after."
Authorities said the gunman, Charles Carl Roberts IV, 32, wrote what
authorities described as suicide notes, took guns and ammunition and
went to a nearby one-room schoolhouse, where he opened fire on several
girls and took his own life, authorities said. Roberts, a father
of three from nearby Bart Township and was not Amish, did not appear to
be targeting the Amish and apparently chose the school because he was
bent on killing young girls as a way of "acting out in revenge for
something that happened 20 years ago," said state police Commissioner
Jeffrey B. Miller.
"This is a horrendous, horrific incident for the Amish community.
They're solid citizens in the community. They're good people. They
don't deserve ... no one deserves this," Miller said.
The names of the dead were not immediately released.
Of the injured, a 6-year-old girl remained in critical condition and a
13-year-old girl was in serious condition at Penn State Children's
Hospital, spokeswoman Buehler Stranges said. She said the names of the
children were not being released. Three girls, ages 8, 10 and 12,
were flown to Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, where they were out
of surgery but remained in critical condition, spokeswoman Peggy Flynn
said.
Roberts brought with him supplies necessary for a lengthy siege,
including three guns, a stun gun, two knives, a pile of wood and a bag
with 600 rounds of ammunition, police said. He also had a change of
clothing, toilet paper, bolts and hardware and rolls of clear tape.
He released about 15 boys, a pregnant woman and three women with
infants, barred the doors with desks and wood and secured them with
nails, bolts and flexible plastic ties. He then made the girls line up
along a blackboard and tied their feet together. The teacher and
another adult fled to a nearby farmhouse, and authorities were called
at about 10:30 a.m. Miller said
Roberts apparently called his wife from a cell phone at around 11 a.m.,
saying he was taking revenge for an old grudge. Miller declined to say
what the grudge could have been.
"It seems as though he wanted to attack young, female victims," Miller
said.
Miller told NBC's "Today" that Roberts lost a daughter "approximately
three years ago" and that that may have been a factor in the
shooting. He said a teacher had to run to a farm house to call
police because there wasn't one at the school, in keeping with Amish
custom. Parents refused to fly in planes - again in keeping with
Amish tradition - and had to be driven to see their children at
hospitals, Miller told "Today." Some were taken to the wrong hospitals
in the confusion, Miller said.
From the suicide notes and telephone calls, it was clear Roberts was
"angry at life, he was angry at God," and co-workers said his mood had
darkened in recent days, Miller said.
In a statement released to reporters, the gunman's wife, Marie Roberts,
called her husband "loving, supportive and thoughtful."
"He was an exceptional father," she said. "He took the kids to soccer
practice and games, played ball in the backyard and took our 7-year-old
daughter shopping. He never said no when I asked him to change a
diaper."
"Our hearts are broken, our lives are shattered, and we grieve for the
innocence and lives that were lost today," she said. "Above all, please
pray for the families who lost children and please pray too for our
family and children."
The attack bore similarities to a deadly school shooting last week in
Bailey, Colo., but Miller said he believed the Pennsylvania attack was
not a copycat crime. "I really believe this was about this individual
and what was going on inside his head," he said. On Friday, a
school principal was shot to death in Cazenovia, Wis. A 15-year-old
student, described as upset over a reprimand, was charged with
murder.
Milk
Man Kills Girls at Pa. Amish School
DAY
By MARK SCOLFORO; Associated Press Writer
Oct 2, 3:36 PM EDT
NICKEL MINES, Pa. (AP) -- A 32-year-old milk truck driver took about a
dozen girls hostage in a one-room Amish schoolhouse Monday, barricaded
the doors with boards and killed at least three girls and apparently
himself, authorities said.
It was the nation's third deadly school shooting in less than a week,
and similar to an attack just days earlier at a school in Colorado.
The gunman, identified as Charles Carl Roberts IV, was inside for over
half an hour and had barred the doors with 2x4s with the girls inside,
State Police Commissioner Jeffrey B. Miller said. By the time officers
broke windows to get in, three girls and the gunman were dead, Miller
said. Seven others were taken to hospitals, three in critical condition.
"It appears that when he began shooting these victims, the victims were
shot execution style in the head," Miller said.
Roberts had walked into the one-room West Nickel Mines Amish School
with a shotgun and handgun, then released about 15 boys, a pregnant
woman and three other women with infants before barring the doors with
the girls inside, Miller said.
The girls were lined up along a blackboard, Miller said. "He had wire
ties with him and flex ties, and he began to tie the girls' feet
together," Miller said.
A teacher was able to call police around 10:30 a.m. and reported that a
gunman was holding students hostage.
About 11 a.m., Roberts apparently called his wife from a cell phone,
saying he was "acting out in revenge for something that happened 20
years ago," Miller said. "It seems as though he wanted to attack young,
female victims."
Moments later, Roberts told a dispatcher he would open fire on the
children if police didn't back away from the building. Troopers heard
gunfire in the building seconds later. The school has about 25 to
30 students in all, ages 6 to 13.
"It seems as though he wanted to attack young, female victims," Miller
said. He released no further details about that what the grudge Roberts
mentioned could have involved.
Lancaster County Coroner G. Gary Kirchner initially said six people
were killed, but later said he wasn't certain about that number.
At least seven people were taken to hospitals, including at least three
girls, ages 6-12, who were admitted to Lancaster General Hospital in
critical condition with gunshot wounds, spokesman John Lines
said. The small school, surrounded by a white board fence, sits
among farmlands just outside Nickel Mines, a tiny village about 55
miles west of Philadelphia.
Hours after the attack, about three dozen people in traditional Amish
clothing, broad-brimmed hats and bonnets stood near the small
schoolhouse as investigators walked in a line through fields searching
for evidence.
The shootings were disturbingly similar to an attack last week at
Platte Canyon High School in Bailey, Colo., where a man took several
girls hostage in a school classroom and then killed one of them and
himself. Authorities said the man sexually molested the girls.
"If this is some kind of a copycat, it's horrible and of concern to
everybody, all law enforcement," said Monte Gore, undersheriff of Park
County, Colo.
"On behalf of Park County and our citizens and our sheriff's office,
our hearts go out to that school and the community," he said.
Nationwide, the 1999 Columbine High School massacre in Littleton,
Colo., remains the deadliest school shooting, claiming the lives of 15
people, including the two teenage gunmen. On Friday, a school principal
was gunned down in Cazenovia, Wis. A 15-year-old student, described as
upset over a reprimand, was charged with murder in the killing.
Several
killed in Pennsylvania school attack
October 2, 2006
NEW YORK (Reuters) - A gunman attacked an Amish school
in Pennsylvania on Monday, shooting and killing a number of people
including an unknown number of students before he was captured or
killed, police said.
"There are a number dead. The exact number I am not sure at this point.
There are also a number of wounded. And the shooter is not at large,"
said state police Corporal Ralph Striebig of rural Lancaster County.
"There are multiple injuries. There are multiple casualties. I cannot
give any names or numbers. It's a horrible, horrible tragedy,"
Lancaster County Coroner Gary Kirchner told Reuters.
A local hospital said that three girls including one aged 11 were in
critical condition with gunshot wounds.
The hostage-taker was either killed or captured at the scene. "One or
the other, but he's not at large," Striebig said.
The incident, the third school shooting in a week in the United States,
happened at Georgetown Amish School in Bart Township.
"The three that are here are in a critical condition, they will be
airlifted from our hospital to pediatric hospitals in the region," said
Lancaster General Hospital spokesman John Lines. "They arrived here
suffering from gunshot wounds."
A spokeswoman at Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center said it
was also receiving patients from the school, but gave no information
yet on how many.
Amish schools typically group students from the first through eighth
grade -- aged about six to 14 -- in the same schoolhouse, so the
victims were likely "teens or pre-teens. They're all in one school from
first grade up," Striebig said.
The Amish people dress and live simply in Lancaster County farm
country, shunning modern machines and vehicles including cars, and
cultivating their land using old-fashioned traditions.
The shooting was a shock to a community that one resident called almost
crime-free.
Aaron Meyer, owner of a local buggy company, told CNN: "In this
township of about 30,000 people, we have no police. Because there's
just virtually no crime. Many of these townships here have no police at
all."
The shooting in Pennsylvania followed reports earlier on Monday of
lockdowns at two Las Vegas area schools as police searched for an armed
youth, local television reported.
Last Friday a 15-year-old student killed his school's principal in
western Wisconsin.
Last Wednesday a drifter took six female high school students hostage,
molested them and then shot one to death and killed himself as police
closed in.
Coroner:
6 Dead in Amish School Shooting
By MARK SCOLFORO, Associated Press Writer
1:58 PM EDT, October 2, 2006
NICKEL MINES, Pa. -- A gunman killed six people at a one-room Amish
schoolhouse Monday morning in Pennsylvania's bucolic Lancaster County,
and several others were taken to hospitals with injuries, authorities
said.
"So far, six confirmed dead, and the helicopters are pulling into
(Lancaster General Hospital) like crazy," Coroner G. Gary Kirchner
said.
It was unclear if the shooter was among the six. State Police Cpl.
Ralph Striebig said earlier that the shooter was dead.
Three girls, all in critical condition with gunshot wounds, were
admitted to Lancaster General Hospital, spokesman John Lines told
WGAL-TV. Officials at the Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center
confirmed that victims also were being admitted there. A spokeswoman
said the hospital anticipated more than one patient.
Police surrounded the one-room school in southeast Lancaster County
late Monday morning, and the Lancaster County 911 Web site reported
that dozens of emergency units were dispatched to a "medical emergency"
at 10:45 a.m.
Three dozen people in traditional Amish clothing, broad-brimmed hats
and bonnets stood near the small school building, surrounded by a low
white fence, speaking to one another and authorities. Others gathered
with a group of children at a nearby farm while investigators stretched
out in a line across a field searching for evidence.
The school is situated among farmlands just outside Nickel Mines, a
tiny village about 55 miles west of Philadelphia.
Gun
Reported at North Las Vegas School
Hartford Courant
By Associated Press
12:14 PM EDT, October 2, 2006
NORTH LAS VEGAS, Nev. -- Two schools were locked down
Monday while police searched for a teenager who had been spotted on a
high school campus with a gun, authorities said.
No students were hurt, and police said there was no initial indication
that the teenager, who they said was not a student, had threatened
anyone with the weapon, said Sean Walker, a North Las Vegas police
spokesman.
The teen ran from the school after being confronted by campus police as
students were arriving at Mojave High School, Walker said.
A handgun was found behind a nearby church, and both the high school
and nearby Elizondo Elementary School were locked down while police
searched the surrounding neighborhoods for the teen, Walker said.
School districts across the country have been especially sensitive to
threats after deadly shootings last week at schools in Wisconsin and
Colorado.
On Friday, a school principal was gunned down in Cazenovia, Wis., and a
15-year-old student, described as upset over a reprimand, was charged
with murder. Just two days earlier, an adult gunman held six girls
hostage in a school at Bailey, Colo., before killing a 16-year-old girl
and then himself.
On Sept. 21, three high school seniors in Green Bay, Wis., were charged
with conspiracy to commit homicide for allegedly planning to attack a
school with guns and bombs.
School
Safety Back Under Scrutiny
Hartford Courant
By JON SARCHE, Associated Press Writer
7:02 PM EDT, October 1, 2006
DENVER -- A bearded drifter walks into a Colorado school and fatally
shoots a student before taking his own life. Wisconsin authorities
charge three boys with plotting a bomb attack on their high school and,
two weeks later, a student in a rural school allegedly shoots his
principal. A gunman bursts into a Vermont elementary school looking for
his ex-girlfriend and guns down a teacher.
All of this in the past month alone.
Since the 1999 Columbine massacre that left 15 people dead, there has
been a determined effort among administrators, principals and teachers
to improve school safety. Law enforcement officers across the nation
and around the world have added training specifically intended to
address school violence.
But experts say there is simply no way to guarantee that a stranger or
student won't be able to injure or kill on school grounds.
"There's no perfect security, from the White House to the schoolhouse,"
said Kenneth Trump, president of the National School Safety and
Security Services consulting firm in Cleveland.
Since Columbine, school officials have gotten better at preventing
student violence, he said, but authorities can't prepare for every
problem.
"When you factor in unpredictable outsiders, when you have a roaming
monster walking into the schools, we have to be realistic," Trump said.
"There are some incidents you're not going to be able to prevent."
Trump's firm counts 17 nonfatal school shootings so far this school
year, beginning Aug. 1. There were 85 the previous school year and 52
in the 2004-2005 school year.
Since Columbine in 1999, the number of fatal school shootings in a
school year has ranged from three (2002-03) to 24 (2004-05), according
to National School Safety and Security Services. The firm does not
track cases before Columbine.
Park County Sheriff Fred Wegener was among the law enforcement
officials who eagerly applied for federal aid to beef up security at
Platte Canyon High School in Bailey, the site of last week's attack in
which a man held six girls hostage before killing one and himself.
A deputy was assigned to be the school's resource officer --
essentially, its security guard. But that guard was called away on
sheriff's business last Wednesday and gunman Duane Morrison walked
inside with two handguns. He reportedly sat in the school parking lot
and wandered the hallways for as long as 35 minutes before the siege
began.
Despite the death of 16-year-old Emily Keyes, things could have been
worse, authorities said.
"Basically, the tragedy of Columbine taught law enforcement and
educators how to avoid future tragedies," Gov. Bill Owens said. "In a
couple of significant ways, the tragedy of Columbine may have helped
prevent an even worse tragedy (here)."
He said educators had been instructed in August on what to do. The
school was also designed using concept learned from the Columbine
attacks, which helped authorities keep the gunman in one room.
Ever since Columbine, school officials have been taught to write
emergency response plans and practice them, to lock down schools and
evacuate when it appears safe. That seemed to work well in Bailey as
hundreds of students were whisked to safety.
Law enforcement officers who once were taught to set up a perimeter and
wait for SWAT teams to show up are now trained in "active shooter"
programs that call for the first officers on the scene to enter the
building and work as quickly as possible to locate the gunman, Trump
said.
"That's why we were able to isolate it to just one room and get
everybody else out," Wegener said. "Still, you can't prepare for
something like this. You do the best you can."
Student Zach Barnes, 16, also said students last year practiced drills
for emergencies including a gunman in the school. Students were told to
remain calm, taught where to go and how to leave the school. Still,
there appeared to be at least one glitch Wednesday.
"We were sitting there in math class and over the intercom they said,
`Students and teachers, we have a code white, repeat code white,' and
nobody really knew what a code white was," Barnes said.
He said his teacher pulled a sheet of paper from her desk, checked it
and then herded her students into a nearby classroom that had a solid
door. After about 25 minutes, a police officer led them into the
hallway and out of the school.
Colorado has left decisions on providing security in schools up to some
172 school boards, but state lawmakers said they will look at training
and other issues following the Bailey attack.
Providing security guards at every entrance to every school would be
difficult, said Senate President Joan Fitz-Gerald, D-Golden, but others
said video cameras and security systems could help fill the gap.
"If we could plug in some technology, that would help," said George
Voorheis, superintendent of Colorado's largely rural Montrose &
Olathe Schools District RE1J.
Gunman's Friendly Exterior Masked Past
NYTIMES
By ASHLEY M. HEHER and CARYN ROUSSEAU | Associated Press Writers
9:42 AM EST, February 16, 2008
DEKALB, Ill. - Steven Kazmierczak's quiet, dependable and fun-loving
exterior masked troubling details from his past that emerged as a
stunned community struggled to understand what caused the 27-year-old
to open fire on a class at Northern Illinois University, leaving six
people dead.
A former employee at a Chicago psychiatric treatment center said
Kazmierczak was placed there after high school by his parents. She said
he used to cut himself, and had resisted taking his medications.
He also had a short-lived stint as a prison guard that ended abruptly
when he didn't show up for work. He was in the Army for about six
months in 2001-02, but he told a friend he'd gotten a psychological
discharge.
Exactly what set Kazmierczak off -- and why he picked his former
university and that particular lecture hall -- remained a mystery.
On Thursday, Kazmierczak, armed with three handguns and a pump-action
shotgun, stepped from behind a screen on the lecture hall's stage and
opened fire on a geology class. He killed five students before
committing suicide.
University Police Chief Donald Grady said Friday that Kazmierczak had
become erratic in the past two weeks after he stopped taking his
medication.
Kazmierczak spent more than a year at the Thresholds-Mary Hill House in
the late 1990s, former house manager Louise Gbadamashi told The
Associated Press. His parents placed him there after high school
because he had become "unruly" at home, she said.
Gbadamashi said she couldn't remember any instances of him being
violent.
"He never wanted to identify with being mentally ill," she said. "That
was part of the problem."
The attack was baffling to many of those who knew him.
"Steve was the most gentle, quiet guy in the world. ... He had a
passion for helping people," said Jim Thomas, an emeritus professor of
sociology and criminology at Northern Illinois who taught Kazmierczak,
promoted him to a teacher's aide and became his friend.
Kazmierczak once told Thomas about getting a discharge from the Army.
"It was no major deal, a kind of incompatibility discharge -- for a
state of mind, not for any behavior," Thomas said. "He was concerned
that that on his record might be a stigma."
Kazmierczak enlisted in September 2001, but was discharged in February
2002 for an "unspecified" reason, Army spokesman Paul Boyce said.
He worked from Sept. 24 to Oct. 9 as a corrections officer at the
Rockville Correctional Facility, a medium-security prison in Rockville,
Ind. His tenure there ended when "he just didn't show up one day,"
Indiana prisons spokesman Doug Garrison said.
Authorities were searching for a woman who police believe may have been
Kazmierczak's girlfriend. According to a law enforcement official who
spoke on condition of anonymity because the case is still under
investigation, authorities were looking into whether Kazmierczak and
the woman recently broke up.
On Feb. 9, Kazmierczak walked into a Champaign gun store and picked up
two guns -- a Remington shotgun and a Glock 9mm handgun. He bought the
two other handguns at the same shop -- a Hi-Point .380 on Dec. 30 and a
Sig Sauer on Aug. 6.
All four guns were bought legally from a federally licensed firearms
dealer, said Thomas Ahern, a spokesman for the federal Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. At least one criminal
background check was performed -- Kazmierczak had no criminal record.
Kazmierczak had a State Police-issued FOID, or firearms owners
identification card, which is required in Illinois to own a gun,
authorities said. Such cards are rarely issued to those with recent
mental health problems.
NIU President John Peters said Kazmierczak compiled "a very good
academic record, no record of trouble" at the 25,000-student campus in
DeKalb. He won at least two awards and served as an officer in two
student groups dedicated to promoting understanding of the criminal
justice system.
Kazmierczak (pronounced kaz-MUR-chek) grew up in the Chicago suburb of
Elk Grove Village. He was a B student at Elk Grove High School, where
school district spokeswoman Venetia Miles said he was active in band
and took Japanese before graduating in 1998. He was also in the chess
club.
A statement posted on the door on the Urbana home of Kazmierczak's
sister, Susan, said: "We are both shocked and saddened. In addition to
the loss of innocent lives, Steven was a member of our family. We are
grieving his loss as well as the loss of life resulting from his
actions."
At NIU, six white crosses were placed on a snow-covered hill around the
center of campus, which was closed Friday. They included the names of
four victims -- Daniel Parmenter, Ryanne Mace, Julianna Gehant,
Catalina Garcia. The two other crosses were blank, though officials
have identified Kazmierczak's final victim as Gayle Dubowski.
By Friday night, dozens of candles flickered in packed snow at
makeshift memorials around campus as hundreds of students, mostly
wearing the school colors of red and
black, packed a memorial service.
"It's kind of overwhelming. It feels strong, it feels like we're all in
this together," said Carlee Siggeman, 18, a freshman from Genoa who
attended the vigil with friends.
___
Associated Press writers Don Babwin, Deanna Bellandi, Dave Carpenter,
Tamara Starks, Carla K. Johnson, Lindsey Tanner, David Mercer, Nguyen
Huy Vu, Michael Tarm and Mike Robinson in Chicago, Anthony McCartney in
Lakeland, Fla., and Matt Apuzzo and Lolita Baldor in Washington
contributed to this report, along with the AP News Research Center in
New York.
A graduate student:
NIU Gunman Stopped Taking Medication
NYTIMES
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: February 15, 2008
Filed at 1:58 p.m. ET
DEKALB, Ill. (AP) -- The man who
gunned down five people at Northern Illinois University in a suicidal
rampage became erratic after halting his medication and carried a
shotgun to campus inside a guitar case, police said Friday.
The man, 27-year-old former student
Stephen Kazmierczak, was also wielding three handguns during Thursday's
ambush inside a lecture hall.
Two of the weapons -- the
pump-action Remington shotgun and a Glock 9mm handgun -- were purchased
legally less than a week ago, on Feb. 9, authorities said. They were
purchased in Champaign, where Kazmierczak was enrolled at the
University of Illinois.
A spokesman for the federal Bureau
of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms said the other two guns were also
traced to the Champaign gun shop, but the ATF was still determining
when Kazmierczak picked them up.
Kazmierczak had a valid Firearm
Owner's Identification Card, which is required for all Illinois
residents who buy or possess firearms, authorities said.
The gunman's father, Robert
Kazmierczak, briefly came out of his single-story house in Lakeland,
Fla., to talk to reporters.
''Please leave me alone. I have no
statement to make and no comment. OK? I'd appreciate that. This is a
very hard time. I'm a diabetic and I don't want to go into a relapse,''
he said before breaking down crying.
He then went back inside his house,
which has a sign on the front door that says ''Illini fans live here.''
President Bush talked by telephone
with NIU President John Peters and said people will be praying for the
families of the victims and for the Northern Illinois University
community.
Campus Police Chief Donald Grady
said investigators recovered 48 shell casings and six shotgun shells
following the attack in Cole Hall. The gunman paused to reload his
shotgun after opening fire on a crowd of terrified students in a
geology class, sending them running and crawling toward the exits. He
shot himself to death on the stage of the hall.
Kazmierczak, whose first name was
earlier listed as Steven, was taking some kind of medication, Grady
said.
''He had stopped taking medication
and become somewhat erratic in the last couple of weeks,'' Grady said,
declining to name the drug or provide other details.
Correcting information his office
released earlier Friday, DeKalb County Coroner Dennis J. Miller said
five students, not six, were killed in the rampage, in addition to the
gunman. Miller said the higher victim total was the result of confusion
over the fate of a patient taken to another county for treatment.
''There was a miscommunication,''
Miller said.
The motive of the killer, who
graduated from NIU in 2006 but was a student there as recently as last
year, was still not known. Grady said Kazmierczak was an
''outstanding'' student while at NIU and authorities were still trying
to determine why he would kill. There was no known suicide note.
''We were dealing with a disturbed
individual who intended to do harm on this campus,'' Peters said.
Witnesses said the gunman, dressed
in black and wearing a stocking cap, emerged from behind a screen on
the stage of 200-seat Cole Hall and opened fire just as the class was
about to end around 3 p.m. Officials said 162 students were registered
for the class but it was unknown how many were there Thursday.
John Giovanni, 20, of Des Plaines
said the gunman calmly fired at the greatest concentration of students.
''He was shooting from the hip. He
was just shooting,'' said Giovanni, who turned and ran so fast that he
lost a shoe. ''I was running but I was hurtling over people in the
fetal position.''
Peters said four people died at the
scene, including three students and the gunman. The other died at a
hospital. The teacher, a graduate student, was wounded but was expected
to recover.
Miller released the identities of
four victims: Daniel Parmenter, 20, of Westchester; Catalina Garcia,
20, of Cicero; Ryanne Mace, 19, of Carpentersville; and Julianna
Gehant, 32, of Meridan.
Another victim, Gayle Dubowski, a
20-year-old sophomore from Carol Stream, died at a Rockford hospital,
Winnebago County Coroner Sue Fiduccia said.
The killer had been a graduate
student in sociology at Northern Illinois as recently as spring 2007,
Peters said. He also said the suspect had no record of police contact
or an arrest record while attending Northern Illinois, a campus with
25,000 students about 65 miles west of Chicago.
The gunman was a student at the
University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, Chancellor Richard Herman
said. The university is about 140 miles south of Chicago.
Lauren Carr said she was sitting in
the third row when she saw the shooter walk through a door on the
right-hand side of the stage, pointing a gun straight ahead.
''I personally Army-crawled halfway
up the aisle,'' said Carr, a 20-year-old sophomore. ''I said I could
get up and run or I could die here.''
She said a student in front of her
was bleeding, ''but he just kept running.''
''I heard this girl scream, 'Run,
he's reloading the gun!'''
More than a hundred students cried
and hugged as they gathered outside the Phi Kappa Alpha house early
Friday to remember Parmenter. Flowers, candles and small notes were
left in the snow near Cole Hall. Flags were flying at half-staff. At a
house across the street, a hand-drawn banner made out of a sheet said:
'NIU We Pray 4 U'
The campus was closed on Friday.
Students were urged to call their parents and were offered counseling
at any residence hall, according to the school Web site.
The school was closed for one day
during final exam week in December after campus police found threats,
including racial slurs and references to shootings earlier in the year
at Virginia Tech, scrawled on a bathroom wall in a dormitory. Police
determined after an investigation that there was no imminent threat and
the campus was reopened. Peters said he knew of no connection between
that incident and Thursday's attack.
------
Associated Press writers Carla K.
Johnson, Michael Tarm, David Mercer, Martha Irvine, Nguyen Huy Vu,
Sarah Rafi, Mike Robinson, Anthony McCartney in Lakeland, Fla., and
photographer Charles Rex Arbogast contributed to this report.
In
the matter of the Virginia Tech disaster...
Twists Multiply in Alabama Shooting
Case
NYTIMES
By SHAILA DEWAN and KATIE ZEZIMA
February 15,
2010
HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — On Friday, this
city of rocket scientists and brainy inventors was stunned when a
neuroscientist with a Harvard Ph.D. was arrested in the shooting deaths
of three of her colleagues after she was denied tenure.
But that was only the first surprise
in the tale of the neuroscientist, Amy Bishop, who was regarded as
fiercely intelligent and had seemed to have a promising career in
biotechnology. Every day since has produced a new revelation from Dr.
Bishop’s past, each more bizarre than the last.
On Saturday, the police in
Braintree, Mass., said that she had fatally shot her brother in 1986
and questioned whether the decision to dismiss the case as an accident
had been the right one.
On Sunday, a law enforcement
official in Boston said she and her husband, James Anderson, had been
questioned in a 1993 case in which a pipe bomb was sent to a colleague
of Dr. Bishop’s at Children’s Hospital Boston. The bomb did not go off, no one was ever
charged in the case, and no proof ever emerged connecting the couple to
the bomb plot. On
Sunday, Mr. Anderson firmly defended his wife in an interview at their
home in Huntsville, saying that she had been completely cleared in the
pipe bomb case and that her brother’s death had been accidental.
“That’s incorrect,” he said about
reports linking him and his wife to the bomb plot. “We were not
suspects. They questioned everybody that ever knew this guy.”
The target of the mail bomb was Dr.
Paul Rosenberg, according to The Boston Globe, which first reported
that the couple had been questioned in the case. After returning home
from a vacation, Dr. Rosenberg opened a package that contained two
6-inch pipe bombs connected to two nine-volt batteries, The Globe
reported. The doctor and his wife fled and called the police.
Officials said that Dr. Bishop was
concerned that Dr. Rosenberg would give her a negative evaluation on
her doctorate work, the newspaper wrote, and that they were concerned
about the incident involving her brother. The authorities in Boston
searched Dr. Bishop’s computer at the time and found a novel she was
working on about a scientist who killed her brother and atoned by
excelling at her work, The Globe reported.
Though he firmly protested his
wife’s innocence in the earlier cases, Mr. Anderson said he remained
mystified over Friday’s shootings, which left three professors dead and
three other people wounded after a faculty meeting at the University of
Alabama, Huntsville. Dr.
Bishop was charged with capital murder; three charges of attempted
murder were added on Sunday. Mr. Anderson said he did not know of any
specific incident that could have led to the shooting, and did not know
that his wife allegedly had a gun when she went to the meeting.
“I had no idea,” he said. “We don’t
own one.”
Those killed were Gopi Podila, 52,
the chairman of the biology department; Maria Ragland Davis, 50, a
professor who studied plant pathogens; and Adriel Johnson, 52, a cell
biologist who also taught Boy Scouts about science. Two of the wounded were Joseph Leahy, 50,
a microbiologist, and Stephanie Monticciolo, 62, a staff assistant,
both of whom were in critical condition. The third was Luis Cruz-Vera,
40, a molecular biologist, who was released from the hospital on
Saturday.
Mr. Anderson said that months ago,
the university administration overruled a successful appeal of the
decision to deny Dr. Bishop tenure in spring 2009.
“She won her appeal,” he said, “and
the provost canned it.”
The university has declined to
elaborate on the details of Dr. Bishop’s tenure application, saying
only that she was denied last spring and that she could stay at the
university only until the end of this academic year. Even if a faculty
member successfully appeals a tenure denial, the final decision rests
with the administration.
But Dr. Bishop had continued
to fight, appealing to two members of the University of Alabama
System’s Board of Trustees for help and hiring a lawyer, who was
“finding one problem after another with the process,” Mr. Anderson
said. One issue was a dispute over whether two of her papers had been
published in time to count toward tenure, he said.
“She exceeded the qualifications for
tenure,” Mr. Anderson said. “The review board said, ‘Grant it or go
through the process again.’ ”
Mr. Anderson said that his wife’s
research was generating millions of dollars for the university, that
she had published numerous papers and that she was a good teacher.
But that estimate of her financial
benefit to the university seems likely to be premature. One of her
innovations, an automated system for producing cell cultures that the
couple developed together, has attracted $1.25 million in financing but
has not yet reached the market. Another, a potential treatment for
degenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s, is in the process of being
licensed from the university. Typically, universities share the
proceeds from such licenses with the scientists responsible.
The police said Saturday that Dr.
Bishop was 45, but her birth date on a university Web site indicated
that she was 44.
Mr. Anderson said he could not gain
access to his wife’s e-mail account and did not know if she had
received any news that might have set off the shooting. The police, he
said, had taken a thick binder documenting her tenure battle, her
computer and the family van. At least one of the trustees had recently
told her that he could not help reverse the tenure decision, a family
friend said.
Mr. Anderson said he had already
told the Huntsville police that they might come across the Boston pipe
bomb incident during their investigation.
Sylvia Fluckiger, who worked as a
laboratory technician at Children’s Hospital when Dr. Bishop and Dr.
Rosenberg were working there, said Dr. Bishop had acknowledged that she
was questioned by the police about the pipe bomb incident.
“She was visited by the police,” Ms.
Fluckiger said. “What she said is they asked her if she had ever used a
stamp, taken it off an envelope and put it somewhere else.”
Ms. Fluckiger said Dr. Bishop “had a
smirk on her face” when asked about the incident. “I don’t know why she
was smirking,” she said. “It was a funny expression on her face.”
“We did know that there was a
dispute between Paul Rosenberg and her,” Ms. Fluckiger said, adding
that she could not recall the details.
On Saturday, the police in Braintree
said they were considering reopening the case of the shooting death of
her brother, Seth Bishop, 18. Although a state police report said
investigators determined that the shooting was an accident, Police
Chief Paul Frazier said other officers remember that it came after an
argument and questioned why local police documents could not be found.
On Sunday, Mayor Joseph C. Sullivan
of Braintree, a Boston suburb, issued a statement saying the town would
conduct a “full and thorough review” of its records for any material
relating to Seth Bishop’s death. But he noted that records from 1986
were created and maintained manually, which would complicate their
retrieval.
Standing at his door after church on
Sunday, Mr. Anderson confirmed the existence of the novel reported in
The Globe, as well as two others his wife worked on in her spare time.
The couple has four children, ranging from grade-school to college age.
Mr. Anderson said that somewhere in his files he had a letter sent by
the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms after the bomb
investigation, saying: “You are hereby cleared in this incident. You
are no longer a subject of the investigation.”
“This is one thing from the past I
hoped would not be dredged up,” he said.
Shaila Dewan
reported from Huntsville, and Katie Zezima from Boston.
Denied
tenure, kills three at Biology Dept. at U. of Alabama.
Accused Alabama prof shot, killed brother
in 1986
DAY
By KRISTIN M. HALL and DESIREE
HUNTER, Associated Press
Writer
Feb 13, 9:15 PM EST
HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (AP) -- The
professor accused of killing three colleagues during a faculty meeting
was a Harvard-educated neurobiologist, inventor and mother whose life
had been marred by a violent episode in her distant past.
More than two decades ago, police
said Amy Bishop fatally shot her teenage brother at their Massachusetts
home in what officers at the time logged as an accident - though
authorities said Saturday that records of the shooting are missing.
Bishop had just months left teaching
at the University of Alabama in Huntsville when police said she opened
fire with a handgun Friday in a room filled with a dozen of her
colleagues from the school's biology department. Bishop, a rare woman
suspected in a workplace shooting, was to leave after this semester
because she had been denied tenure.
Police say she is 42, but the
university's Web site lists her as 44.
Some have said she was upset after
being denied the job-for-life security afforded tenured academics, and
the husband of one victim and one of Bishop's students said they were
told the shooting stemmed from the school's refusal to grant her such
status. Authorities have refused to discuss a motive, and school
spokesman Ray Garner said the faculty meeting wasn't called to discuss
tenure.
William Setzer, chairman of
chemistry department at UAH, said Bishop was appealing the decision
made last year.
"Politics and personalities" always
play a role in the tenure process, he said. "In a close department it's
more so. If you have any lone wolves or bizarre personalities, it's a
problem and I'm thinking that certainly came into play here."
The three killed were Gopi K.
Podila, the chairman of the Department of Biological Sciences, and two
other faculty members, Maria Ragland Davis and Adriel Johnson. The
wounded were still recovering in hospitals early Saturday. Luis
Cruz-Vera was in fair condition; Joseph Leahy in critical condition;
and staffer Stephanie Monticciolo also was in critical condition.
Descriptions of Bishop from students
and colleagues were mixed. Some saw a strange woman who had difficulty
relating to her students, while others described a witty, intelligent
teacher.
Students and colleagues described
Bishop as intelligent, but someone who often had difficulty explaining
difficult concepts.
Bishop was well-known in the
research community, appearing on the cover of the winter 2009 issue of
"The Huntsville R&D Report," a local magazine focusing on
engineering, space and genetics. However, it was unclear how many of
her colleagues and students knew about a more tragic part of her past.
She shot her brother, an 18-year-old
accomplished violinist, in the chest in 1986, said Paul Frazier, the
police chief in Braintree, Mass., where the shooting occurred. Bishop
fired at least three shots, hitting her brother once and hitting her
bedroom wall before police took her into custody at gunpoint, he said.
Frazier said the police chief at the
time told officers to release Bishop to her mother before she could be
booked. It was logged as an accident.
But Frazier's account was disputed
by former police Chief John Polio, who told The Associated Press he
didn't call officers to tell them to release Bishop. "There's no
cover-up, no missing records," he said.
Attempts by AP to track down
addresses and phone numbers for Bishop's family in the Braintree area
weren't immediately successful Saturday. The current police chief said
he believed her family had moved away.
After being educated at Harvard
University, Bishop moved to Huntsville and in 2003 became an associate
professor at the University of Alabama's campus there. The school, with
about 7,500 students, has close ties with NASA and is known for its
engineering and science programs.
Setzer, the chemistry chairman, said
he was not aware of the incident with Bishop's brother.
Bishop and her husband placed third
in a statewide university business plan competition in July 2007,
presenting a portable cell incubator they had invented. They won
$25,000 to help start a company to market the device.
Her husband, James Anderson, was
detained and questioned by police but has not been charged. Police said
Bishop was quickly caught after Friday's shooting. A 9-millimeter
handgun was found in the bathroom of the building where the shootings
occurred, and Huntsville police spokesman Sgt. Mark Roberts said Bishop
did not have a permit for it.
Bishop was in custody and it wasn't
immediately known if she has an attorney. No one was home at the
couple's house.
Several experts said campus
shootings commonly occur because the shooter has some kind of festering
grievance that university officials haven't addressed, and the granting
of tenure can be a polarizing and politicized process for many
academics.
"Universities tend to string it out
without resolution, tolerate too much and to have a cumbersome decision
process that endangers the comfort of many and the safety of some,"
said Dr. Park Dietz, who is president of Threat Assessment Group Inc.,
a Newport Beach, Calif.-based violence prevention firm.
Tenure, which makes firing and other
discipline difficult if not impossible, can seem generous to outsiders.
But the job protection gives professors the freedom to express ideas
and conduct studies without fear of reprisal. The system typically
emphasizes research over teaching, and tenured professors typically are
paid more.
While it's rare for the stresses of
the tenure process to incur violence, what's even rarer is for a woman
to be accused in such an incident like the one Friday that also left
three of Bishop's colleagues injured, two critically.
"Workplace shootings of that kind
are overwhelmingly male," said Franklin E. Zimring, a law professor and
director of violence prevention at the University of California,
Berkeley. "Going postal was essentially a monopoly position of the XY
chromosome."
---
Associated Press Writers Jay Lindsay
in Braintree, Mass., and Thomas Watkins in Los Angeles contributed to
this report.
© 2010 The Associated Press.
All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast,
rewritten or redistributed. Learn more about our Privacy Policy.
Troubling portrait emerges of Fort Hood suspect
YAHOO
By BRETT J. BLACKLEDGE, Associated Press Writer
November 6, 2009
WASHINGTON – His name appears on
radical Internet postings. A fellow officer says he fought his
deployment to Iraq and argued with soldiers who supported U.S. wars. He
required counseling as a medical student because of problems with
patients.
There are many unknowns about Nidal
Malik Hasan, the man authorities say is responsible for the worst mass
killing on a U.S. military base. Most of all, his motive.
For six years before reporting for
duty at Fort Hood, Texas, in July, the 39-year-old Army major worked at
the Walter Reed Army Medical Center pursuing his career in psychiatry,
as an intern, a resident and, last year, a fellow in disaster and
preventive psychiatry. He received his medical degree from the
military's Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in
Bethesda, Md., in 2001.
While an intern at Walter Reed,
Hasan had some "difficulties" that required counseling and extra
supervision, said Dr. Thomas Grieger, who was the training director at
the time. Grieger said
privacy laws prevented him from going into details but noted that the
problems had to do with Hasan's interactions with patients. He recalled
Hasan as a "mostly very quiet" person who never spoke ill of the
military or his country.
"He swore an oath of loyalty to the
military," Grieger said. "I didn't hear anything contrary to those
oaths."
But, more recently, federal agents
grew suspicious.
At least six months ago, Hasan came
to the attention of law enforcement officials because of Internet
postings about suicide bombings and other threats, including posts that
equated suicide bombers to soldiers who throw themselves on a grenade
to save the lives of their comrades. They had not determined for certain
whether Hasan is the author of the posting, and a formal investigation
had not been opened before the shooting, said law enforcement officials
who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to
discuss the case.
In an interview with The Washington
Post, Hasan's aunt, Noel Hasan of Falls Church, Va., said he had been
harassed about being a Muslim in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001,
terror attacks and he wanted out of the Army.
"Some people can take it and some
people cannot," she said. "He had listened to all of that and he wanted
out of the military."
She said he had sought a discharge
from the military for several years, and even offered to repay the cost
of his medical training.
A military official told The
Associated Press that Hasan was in the preparation stage of deployment,
which can take months. The official said Hasan had indicated he didn't
want to go to Iraq but was willing to serve in Afghanistan. The
official did not have authorization to discuss the matter publicly and
spoke on condition of anonymity.
A second military official said
Hasan's family has Palestinian roots. There have been reports that he
was harassed for his Muslim religion, but the official says there is no
indication Hasan filed a complaint within the military about
that. Terrorism task
force agents plan to interview several of Hasan's relatives Friday,
according to a law enforcement official who spoke on condition of
anonymity because the person was not authorized to discuss the case.
Noel Hasan said her nephew "did not
make many friends" and would say "they military was his life."
A cousin, Nader Hasan, told The New
York Times that after counseling soldiers returning from Iraq and
Afghanistan with post-traumatic stress disorder, Hasan knew war
firsthand.
"He was mortified by the idea of
having to deploy," Nader Hasan said. "He had people telling him on a
daily basis the horrors they saw over there."
Federal law-enforcement agents
ordered an evacuation of the apartment complex where Hasan lived in
Killeen, Texas, Thursday night and conducted a search of his home, said
Hilary Shine, director of public information for the city. She didn't
say what was found during the search. Officials said earlier that federal
search warrants were being drawn up to authorize the seizure of his
computer.
Retired Army Col. Terry Lee, who
said he worked with Hasan, told Fox News that Hasan had hoped President
Barack Obama would pull troops out of Afghanistan and Iraq. Lee said
Hasan got into frequent arguments with others in the military who
supported the wars, and had tried hard to prevent his pending
deployment. Hasan
attended prayers regularly when he lived outside Washington, often in
his Army uniform, said Faizul Khan, a former imam at a mosque Hasan
attended in Silver Spring, Md. He said Hasan was a lifelong Muslim.
"I got the impression that he was a
committed soldier," Khan said. He spoke often with Hasan about Hasan's
desire for a wife.
On a form filled out by those
seeking spouses through a program at the mosque, Hasan listed his
birthplace as Arlington, Va., but his nationality as Palestinian, Khan
said.
"I don't know why he listed
Palestinian," Khan said, "He was not born in Palestine."
Nothing stood out about Hasan as
radical or extremist, Khan said.
"We hardly ever got to discussing
politics," Khan said. "Mostly we were discussing religious matters,
nothing too controversial, nothing like an extremist."
Hasan earned his rank of major in
April 2008, according to a July 2008 Army Times article. He served eight years as an enlisted
soldier.
He also served in the ROTC as an undergraduate at Virginia Tech in
Blacksburg. He received a bachelor's degree in biochemistry there in
1997.
New Tech Gunman Records Fail to Predict Bloodshed
NYTIMES
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
August 19, 2009 (Filed
at 5:53 p.m. ET)
ROANOKE, Va. (AP) -- Recently
discovered mental health records released on Wednesday contain no
obvious indications that the Virginia Tech gunman was a year and a half
away from committing the worst mass shootings in modern U.S. history.
The records contain previously
unseen handwritten notes from the counselors who talked to Seung-Hui
Cho in 2005, and in one report Cho denied having any suicidal or
homicidal thoughts. On April 16, 2007, Cho killed 32 students and
faculty members on the Blacksburg, Va., campus and took his own
life. The counselors'
notes indicate they were concerned for the troubled student, but the
records don't contain any evidence that they saw serious warning signs
to believe Cho would commit violence.
The missing files were released
almost five weeks after they were discovered at the home of the former
director of the university's counseling center.
University officials have said Cho
talked to two different therapists during 45-minute telephone triage
sessions in the fall, then made one court-ordered 45-minute in-person
visit that December. Cho
denied the homicidal thoughts in the telephone sessions and in the
in-person meeting with counselor Sherry Lynch Conrad on Dec. 14, 2005.
Cho met with Conrad at Cook Counseling Center after being detained in a
mental hospital overnight because he had expressed thoughts of suicide.
''He denies suicidal and/or
homicidal thoughts. Said the comment he made was a joke. Says he has no
reason to harm self and would never do it,'' Conrad wrote.
That was Cho's last contact with the
counseling center. The counselor wrote that she gave him emergency
contact numbers and encouraged him to return the next semester in
January, but he didn't make an appointment. Edward J. McNelis, an attorney for Conrad
and the counselors who spoke with Cho by phone, said he had advised
them not to comment because they are named in civil lawsuits filed by
two of the victims' families.
A telephone message left for Conrad
was not immediately returned.
The files first turned up July 16,
when former Cook Counseling Center director Robert C. Miller found them
in his home while preparing for those civil suits, which name him as a
defendant. Miller said
in a court filing that the Cho records were in a manila folder along
with several others, and he packed it up with his personal documents in
late February or early March 2006 when he transferred from the center
to another position at the university. The files were released by Virginia Tech
following the approval of Cho's family. It was their decision whether
to release them because of privacy laws.
''My mother, father and I all agree
that it is the correct thing to do to release the newly discovered
medical records of my brother,'' Cho's sister, Sun Cho, said in a
letter authorizing the release.
University spokesman Mark Owczarski
said with the release of the records the school was seeking to provide
the victims' families ''with as much information as is known about
Cho's interactions with the mental health system.''
Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine said
in a statement he was pleased that the Cho family wanted the records
released and that his administration remained committed to openness
about events surrounding the mass shootings.
''We will never fully comprehend
what led Seung-Hui Cho to carry out his assault on his fellow students
and instructors,'' Kaine said. ''His actions were by nature
inexplicable, and I don't expect the questions surrounding the tragedy
will ever really end.''
Robert Hall, attorney for the
families who have sued, noted that the file contained no mention of
discussions former English Department Chairwoman Lucinda Roy had with
Miller about Cho. She consulted the counseling center director when she
was trying to tutor Cho that fall after his disturbing writings and
bizarre behavior got him kicked out of class.
''It's like there are parallel
universes,'' he said, one in which the faculty is concerned and tries
to get help for a seriously disturbed student and another in which the
school therapists appeared to know little about Cho's troubles.
Relatives of victims said the files
showed that Cho slipped through the cracks despite red flags.
''They definitely weren't paying
attention, and that's what led to April 16th,'' said Suzanne Grimes,
whose son Kevin was wounded but survived.
''It just sounded like he was going
through a McDonald's,'' said Michael Pohle, whose son Michael Pohle Jr.
was killed. ''It just looked like he was passed through from one person
to another person and there was no collaboration going on.''
Lori Haas, whose daughter Emily Haas
was injured, said she was more concerned about the circumstances under
which the records were found more than two years after the shootings.
''I'm just suspicious of the manner
in which information has been dribbled out,'' she said.
Roger O'Dell, whose son Derek O'Dell
was injured, said he hoped the records could be helpful in altering
treatment of troubled individuals.
''There are lessons to be learned,''
he said.
------
Associated Press
Writer Steve Szkotak in Richmond contributed to this report.
Va. Tech Families
Want Shooting Probe Reopened
NYTIMES
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
July
28, 2009, Filed
at 11:22 a.m. ET
ROANOKE, Va. (AP) -- Families of the
Virginia Tech shooting victims asked Gov. Tim Kaine on Tuesday to
reopen a state commission's investigation of the 2007 mass killings in
which 32 people died.
A group of parents of many of those
killed and injured in the rampage by student gunman Seung-Hui Cho
issued a statement urging Kaine to reopen the review because of
inaccuracies in the report.
The families' statement followed
disclosure last week that the former director of the university's
counseling center recently found missing mental health records for Cho
at his home.
Cho committed suicide after killing
students and faculty members in a dormitory and classroom building on
the Blacksburg campus on April 16, 2007 -- the worst mass shootings in
modern U.S. history.
''We still suffer emotional pain
dealing with the impenetrable layers of bureaucracy in our simple quest
for answers,'' the statement said. ''An accurate, complete and thorough
accounting of what happened before, during and after April 16th, 2007
is the legacy we seek on behalf of those who died and those who
survived.''
The families said they want more
information about the discovery of Cho's records at the home of Dr.
Robert C. Miller. Miller has said he inadvertently took the files as he
left his job as director of Cook Counseling Center more than a year
before the shootings.
Kaine said in response to a caller's
question on his monthly radio show on Washington's WTOP that the
professional staff who investigated and wrote the Virginia Tech Review
Panel report is already investigating Miller's possession of Cho's
records.
Reconvening the appointed members of
the panel, including former State Police Superintendent Gerald
Massengill and former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, would be a
problem because all were volunteer members when they served.
''These records are critical. They
never should have been removed from the counseling center. I want to
know why,'' Kaine said.
Suzanne Grimes, whose son Kevin
Sterne was wounded but survived, said she and other family members who
have conducted their own investigation of the events of that day have
found other errors in the report.
''With the revelation that Dr.
Miller has discovered the missing records, it just raises whole new
questions of what else is out there that we're unaware of,'' she said.
The review panel issued its report
four months after the shootings, in August of 2007. A separate criminal
investigation into the shootings is ongoing. A telephone message left for Massengill
was not immediately returned.
Va. Tech Gunman’s
Mental Health Records Found
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:08 p.m. ET
July 22, 2009
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) -- Mental health
records for Virginia Tech gunman Seung-Hui Cho that were missing for
more than two years have been discovered in the home of the university
clinic's former director, according to a state memo sent to victims'
family members.
Cho killed 32 people on April 16,
2007, then committed suicide as police closed in. His mental health
treatment has been a major issue in the vast investigation of the
shootings, yet the records' location had eluded authorities until they
were uncovered by attorneys for some families of Cho's victims.
A memo from Gov. Tim Kaine's chief
legal counsel to victims' family members says Cho's records and those
of several other Virginia Tech students were found last week in the
home of Dr. Robert C. Miller. The memo was obtained by The Associated
Press on Wednesday.
The memo said Cho's records were
removed from the Cook Counseling Center on the Virginia Tech campus
more than a year before the shootings, when Miller transferred from his
position at the clinic. Records for several other students were also at
his home, the memo said.
''I appreciate your call, but I'm
not making comment at this time,'' Miller said when reached at a number
for his private practice.
Kaine said a Virginia State Police
criminal investigation was under way into how the records disappeared
from the center where Cho was ordered to undergo counseling. Removing
records from the center is illegal, he said. Kaine said he was dismayed that it took
two years before they were found by the attorneys.
''That is part of the investigation
that I am very interested in and, of course, I'm very concerned about
that,'' Kaine said.
The medical records are protected
under state privacy laws. The state planned to release the records
publicly as soon as possible, either by consent from Cho's estate or
through a subpoena. The
discovery calls into question the thoroughness of the criminal probe
two years ago and the findings of a commission Kaine appointed to
review the catastrophe, one victim's relative said.
''Deception comes to my mind in my
first response,'' said Suzanne Grimes, whose son Kevin Sterne was
injured in the shootings.
''To say it doesn't make sense is an
injustice,'' she said. ''It gives me the impression: 'What else are
they hiding?'''
She praised Kaine's willingness to
investigate the disappearance of the records and have them released.
''Until we get all the answers to
what happened on that day and days prior, there's no sense of
closure,'' Grimes said.
Andrew Goddard, whose son, Colin,
survived four gunshots, welcomed the new information.
''We're not looking to hang people.
We're looking for more of the truth about what happened,'' he said.
While a large part of the shooting
investigation focused on how university officials and law enforcement
responded following the first reports of deaths in a Virginia Tech
dormitory, family members of victims have also inquired how the
troubled Cho slipped through the cracks at university counseling.
In April, on the second anniversary
of the shootings, families of two slain students sued the state, the
school and its counseling center, several top university officials and
a local mental health agency, claiming gross negligence in the chain of
events that allowed Cho to commit his killing spree. The lawsuits also claim the local health
center where Cho had gone to say he felt suicidal did not adequately
treat or monitor him.
The discovery shakes up that
lawsuit, an attorney for the two families said.
''Why would he (Miller) take any
student mental health records to his home at any time, and why that
student?'' Robert T. Hall said.
''It certainly is a question of
whether there is more to the Seung-Hui Cho mental health history than
we've been told,'' Hall said in a telephone interview from vacation in
Vermont.
Goddard, who was appointed last year
to the state board of Mental Health, Mental Retardation and Substance
Abuse Services, said he wasn't sure how helpful the records would be.
But he said if they showed Cho was
''anything other than this mildly upset student,'' that needed to come
out.
Internet
Key in Probe of Va. Tech Gunman
Hartford Courant
By ADAM GELLER and CHRIS KAHN, Associated Press Writers
6:20 AM EDT, April 22, 2007
BLACKSBURG, Va. -- Computer forensics are playing a key
role in the probe of the Virginia Tech gunman, with investigators
revealing he bought ammunition clips on eBay designed for one of two
handguns used to kill 32 people and himself.
The eBay account and other Internet activities provided insight
Saturday into how Seung-Hui Cho may have plotted for the rampage,
including the purchase of two empty ammo clips about three weeks before
the attack.
EBay spokesman Hani Durzy said the purchase of the clips from a Web
vendor based in Idaho was legal and that the company has cooperated
with authorities. Attempts to reach the Idaho dealer were unsuccessful.
"Within 24 hours, after Cho's identity was made public, we had reached
out to law enforcement to offer our assistance in any investigation,"
Durzy said.
Authorities are also examining the personal computers found in Cho's
dorm room and seeking his cell-phone records.
Cho, 23, also used the eBay account to sell items ranging from Hokies
football tickets to horror-themed books, some of which were assigned in
one of his classes.
A search warrant affidavit filed Friday stated that investigators
wanted to search Cho's e-mail accounts, including the address
Blazers5505@hotmail.com. Durzy confirmed Cho used the same blazers5505
handle on eBay.
Virginia State Police spokeswoman Corinne Geller said investigators are
"aware of the eBay activity that mirrors" the Hotmail account.
One question investigators hope to answer is whether Cho had any e-mail
contact with Emily Hilscher, one of the first two victims.
Investigators plan to search her Virginia Tech e-mail account.
Experts say that when the subject of an investigation is a loner like
Cho, his computers and cell phone can be a rich source of information.
Authorities say Cho had a history of sending menacing text messages and
other communications -- written and electronic.
On March 22, Cho bought two 10-round magazines for the Walther P22. A
day later, he made a purchase from a vendor named "oneclickshooting,"
which sells gun accessories and other items. Details on the purchase
were unclear, and the seller could not be reached for comment.
Cho sold tickets to Virginia Tech sporting events, including last
year's Peach Bowl. He sold a Texas Instruments graphics calculator that
contained several games, most of them with mild themes.
"The calculator was used for less than one semester then I dropped the
class," Cho wrote on the site.
He also sold many books about violence, death and mayhem. Several of
those books were used in his English classes, meaning Cho simply could
have been selling used books at the end of the semester.
His eBay rating was superb -- 98.5 percent. That means he received one
negative rating from people he dealt with on eBay, compared with 65
positive.
"great ebayer. very flexible," the buyer said of his Chick-fil-A Peach
Bowl tickets, which went for $182.50.
Andy Koch, Cho's roommate from 2005-06, said he never saw Cho receive
or send a package, although he didn't have much interaction with the
shooter. Students can sign up for a free lottery on a game-by-game
basis, and the tickets are free.
"We took him to one football game," he said. "We told him to sign up
for the lottery, and he went and he left like in the third quarter, and
that was it. He never went again. He never went to another game."
Cho sold the books on the eBay-affiliated site half.com. They include
"Men, Women, and Chainsaws" by Carol J. Clover, a book that explores
gender in the modern horror film. Others include "The Best of H.P.
Lovecraft: Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre"; and "The
Female of the Species: Tales of Mystery and Suspense" by Joyce Carol
Oates -- a book in which the publisher writes: "In these and other
gripping and disturbing tales, women are confronted by the evil around
them and surprised by the evil they find within themselves."
Books by those three authors were taught in his Contemporary Horror
class.
Experts say things like eBay transactions can be hugely valuable in
trying to figure out the motivation behind crimes.
An examination of a computer is "very revealing, particularly for a
person like this," said Mark Rasch of FTI Consulting, a computer and
electronic investigation firm. "What we find ... particularly with
people who are very uncommunicative in person, is that they may be much
more communicative and free to express themselves with the anonymity
that computers and the Internet give you."
Cho's computer could hold a record of just about anything he has done,
even of activities or communications he may have tried to erase. But
Rasch said that likely will not be a problem, noting the way the gunman
created a record of his thinking in videos, photos and documents.
"This guy wanted to leave a trail. He wasn't trying to conceal what he
did," Rasch said.
AP:
Va. gunman's family feels hopeless
By ALLEN G. BREED and AARON BEARD, Associated Press Writer
April 20, 2007
BLACKSBURG, Va. - The family of Virginia Tech gunman Seung-Hui Cho told
The Associated Press on Friday that they feel "hopeless, helpless and
lost," and "never could have envisioned that he was capable of so much
violence."
"He has made the world weep. We are living a nightmare," said a
statement issued by Cho's sister, Sun-Kyung Cho, on the family's behalf.
It was the Chos' first public comment since the 23-year-old student
killed 32 people and committed suicide Monday in the deadliest shooting
rampage in modern U.S. history.
Raleigh, N.C., lawyer Wade Smith provided the statement to the AP after
the Cho family reached out to him. Smith said the family would not
answer any questions, and neither would he.
"Our family is so very sorry for my brother's unspeakable actions. It
is a terrible tragedy for all of us," said Sun-Kyung Cho, a 2004
Princeton University graduate who works as a contractor for a State
Department office that oversees American aid
for Iraq.
"We pray for their families and loved ones who are experiencing so much
excruciating grief. And we pray for those who were injured and for
those whose lives are changed forever because of what they witnessed
and experienced," she said. "Each of these people had so much love,
talent and gifts to offer, and their lives were cut short by a horrible
and senseless act."
The Chos' whereabouts are unclear. But Virginia State Police said they
are under law enforcement protection.
The statement was issued during a statewide day of mourning for the
victims. Silence fell across the Virginia Tech campus at noon and bells
tolled in churches nationwide in memory of the victims.
"We are humbled by this darkness. We feel hopeless, helpless and lost.
This is someone that I grew up with and loved. Now I feel like I didn't
know this person," Cho's sister said. "We have always been a close,
peaceful and loving family. My brother was quiet and reserved, yet
struggled to fit in. We never could have envisioned that he was capable
of so much violence."
She said her family will cooperate fully and "do whatever we can to
help authorities understand why these senseless acts happened. We have
many unanswered questions as well."
Wendy Adams, whose niece, Leslie Sherman, was killed in the massacre,
said of the family's statement: "I'm not so generous to be able to
forgive him for what he did. But I do feel for the family. I do feel
sorry for them."
"I do believe they're living a nightmare," she added.
Robert Jeffers of Idaho Falls, Idaho, a friend of slain 25-year-old
student Brian R. Bluhm, said: "I hope people can see that the right
action to take from all of this is love, not hate."
"Based on this sorrowful statement, it is apparent that the family
grieves with everyone in the world," Virginia Tech spokesman Larry
Hincker said.
Cho's name was given as "Cho Seung-Hui" by police and school officials
earlier this week. But the the South Korean immigrant family said their
preference was "Seung-Hui Cho." Many Asian immigrant families
Americanize their names by reversing them and putting their surnames
last.
While Cho clearly was seething and had been taken to a psychiatric
hospital more than a year as threat to himself, investigators are still
trying to establish exactly what set him off, why he chose a dormitory
and a classroom building for the rampage, and how he selected his
victims.
"The why and the how are the crux of the investigation," Virginia State
Police spokeswoman Corinne Geller said. "The why may never be
determined because the person responsible is deceased."
During the campus memorial, hundreds of somber students and area
residents, most wearing the school's maroon and orange, stood with
heads bowed on the parade ground in front of Norris Hall, the
classrooom building where all but two of the victims died. Along with
the bouquets and candles was a sign reading, "Never forgotten."
"It's good to feel the love of people around you," said Alice Lo, a
Virginia Tech graduate and friend of Jocelyne Couture-Nowak, a French
instructor killed in the rampage. "With this evil, there is still
goodness."
The mourners gathered in front of stone memorials, each adorned with a
basket of tulips and an American flag. There were 33 stones — one for
each victim and Cho.
"His family is suffering just as much as the other families," said
Elizabeth Lineberry, who will be a freshman at Virginia Tech in the
fall.
President Bush wore an orange and
maroon tie in a show of support. The White House said he also asked top
officials at the Justice, Health and Human Services and Education
Departments to travel the country, talk to educators, mental health
experts and others, and compile a report on how to prevent similar
tragedies.
Seven people hurt in the rampage remained hospitalized, at least one in
serious condition.
Va.
Tech stunned by images of gunman
By MATT APUZZO, Associated Press Writer
April 19, 2007
BLACKSBURG, Va. - Two days after the worst killing spree in modern U.S.
history, videos and photographs of an armed Cho Seung-Hui stunned the
university community where he killed 32 people before committing
suicide Monday.
In the photos and recordings mailed to NBC midway through his rampage,
23-year-old Cho Seung-Hui delivered a snarling, profanity-laced tirade
about rich "brats" and their "hedonistic needs."
"You had a hundred billion chances and ways to have avoided today," he
says in a harsh monotone. "But you decided to spill my blood. You
forced me into a corner and gave me only one option. The decision was
yours. Now you have blood on your hands that will never wash off."
NBC said the package contained a rambling and often incoherent 23-page
written statement, 28 video clips and 43 photos. Several of the photos
showed him aiming handguns at the camera.
The package arrived at NBC headquarters in New York on Tuesday and was
opened Wednesday. It bore a Postal Service time stamp showing that it
had been mailed at a Blacksburg post office at 9:01 a.m. Monday, about
an hour and 45 minutes after Cho first opened fire.
"I saw his picture on TV and when I did I just got chills," said Kristy
Venning, a junior from Franklin County, Va. "There's really no words.
It shows he put so much thought into this and I think it's sick."
The package helped explain one of the biggest mysteries about the
massacre: where the gunman was and what he did during that two-hour
window between the first burst of gunfire, at a high-rise dorm, and the
second attack, at a classroom building.
"Your Mercedes wasn't enough, you brats," says Cho, a South Korean
immigrant whose parents work at a dry cleaners in suburban Washington.
"Your golden necklaces weren't enough, you snobs. Your trust funds
wasn't enough. Your vodka and cognac wasn't enough. All your
debaucheries weren't enough. Those weren't enough to fulfill your
hedonistic needs. You had everything."
Earlier in the day, authorities disclosed that more than a year before
the massacre, Cho was accused of sending unwanted messages to two women
and was taken to a psychiatric hospital on a magistrate's orders and
was pronounced a danger to himself. But he was released with orders to
undergo outpatient treatment.
The disclosure added to the rapidly growing list of warning signs that
appeared well before the student opened fire. Among other things, Cho's
twisted, violence-filled writings and sullen, vacant-eyed demeanor had
disturbed professors and students so much that he was removed from one
English class and was repeatedly urged to get counseling.
Some of the pictures in the video package show him smiling; others show
him frowning and snarling. Some depict him brandishing two weapons at a
time, one in each hand. He wears a khaki-colored military-style vest,
fingerless gloves, a black T-shirt, a backpack and a backward, black
baseball cap. Another photo shows him swinging a hammer two-fisted.
Another shows an angry-looking Cho holding a gun to his temple.
He refers to "martyrs like Eric and Dylan" — a reference to the teenage
killers in the Columbine High School massacre.
NBC News President Steve Capus said the package arrived in Tuesday
afternoon's mail, but was not opened until Wednesday morning. It was
sent by overnight delivery and apparently had the wrong ZIP code, NBC
said.
An alert postal employee brought the package to NBC's attention after
noticing the Blacksburg return address and a name similar to the words
reportedly found scrawled in red ink on Cho's arm after the bloodbath,
"Ismail Ax," NBC said.
Capus said that the network notified
the FBI around noon, but held
off reporting on it at the FBI's request, so that the bureau could look
at it first. NBC finally broke the story just before police announced
the development at 4:30 p.m.
It was clear Cho videotaped himself, Capus said, because he could be
seen leaning in to shut off the camera.
State Police Spokeswoman Corinne Geller cautioned that, while the
package was mailed between the two shootings, police have not inspected
the footage and have yet to establish exactly when the images were made.
Cho repeatedly suggests he was picked on or otherwise hurt.
"You have vandalized my heart, raped my soul and torched my
conscience," he says, apparently reading from his manifesto. "You
thought it was one pathetic boy's life you were extinguishing. Thanks
to you, I die like Jesus Christ, to inspire generations of the weak and
the defenseless people."
A law enforcement official said Cho's letter also refers in the same
sentence to President Bush
and John Mark Karr, who falsely confessed last year to having killed
child beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey. The official spoke on condition of
anonymity because the person was not authorized to speak to the media.
Earlier Wednesday, authorities disclosed that in November and December
2005, two women complained to campus police that they had received
calls and computer messages from Cho. But the women considered the
messages "annoying," not threatening, and neither pressed charges,
Virginia Tech Police Chief Wendell Flinchum said.
Neither woman was among the victims in the massacre, police said.
After the second complaint about Cho's behavior, the university
obtained a temporary detention order and took Cho away because an
acquaintance reported he might be suicidal, authorities said. Police
did not identify the acquaintance.
On Dec. 13, 2005, a magistrate ordered Cho to undergo an evaluation at
Carilion St. Albans, a private psychiatric hospital. The magistrate
signed the order after an initial evaluation found probable cause that
Cho was a danger to himself or others as a result of mental illness.
The next day, according to court records, doctors at Carilion conducted
further examination and a special justice, Paul M. Barnett, approved
outpatient treatment.
A medical examination conducted Dec. 14 reported that that Cho's
"affect is flat. ... He denies suicidal ideations. He does not
acknowledge symptoms of a thought disorder. His insight and judgment
are normal."
The court papers indicate that Barnett checked a box that said Cho
"presents an imminent danger to himself as a result of mental illness."
Barnett did not check the box that would indicate a danger to others.
It is unclear how long Cho stayed at Carilion, though court papers
indicate he was free to leave as of Dec. 14. Virginia Tech spokesman
Larry Hincker said Cho had been continually enrolled at Tech and never
took a leave of absence.
A spokesman for Carilion St. Albans would not comment.
Though the incidents with the two women did not result in criminal
charges, police referred Cho to the university's disciplinary system,
Flinchum said. But Ed Spencer, assistant vice president of student
affairs, would not comment on any disciplinary proceedings, saying
federal law protects students' medical privacy even after death.
Some students refused to second-guess the university.
"Who would've woken up in the morning and said, `Maybe this student
who's just troubled is really going to do something this horrific?'"
said Elizabeth Hart, a communications major and a spokeswoman for the
student government.
One of the first Virginia Tech officials to recognize Cho's problems
was award-winning poet Nikki Giovanni, who kicked him out of her
introduction to creative writing class in late 2005.
Students in Giovanni's class had told their professor that Cho was
taking photographs of their legs and knees under the desks with his
cell phone. Female students refused to come to class. She said she
considered him "mean" and "a bully."
Lucinda Roy, professor of English at Virginia Tech, said that she, too,
relayed her concerns to campus police and various other college units
after Cho displayed antisocial behavior in her class and handed in
disturbing writing assignments.
But she said authorities "hit a wall" in terms of what they could do
"with a student on campus unless he'd made a very overt threat to
himself or others." Cho resisted her repeated suggestion that he
undergo counseling, Roy said.
Questions lingered over whether campus police should have issued an
immediate campus-wide warning of a killer on the loose and locked down
the campus after the first burst of gunfire.
Police said that after the first shooting, in which two students were
killed, they believed that it was a domestic dispute, and that the
gunman had fled the campus. Police went looking for a young man, Karl
David Thornhill, who had once shot guns at a firing range with the
roommate of one of the victims. But police said Thornhill is no longer
under suspicion.
___
Associated Press writers Allen G.
Breed, Vicki Smith, Sue Lindsey and Justin Pope in Blacksburg, Va.,
Matt Barakat in Richmond, Va., Colleen Long and Tom Hays in New York,
and Lara Jakes Jordan in Washington, D.C. contributed to this report.
Va. gunman sent
videos and photos to NBC
By MATT APUZZO, Associated Press Writer
April 18, 2007
BLACKSBURG, Va. - Midway through his murderous rampage, the Virginia
Tech gunman went to the post office and mailed NBC a package containing
photos and videos of him brandishing guns and delivering a snarling,
profanity-laced tirade about rich "brats" and their "hedonistic needs."
"You had a hundred billion chances and ways to have avoided today,"
23-year-old Cho Seung-Hui says in a harsh monotone. "But you decided to
spill my blood. You forced me into a corner and gave me only one
option. The decision was yours. Now you have blood on your hands that
will never wash off."
NBC said the package contained a rambling and often incoherent 23-page
written statement, 28 video clips and 43 photos. Several of the photos
showed him aiming handguns at the camera.
The package arrived at NBC headquarters in New York on Tuesday and was
opened Wednesday, two days after Cho killed 32 people and committed
suicide in the deadliest one-man shooting rampage in modern U.S.
history. It bore a Postal Service time stamp showing that it had been
mailed at a Blacksburg post office at 9:01 a.m. Monday, about an hour
and 45 minutes after Cho first opened fire.
That would help explain one of the biggest mysteries about the
massacre: where the gunman was and what he did during that two-hour
window between the first burst of gunfire, at a high-rise dorm, and the
second fusillade, at a classroom building.
"Your Mercedes wasn't enough, you brats," says Cho, a South Korean
immigrant whose parents work at a dry cleaners in suburban Washington.
"Your golden necklaces weren't enough, you snobs. Your trust funds
wasn't enough. Your vodka and cognac wasn't enough. All your
debaucheries weren't enough. Those weren't enough to fulfill your
hedonistic needs. You had everything."
Earlier in the day, authorities disclosed that more than a year before
the massacre, Cho was accused of sending unwanted messages to two women
and was taken to a psychiatric hospital on a magistrate's orders and
was pronounced a danger to himself. But he was released with orders to
undergo outpatient treatment.
The disclosure added to the rapidly growing list of warning signs that
appeared well before the student opened fire. Among other things, Cho's
twisted, violence-filled writings and sullen, vacant-eyed demeanor had
disturbed professors and students so much that he was removed from one
English class and was repeatedly urged to get counseling.
Some of the pictures in the video package show him smiling; others show
him frowning and snarling. Some depict him brandishing two weapons at a
time, one in each hand. He wears a khaki-colored military-style vest,
fingerless gloves, a black T-shirt, a backpack and a backward, black
baseball cap. Another photo shows him swinging a hammer two-fisted.
Another shows an angry-looking Cho holding a gun to his temple.
He refers to "martyrs like Eric and Dylan" — a reference to the teenage
killers in the Columbine High massacre.
NBC News President Steve Capus said the package arrived in Tuesday
afternoon's mail, but was not opened until Wednesday morning. It was
sent by overnight delivery and apparently had the wrong ZIP code, NBC
said.
An alert postal employee brought the package to NBC's attention after
noticing the Blacksburg return address and a name similar to the words
reportedly found scrawled in red ink on Cho's arm after the bloodbath,
"Ismail Ax," NBC said.
Capus said that the network notified
the FBI around noon, but held
off reporting on it at the FBI's request, so that the bureau could look
at it first. NBC finally broke the story just before police announced
the development at 4:30 p.m.
It was clear Cho videotaped himself, Capus said, because he could be
seen leaning in to shut off the camera.
State Police Spokeswoman Corinne Geller cautioned that, while the
package was mailed between the two shootings, police have not inspected
the footage and have yet to establish exactly when the images were made.
Cho repeatedly suggests he was picked on or otherwise hurt.
"You have vandalized my heart, raped my soul and torched my
conscience," he says, apparently reading from his manifesto. "You
thought it was one pathetic boy's life you were extinguishing. Thanks
to you, I die like Jesus Christ, to inspire generations of the weak and
the defenseless people."
A law enforcement official said Cho's letter also refers in the same
sentence to President Bush
and John Mark Karr, who falsely confessed last year to having killed
child beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey. The official spoke on condition of
anonymity because the person was not authorized to speak to the media.
Earlier Wednesday, authorities disclosed that in November and December
2005, two women complained to campus police that they had received
calls and computer messages from Cho. But the women considered the
messages "annoying," not threatening, and neither pressed charges,
Virginia Tech Police Chief Wendell Flinchum said.
Neither woman was among the victims in the massacre, police said.
After the second complaint about Cho's behavior, the university
obtained a temporary detention order and took Cho away because an
acquaintance reported he might be suicidal, authorities said. Police
did not identify the acquaintance.
On Dec. 13, 2005, a magistrate ordered Cho to undergo an evaluation at
Carilion St. Albans, a private psychiatric hospital. The magistrate
signed the order after an initial evaluation found probable cause that
Cho was a danger to himself or others as a result of mental illness.
The next day, according to court records, doctors at Carilion conducted
further examination and a special justice, Paul M. Barnett, approved
outpatient treatment.
A medical examination conducted Dec. 14 reported that that Cho's
"affect is flat. ... He denies suicidal ideations. He does not
acknowledge symptoms of a thought disorder. His insight and judgment
are normal."
The court papers indicate that Barnett checked a box that said Cho
"presents an imminent danger to himself as a result of mental illness."
Barnett did not check the box that would indicate a danger to others.
It is unclear how long Cho stayed at Carilion, though court papers
indicate he was free to leave as of Dec. 14. Virginia Tech spokesman
Larry Hincker said Cho had been continually enrolled at Tech and never
took a leave of absence.
A spokesman for Carilion St. Albans would not comment.
Though the incidents with the two women did not result in criminal
charges, police referred Cho to the university's disciplinary system,
Flinchum said. But Ed Spencer, assistant vice president of student
affairs, would not comment on any disciplinary proceedings, saying
federal law protects students' medical privacy even after death.
Some students refused to second-guess the university.
"Who would've woken up in the morning and said, `Maybe this student
who's just troubled is really going to do something this horrific?'"
said Elizabeth Hart, a communications major and a spokeswoman for the
student government.
One of the first Virginia Tech officials to recognize Cho's problems
was award-winning poet Nikki Giovanni, who kicked him out of her
introduction to creative writing class in late 2005.
Students in Giovanni's class had told their professor that Cho was
taking photographs of their legs and knees under the desks with his
cell phone. Female students refused to come to class. She said she
considered him "mean" and "a bully."
Lucinda Roy, professor of English at Virginia Tech, said that she, too,
relayed her concerns to campus police and various other college units
after Cho displayed antisocial behavior in her class and handed in
disturbing writing assignments.
But she said authorities "hit a wall" in terms of what they could do
"with a student on campus unless he'd made a very overt threat to
himself or others." Cho resisted her repeated suggestion that he
undergo counseling, Roy said.
Questions lingered over whether campus police should have issued an
immediate campus-wide warning of a killer on the loose and locked down
the campus after the first burst of gunfire.
Police said that after the first shooting, in which two students were
killed, they believed that it was a domestic dispute, and that the
gunman had fled the campus. Police went looking for a young man, Karl
David Thornhill, who had once shot guns at a firing range with the
roommate of one of the victims. But police said Thornhill is no longer
under suspicion.
Va.
Tech gunman had mental
problems: police
By Andrea Hopkins and Patricia Zengerle
April 18, 2007 12 noon
BLACKSBURG, Virginia (Reuters) - The gunman who went on a rampage at
Virginia Tech had been confronted by university police in 2005 over
complaints he was bothering women students and was sent to a mental
health facility because of worries he was suicidal, police said on
Wednesday.
The new details added to a chilling portrait of Cho Seung-Hui, a
23-year-old South Korean student who massacred 32 people and then took
his own life at the university on Monday in the deadliest shooting
spree in modern U.S. history. Fellow students and teachers have
described a troubled loner whose writings for his English degree were
so laced with violence and disillusionment that they alarmed some of
those around him.
University Police Chief Wendell Flinchum said his officers
approached Cho in late 2005 when two women students complained of
"annoying" phone calls and instant messages from him.
"I'm not saying they were threats; I'm saying they were annoying.
That's the way the victims characterized them, as annoying messages,"
Flinchum told a news conference.
After the second incident Cho's roommate told police he "might be
suicidal," prompting them to issue a "temporary detention order" and
send him to a mental health facility for evaluation, Flinchum
said. Authorities would not say how long Cho was evaluated.
"We did not have any contact with him after December 2005 that I'm
aware of at this time," Flinchum said.
Cho, who immigrated to the United States 15 years ago with his family
and was raised in suburban Washington, D.C., chained doors closed to
prevent escape and worked his way through classrooms, shooting his
victims one by one. He later killed himself. Virginia Gov. Tim
Kaine said he would appoint W. Gerald Massengill, who headed the
Virginia State Police during the September 11 attacks and the killing
spree of a sniper pair in 2002, to head a panel to review the
university's response to the shootings. The review had been requested
by the university.
Neighbors, roommates and teachers described Cho as a withdrawn person
who rarely spoke. Two students who said they were Cho's roommates said
he had harassed several female students and once told them he wanted to
kill himself, which prompted the roommates to report their concerns to
the police. Cho used two handguns, which police confirmed he had
purchased legally, and stopped only to reload. Police have stopped
short of saying he was responsible for the shooting deaths of two other
people two hours earlier at a dormitory but said tests showed the same
gun was used in both incidents.
In His Words
And His Silence, Hints Of Anger And Isolation
Cho's
eruption of violence, in which 32 victims and himself were killed on
the Virginia Tech campus here in a rampage of gunfire, was never
directly signaled by his actions or words, several of his acquaintances
said Tuesday. But those acquaintances were frequently disturbed by his
isolation from the world and his barely concealed anger.
By Manny Fernandez , Marc Santora , New York Times News
Service
Published on 4/18/2007
Blacksburg, Va. — Cho Seung-Hui rarely spoke to his own dormitory
roommate. His teachers were so disturbed by some of his writing that
they referred him to counseling. And when Cho finally and horrifyingly
came to the world's attention on Monday, he did so after writing a note
that bitterly lashed out at his fellow students for what he deemed
their moral decline.
Cho's eruption of violence, in which 32 victims and himself were killed
on the Virginia Tech campus here in a rampage of gunfire, was never
directly signaled by his actions or words, several of his acquaintances
said Tuesday. But those acquaintances were frequently disturbed by his
isolation from the world and his barely concealed anger.
Joe Aust, who shared Room 2121 at Harper Hall with him, said he had
spoken to Cho often but had received only one-word replies. Later, Aust
said, Cho stopped talking to him entirely. Aust would sometimes enter
the room and find Cho sitting at his desk, staring into nothingness.
“He was always really, really quiet and kind of weird, keeping to
himself all the time,” said Aust, a 19-year-old sophomore, who, though
finding Cho strange, had not thought him menacing.
Yet there were signs that Cho's behavior was more than just bizarre.
Lucinda Roy, who taught Cho in a poetry workshop in the fall of 2005,
said that in October of that year he submitted a piece of writing that
was so disturbing that she contacted the campus police, counseling
services, student affairs and officials in her department. She
described the writing as a “veiled threat rather than something
explicit.”
University officials said he could be excused from the class unless she
wanted to tutor him individually, which she agreed to do three times
from October to December 2005. During those sessions, she said in an
interview, he always wore sunglasses and a baseball cap pulled low.
“He seemed to be crying behind his sunglasses,” she said.
Roy said she had been so nervous about taking him on as an individual
student that she worked out a code with her assistant: If she mentioned
the name of a dead professor, her assistant would know it was time to
call security.
In another writing class, Cho submitted two profoundly violent and
profane plays. Ian MacFarlane, a classmate who now works for America
Online, posted the plays on the company's Web site Tuesday, saying they
had horrified the rest of the students.
“When we read Cho's plays, it was like something out of a nightmare,”
MacFarlane wrote. “The plays had really twisted, macabre violence that
used weapons I wouldn't have even thought of.”
As a result of them, MacFarlane added, “we students were talking to
each other with serious worry about whether he could be a school
shooter.”
In one play, called “Richard McBeef,” Cho wrote of a teenage boy who
accuses his stepfather of murdering the boy's father and of trying to
molest the boy himself.
“I hate him,” the boy says of the stepfather in a copy of the play on
the Web site. “Must kill Dick. Must kill Dick. Dick must die.”
Though the level of anger was clear to those who knew Cho, there
remains no indication of the precise motive for Monday's events.
“What was this kid thinking about? There are no indications,” said a
federal law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
There were just the snippets of a lonely young life: prescription
medicines, ominous words and two newly bought handguns, the first of
which was purchased on March 13.
Cho was a 23-year-old senior, skinny and boyish-looking, his hair cut
in a short, military-style fashion. He was a native of South Korea who
grew up in Centreville, Va., a suburb of Washington, where his family
owns a dry-cleaning business. He moved with his family to the United
States at age 8, in 1992, according to federal immigration authorities,
and was a legal permanent resident, not a citizen.
In the suite in Harper Hall where he lived with five other students, he
was known as a loner, almost a stranger, amid a student body of 26,000.
He ate his meals alone in a dining hall. Karan Grewal, 21, another
student in the suite of rooms where he lived, recalled that when a
candidate for student council visited the suite this year to pass out
candy and ask for votes, Cho refused even to make eye contact.
On Tuesday afternoon, investigators were examining a note Cho had left
behind in his dorm room, a rambling and bitter list of the moral laxity
he found among what he considered the more privileged students on
campus.
Cho went to bed early by college standards, about 9 p.m. He often rose
early, but in recent weeks he had been rising even earlier, frequently
before dawn, said Aust. Such was the case Monday.
Cho awoke before 5 a.m., then sat down to work on his computer and
awakened his roommate in the process. Grewal, who shares a room in the
same suite, saw Cho in the bathroom shortly after 5 a.m.
As usual, Cho did not say anything to Grewal. No good morning, no
hello, Grewal said. Cho stood in the bathroom, brushing his teeth,
wetting his contact lenses and applying a moisturizer. He also took a
prescription medicine, though neither Aust nor Grewal knew what the
medication was for. Prescription medications said to be related to the
treatment of psychological problems were found among his effects,
officials said.
Sources:
Virginia Tech gunman left note. ‘Horrible coincidence’ of two
shooters
Hartford Couranr
By Aamer Madhani, Tribune national correspondent
4:54 PM EDT, April 17, 2007
BLACKSBURG, Va. -- The suspected gunman in the Virginia Tech shooting
rampage, Cho Seung-Hui, was a troubled 23-year-old senior from South
Korea who investigators believe left an invective-filled note in his
dorm room, sources say.
The note included a rambling list of grievances, according to sources.
They said Cho also died with the words "Ismail Ax" in red ink on one of
his arms.
Cho had shown recent signs of violent, aberrant behavior, according to
an investigative source, including setting a fire in a dorm room and
allegedly stalking some women.
A note believed to have been written by Cho was found in his dorm room
that railed against "rich kids," "debauchery" and "deceitful
charlatans" on campus.
Cho was an English major whose creative writing was so disturbing that
he was referred to the school's counseling service, the Associated
Press reported.
Professor Carolyn Rude, chairwoman of the university's English
department, said she did not personally know the gunman. But she said
she spoke with Lucinda Roy, the department's director of creative
writing, who had Cho in one of her classes and described him as
"troubled."
"There was some concern about him," Rude said. "Sometimes, in creative
writing, people reveal things and you never know if it's creative or if
they're describing things, if they're imagining things or just how real
it might be. But we're all alert to not ignore things like this."
She said Cho was referred to the counseling service, but she said she
did not know when, or what the outcome was.
Cho, from Centreville, Va., a rapidly growing suburb of Washington,
D.C., came to the United States in 1992, an investigative source said.
He was a legal permanent resident. His family runs a dry cleaning
business and he has a sister who attended Princeton University,
according to the source.
Investigators believe Cho at some point had been taking medication for
depression. They are examining Cho's computer for more evidence.
The gunman's family lived in an off-white, two-story town house in
Centreville.
"He was very quiet, always by himself," neighbor Abdul Shash said of
the gunman. Shash said the gunman spent a lot of his free time playing
basketball, and wouldn't respond if someone greeted him. He described
the family as quiet.
Marshall Main, who lives across the street, said the family had lived
in the townhouse for several years.
According to court records, Virginia Tech Police issued a speeding
ticket to Cho on April 7 for going 44 mph in a 25 mph zone, and he had
a court date set for May 23.
Cho was found among the 31 dead found in an engineering hall. Police
said the victims laid over four classrooms and a stairwell.
"He was a loner," said Larry Hincker, a university spokesman, who added
that investigators are having some difficulty unearthing information
about him.
A law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity because
the information had not been announced, said Cho was carrying a
backpack that contained receipts for a March purchase of a Glock 9 mm
pistol. Ballistics tests by the federal Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco and Firearms showed that one gun was used in Monday's two
separate campus attacks that were two hours apart.
As a permanent legal resident of the United States, Cho was eligible to
buy a handgun unless he had been convicted of any felony criminal
charges, a federal immigration official said.
Police said Cho killed 30 people in a Virginia Tech engineering
building Monday morning and then killed himself. Another two
students were shot to death two hours earlier in a dorm room on the
opposite side of the university's sprawling 2,600-acre campus, bringing
the day's death toll to 33.
Students at Harper Hall, the campus dormitory where Cho lived, said
they had little interaction with him and no insight into what might
have motivated the attack. Officials said the same gun was used
in the attack in the dorm room and the larger-scale classroom killings.
"At this time, the evidence does not conclusively identify Cho as the
gunman at both locations," said Col. W. Steven Flaherty, superintendent
of Virginia State Police.
All classes at Virginia Tech will be closed for the remainder of the
week, said school President Charles Steger.
'Horrible coincidence' of two gunmen
Fairfax County, Va., police investigators said today that Cho was a
2003 graduate of the same high school attended by an 18-year-old who
went on a shooting rampage last year at a Virginia police station,
killing two officers.
Michael Kennedy, armed with an AK-47, fired more than 70 rounds in the
parking lot of the Sully District police station on May 8, killing Det.
Vicky Armel and Master Police Officer Michael Garbarino. Kennedy was
shot to death by police.
Cho and Kennedy lived in Centreville and graduated from Westfield High
School, said Officer Courtney Thibault of the Fairfax County Police
Department. She said Cho graduated four years ahead of Kennedy.
Once Cho's identify was released by police in Blacksburg, Thibault said
Fairfax County police launched an investigation to determine if there
was any connection between the two shooters. She said they found
nothing tying the two young men together.
"It's just a horrible coincidence," she said. "It's hard to believe."
Kennedy's father, Brian Kennedy, was charged earlier this month with
helping his son obtain the AK-47 used in the rampage. Federal
prosecutors claim he was illegally in possession of a small arsenal of
weapons, including rifles, shotguns, handguns and more than 2,500
rounds of ammunition.
Campus holds convocation
The new details were revealed as the university underwent a day of
mourning.
Thousands of people gathered in the basketball arena, and when it
filled up, thousands more filed into the football stadium, for a
memorial service for the victims. President Bush and the first lady
attended.
"Laura and I have come to Blacksburg today with hearts full of sorrow,"
he said in six-minute remarks. "This is a day of mourning for the
Virginia Tech community and it is a day of sadness for our entire
nation.
Steger received a 30-second standing ovation, despite bitter complaints
from parents and students that the university should have locked down
the campus immediately after the first burst of gunfire. Steger
expressed hope that "we will awaken from this horrible nightmare."
Many students showed up for the memorial service hours ahead of time,
some in tears or carrying flowers. There was already an overflow crowd
at the arena by early afternoon, and many people arriving were turned
away.
Some victims' names released
Among the dead was a professor, Liviu Librescu. Students who were in
Librescu's engineering class at Norris Hall told the Tribune late
Monday that the professor tried to protect the students in his class
when they realized a gunmen was loose in the building.
Alec Calhoun was in Librescu's solid mechanics engineering class when
gunfire erupted in the room next door. He said Librescu, went to the
door and pushed himself against it in case the shooter tried to come in.
Librescu, an Israeli, was born in Romania and was known internationally
for his research in aeronautical engineering.
Also killed were:
- Ross Abdallah Alameddine, 20, of Saugus, Mass., according to his
mother, Lynnette Alameddine.
- Christopher James Bishop, 35, according to Darmstadt University of
Technology in Germany, where he helped run an exchange program.
- Ryan Clark, 22, of Martinez, Ga., biology and English major,
according to Columbia County Coroner Vernon Collins.
- Jocelyn Couture-Nowak, a French instructor, according to her husband,
Jerzy Nowak, the head of the horticulture department at Virginia Tech.
- Daniel Perez Cueva, 21, killed in his French class, according to his
mother, Betty Cueva, of Peru.
- Kevin Granata, age unknown, engineering science and mechanics
professor, according to Ishwar K. Puri, the head of the engineering
science and mechanics department.
- Caitlin Hammaren, 19, of Westtown, N.Y., a sophomore majoring in
international studies and French, according to Minisink Valley, N.Y.,
school officials who spoke with Hammaren's family.
- Jeremy Herbstritt, 27, of Bellefonte, Pa., according to Penn State
University, his alma mater and his father's employer.
- Emily Jane Hilscher, a 19-year-old freshman from Woodville, according
to Rappahannock County Administrator John W. McCarthy, a family friend.
- Jarrett L. Lane, 22, of Narrows, Va., according to Riffe's Funeral
Service Inc. in Narrows, Va.
- Matthew J. La Porte, 20, a freshman from Dumont, N.J., according to
Dumont Police Chief Brian Venezio.
- G.V. Loganathan, 51, civil and environmental engineering professor,
according to his brother G.V. Palanivel.
- Daniel O'Neil, 22, according to close friend Steve Craveiro and
according to Eric Cardenas of Connecticut College, where O'Neil's
father, Bill, is director of major gifts.
- Juan Ramon Ortiz, a 26-year-old graduate student in engineering from
Bayamon, Puerto Rico, according to his wife, Liselle Vega Cortes.
- Mary Karen Read, 19, of Annandale, Va. according to her aunt, Karen
Kuppinger, of Rochester, N.Y.
- Reema J. Samaha, 18, a freshman from Centreville, Va., according to
her family.
Tribune staff reporters E.A.
Torriero and Rex W. Huppke, the Tribune's Washington bureau and the
Associated Press contributed.
Va. Tech Gunman
Writings Raised Concerns
Hartford Courant
By ADAM GELLER, AP National Writer
4:41 PM EDT, April 17, 2007
BLACKSBURG, Va. -- The gunman suspected of carrying out the Virginia
Tech massacre that left 33 people dead was described Tuesday as a
sullen loner whose creative writing in English class was so disturbing
that he was referred to the school's counseling service.
News reports also said that he may have been taking medication for
depression, that he was becoming increasingly violent and erratic, and
that he left a note in his dorm in which he railed against "rich kids,"
"debauchery" and "deceitful charlatans" on campus.
Cho Seung-Hui, a 23-year-old senior majoring in English, arrived in the
United States as boy from South Korea in 1992 and was raised in
suburban Washington, D.C., officials said. He was living on campus in a
different dorm from the one where Monday's bloodbath began.
Police and university officials offered no clues as to exactly what set
him off on the deadliest shooting rampage in modern U.S. history.
"He was a loner, and we're having difficulty finding information about
him," school spokesman Larry Hincker said.
On Tuesday afternoon, thousands of people gathered in the basketball
arena, and when it filled up, thousands more filed into the football
stadium, for a memorial service for the victims. President Bush and the
first lady attended. Virginia Tech President Charles Steger
received a 30-second standing ovation, despite bitter complaints from
parents and students that the university should have locked down the
campus immediately after the first burst of gunfire. Steger expressed
hope that "we will awaken from this horrible nightmare."
"As you draw closer to your families in the coming days, I ask you to
reach out to those who ache for sons and daughters who are never coming
home," Bush said.
A vast portrait of the victims began to emerge, among them: Christopher
James Bishop, 35, who taught German at Virginia Tech and helped oversee
an exchange program with a German university; Ryan "Stack" Clark, a
22-year-old student from Martinez, Ga., who was in the marching band
and was working toward degrees in biology and English; Emily Jane
Hilscher, a 19-year-old freshman from Woodville, Va., who was majoring
in animal and poultry sciences and, naturally, loved animals; and Liviu
Librescu, an Israeli engineering and math lecturer who was said to have
protected his students' lives by blocking the doorway of his classroom
from the approaching gunman.
Meanwhile, a chilling portrait of the gunman as a misfit began to
emerge.
Professor Carolyn Rude, chairwoman of the university's English
department, said she did not know Cho. But she said she spoke with
Lucinda Roy, the department's director of creative writing, who had Cho
in one of her classes and described him as "troubled."
"There was some concern about him," Rude said. "Sometimes, in creative
writing, people reveal things and you never know if it's creative or if
they're describing things, if they're imagining things or just how real
it might be. But we're all alert to not ignore things like this."
She said Cho was referred to the counseling service, but she said she
did not know when, or what the outcome was. Rude refused to release any
of his writings or his grades, citing privacy laws. The Chicago
Tribune reported on its Web site that he left a note in his dorm room
that included a rambling list of grievances. Citing unidentified
sources, the Tribune said he had recently shown troubling signs,
including setting a fire in a dorm room and stalking some women.
ABC, citing law enforcement sources, reported that the note, several
pages long, explains Cho's actions and says, "You caused me to do this."
Investigators believe Cho at some point had been taking medication for
depression, the Tribune reported. Classmates said that on the
first day of an introduction to British literature class last year, the
30 or so English students went around and introduced themselves. When
it was Cho's turn, he didn't speak.
The professor looked at the sign-in sheet and, where everyone else had
written their names, Cho had written a question mark. "Is your name,
`Question mark?'" classmate Julie Poole recalled the professor asking.
The young man offered little response.
Cho spent much of that class sitting in the back of the room, wearing a
hat and seldom participating. In a small department, Cho distinguished
himself for being anonymous. "He didn't reach out to anyone. He never
talked," Poole said.
"We just really knew him as the question mark kid," Poole said.
The rampage consisted of two attacks, more than two hours apart --
first at a dormitory, where two people were killed, then inside a
classroom building, where 31 people, including Cho, died after being
locked inside, Virginia State Police said. Cho committed suicide; two
handguns -- a 9 mm and a .22-caliber -- were found in the classroom
building.
One law enforcement official said Cho's backpack contained a receipt
for a March purchase of a Glock 9 mm pistol. Cho held a green card,
meaning he was a legal, permanent resident, federal officials said.
That meant he was eligible to buy a handgun unless he had been
convicted of a felony.
Roanoke Firearms owner John Markell said his shop sold the Glock and a
box of practice ammo to Cho 36 days ago for $571.
"He was a nice, clean-cut college kid. We won't sell a gun if we have
any idea at all that a purchase is suspicious," Markell said. Markell
said it is not unusual for college kids to make purchases at his shop
as long as they are old enough.
"To find out the gun came from my shop is just terrible," Markell said.
Investigators stopped short of saying Cho carried out both attacks. But
ballistics tests show one gun was used in both, Virginia State Police
said.
And two law enforcement officials, speaking on condition of anonymity
because the information had not been announced, said Cho's fingerprints
were found on both guns. The serial numbers on the two weapons had been
filed off, the officials said.
Col. Steve Flaherty, superintendent of the Virginia State Police, said
it was reasonable to assume that Cho was the shooter in both attacks
but that the link was not yet definitive. "There's no evidence of any
accomplice at either event, but we're exploring the possibility," he
said.
Officials said Cho graduated from Westfield High School in Chantilly,
Va., in 2003. His family lived in an off-white, two-story townhouse in
Centreville, Va.
Two of those killed in the shooting rampage, Reema Samaha and Erin
Peterson, graduated from Westfield High in 2006, school officials said.
But there was no immediate word from authorities on whether Cho knew
the two young women and singled them out.
"He was very quiet, always by himself," neighbor Abdul Shash said.
Shash said Cho spent a lot of his free time playing basketball and
would not respond if someone greeted him. He described the family as
quiet.
South Korea expressed its condolences, and said it hoped that the
tragedy would not "stir up racial prejudice or confrontation." "We are
in shock beyond description," said Cho Byung-se, a Foreign Ministry
official handling North American affairs.
Classes were canceled for the rest of the week. Norris Hall, the
classroom building, will be closed for the rest of the semester.
Many students were leaving town quickly, lugging pillows, sleeping bags
and backpacks down the sidewalks.
Jessie Ferguson, 19, a freshman from Arlington, left Newman Hall and
headed for her car with tears streaming down her red cheeks.
"I'm still kind of shaky," she said. "I had to pump myself up just to
kind of come out of the building. I was going to come out, but it took
a little bit of 'OK, it's going to be all right. There's lots of cops
around.'"
Although she wanted to be with friends, she wanted her family more. "I
just don't want to be on campus," she said.
Until Monday, the deadliest shooting in modern U.S. history was in
Killeen, Texas, in 1991, when George Hennard plowed his pickup truck
into a Luby's Cafeteria and shot 23 people to death, then himself.
Previously, the deadliest campus shooting in U.S. history was a rampage
that took place in 1966 at the University of Texas at Austin, where
Charles Whitman climbed the clock tower and opened fire with a rifle
from the 28th-floor observation deck. He killed 16 people before he was
shot to death by police.
Mall shooter's suicide note: Now I'll
be famous
Dec. 6, 2007
OMAHA, Nebraska (CNN) -- A 19-year-old gunman who police said killed
eight people and then himself at a Nebraska mall left a suicide note
predicting the shootings would make him famous, his landlord said.
Five other people were injured, and two of them were in critical
condition, hospital officials said.
The shootings inside the Von Maur department store at the popular
Westroads Mall in Omaha sent panicked holiday shoppers fleeing for
cover.
"It was just so loud, and then it was silence," said witness Jennifer
Kramer, who hid behind a clothing rack. "I was scared to death he'd be
walking around looking for someone else."
Police identified the gunman as Robert A. Hawkins of Bellvue, Nebraska.
Chief Thomas Warren of the Omaha Police Department called the shooting
"premeditated," but said it "appears to be very random and without
provocation."
Debora Maruca Kovac, Hawkins' landlord, said she found the suicide note
after getting a phone call from Hawkins about 1 p.m., just minutes
before the shootings. Video Watch landlord describe phone call from
shooter »
"He basically said how sorry he was for everything," Maruca Kovac said
of the note. "He didn't want to be a burden to people and that he was a
piece of s--- all of his life and that now he'd be famous."
She said Hawkins was a friend of her sons and "reminded me of a lost
puppy that nobody wanted." He came to live with her about a year and a
half ago, telling her he could not stay with his own family because of
"some issues with his stepmother."
She described Hawkins as well-behaved, although "he had a lot of
emotional problems, obviously."
Maruca Kovac told the Omaha World-Herald that Hawkins showed her an SKS
semiautomatic Russian military rifle the night before the rampage, but
she wasn't alarmed.
The shootings began about 1:42 p.m. (2:42 p.m. ET).
Seven people were found dead at the scene by officers who arrived six
minutes later; two others, a male and a female, died after being
transported to Creighton University Medical Center, said Fire Chief
Robert Dahlquist.
A Creighton spokeswoman said a second female underwent surgery and was
in critical condition Wednesday afternoon.
Three other people were taken to the University of Nebraska Medical
Center.
One, a 61-year-old man who sustained a chest wound after being shot in
the armpit, had surgery and remained in critical condition in the
intensive care unit Wednesday night, said hospital spokeswoman Maggie
O'Brien.
The other two -- a 34-year-old man who was shot in the arm, and a
55-year-old man who fell and struck a clothing rack as he was trying to
escape -- were treated and released, she said.
Warren said Hawkins was armed with an SKS assault rifle. His body, and
the weapon, were found on the store's third floor, he said.
Maruca Kovac told CNN that Hawkins left the house Wednesday about 11
a.m., and called the house about two hours later, sounding upset.
"He just said he wanted to thank me for everything I'd done for him ...
and he was sorry," Maruca Kovac said. He told her he had gotten fired
from his job at a McDonald's restaurant, she said.
"I said, 'Come home and we'll talk about it,' " she recounted. "He
said, 'It's too late.' He said he'd left a note explaining everything."
Kramer told CNN she heard at least 25 shots. Video Watch witnesses
describe the ordeal »
"I looked at my mom and said, 'We need to get out of here. Those are
gunshots,' " Kramer said. "I just grabbed my mom and we ran to the back
of the men's department and hid in some pants racks."
"He just kept firing," she said. She said she called 911 on her cell
phone, whispering into it out of fear of being heard. A dispatcher told
her other calls had been received and help was on the way, but she said
it seemed to take "a long time" for them to arrive.
She said as she was being escorted out by police, she saw a man lying
injured by the escalator where she had been previously.
Mall employee Charissa Tatoon said a man by an escalator near her was
heard saying he was calling 911. See a map of where the shooting took
place »
"Immediately after that, the shooter shot down from the third floor and
shot him on the second floor," she said.
"All of us were slightly confused because we didn't know what it was,"
Tatoon said. "Immediately after that, there was a series of maybe 20 to
25 more shots up on the third floor."
Warren, the police chief, said the victims included five females and
three males, not including Hawkins. The shooting appeared to be
contained in the Von Maur store, he said.
"We believe there was one shooter, and one shooter only," he said.
Video Watch police talk about the shooting »
Maruca Kovac said Hawkins' mental state seemed to be improving but he
had been through a rough patch recently.
"When he first came to live with us, he was in the fetal position and
chewed his fingernails all the time," she said. But she said she
thought he was improving, as he had gotten a job, a haircut and a
girlfriend.
However, she said Hawkins and his girlfriend had broken up in the last
couple of weeks, and he had taken it hard. Then he got fired from
McDonald's on Wednesday.
She said late Wednesday that authorities were searching her house for
evidence.
"My kids are devastated," she said. "We're all in shock."
A school district spokeswoman said he attended Papillion-La Vista High
School until he withdrew in March 2006. The World-Herald said he later
earned his GED.
President Bush had visited Omaha on Wednesday before the shooting.
"The president is deeply saddened by the shootings in Omaha," White
House press secretary Dana Perino said. "His thoughts and prayers are
with the victims and their families."
The shooting was at least the fourth at a mall or shopping center so
far this year, following incidents in Salt Lake City, Utah; Kansas
City, Missouri; and Douglasville, Georgia.
Gun
rampage US teen 'wanted fame'
I-BBC
6 Dec 2007
A teenager who shot dead eight people in a US shopping centre
before killing himself wrote in a suicide note that he wanted to be
famous.
Robert Hawkins, 19, from Bellevue, Nebraska, opened fire at the
Westroads Mall in Omaha on Wednesday.
A woman who took him in after he left home said he left a note saying
he was sorry for everything and did not want to be a burden to anybody.
Police have confirmed the existence of the note, but not its contents.
Hawkins struck as the centre was crowded with Christmas shoppers, and
witnesses spoke of people screaming and scrambling to find safe
shelter.
Five people were wounded, two of them critically.
In a statement, President George W Bush - who visited Omaha earlier in
the day for a fundraiser - said he was "deeply saddened" by the
shootings.
Hiding
The shooting took place inside the upmarket Von Maur department store
at the Westroads Mall.
Police were called at about 1400 local time (2000 GMT), after receiving
a call from inside, said Sgt Teresa Negron.
Witnesses said the gunman fired down on shoppers from a balcony
on the third floor of the Von Maur store, using what police said was an
SKS rifle to shoot at random.
By the time police arrived at the scene six minutes later, the shooting
was over, she said.
Jeff Schaffart was shot in the arm as he spent his lunch break shopping
with his wife, Reuters news agency reported. He said he hid in a Von
Maur women's bathroom, using his tie as a tourniquet to slow the
bleeding.
"I was obviously very fortunate. Not a lot of people were so fortunate
today," said Mr Schaffart.
Chuck Wright was working at the mall when he heard a "pop pop" sound.
"A lady that I work with on the same floor, she happened to walk over
to the [central atrium] and she was standing there and a gentleman
walked up, and the shooter reached over the top on the third floor and
shot the guy in the head."
Another woman also described seeing the gunman on the attack.
"I went around and then I saw the guy in the children's department,"
she said.
"Big tall guy, real tall and he just stood there with his arm like
this, his hand straight up in the air, shooting. And then I turned and
ran."
Witnesses spoke of trying to hide as they waited for police
Seven people were found dead at the scene, and another two died after
being taken to a local hospital.
In an e-mail to the BBC, one Omaha resident, called Julie, said that
she had been in a restaurant next door to Von Maur department store
when the shooting began.
"Someone came in to the restaurant and advised that someone was
shooting in the mall and to get out. Everyone started to run out of the
small doors in Panera [the restaurant], so we were able to get out very
quickly.
"I heard screaming and loud shots being fired somewhere close by. I got
out of the mall before the local police department arrived."
'Lost puppy'
Hawkins is said to have suffered from depression in the past, and
recently lost his job at McDonald's and broke up with his girlfriend.
He was living with a friend's family in Bellevue, an Omaha suburb.
His friend's mother, Debora Maruca Kovac, told the Associated Press
news agency that when he first came to live with them, "he was
introverted, a troubled young man who was like a lost pound puppy that
nobody wanted".
She said he phoned her about 1300 on Wednesday, telling her that he had
left a note for her in his bedroom. She tried to get him to explain.
"He said, 'It's too late'," and then hung up, she told CNN.
In the note, she said, Hawkins had written that "he was sorry for
everything, that he didn't want to be a burden to anybody, he loved his
family, he loved all of his friends".
The note went on to say he wanted to be famous, she said.
Omaha Police Chief Thomas Warren said the shooting appeared to be "very
random and without provocation".
"We do have a [suicide] note. I can't describe the contents of that
note, but it does appear this incident was premeditated," he added.
The incident is the latest in a series of mass shootings in the US,
which have reignited the debate in the US about gun ownership.
The Supreme Court will consider Americans' right to bear arms early
next year for the first time in nearly 70 years.
--------------------------
US MASS SHOOTINGS IN 2007
Oct: Asa H Coon, 14, shoots four people, injuring them, at his school
in Cleveland, Ohio, before killing himself.
April: Cho Seung-hui , 23, shoots 32 people dead on campus of Virginia
Tech university, Virginia, then kills himself.
Feb: Sulejman Talovic, 18, shoots dead five people and injures four at
a mall in Salt Lake City, Utah, before being killed by police.
Full story with pictures here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7130504.stm
The Red and the Black
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (2-15-08)
Le Rouge et le Noir (The Red and the Black) is a novel by
Stendhal, published in 1830. The title has been translated into English
variously as Scarlet and Black, Red and Black, and The Red and the
Black. It is set in 1830, and relates a young man's attempts to rise
above his plebeian birth through a combination of talent, hard work,
deception and hypocrisy, only to find himself betrayed by his own
passions.
Like Stendhal's later novel The Charterhouse of Parma (La Chartreuse de
Parme), Le Rouge et le Noir is a Bildungsroman. The protagonist, Julien
Sorel, is a driven and intelligent man, but equally fails to understand
much about the ways of the world he sets out to conquer. He harbours
many romantic illusions, and becomes little more than a pawn in the
political machinations of the influential and ruthless people who
surround him. Stendhal uses his flawed hero to satirize French society
of the time, particularly the hypocrisy and materialism of its
aristocracy and the Roman Catholic Church, and to foretell a radical
change in French society that will remove both of those forces from
their positions of power.
The most common and most likely explanation of the title is that red
and black are the contrasting colors of the army uniform of the times
and of the robes of priests, respectively. Julien Sorel observes early
on in the novel that, under the Bourbon restoration it is impossible
for a man of his class to distinguish himself in the army (as he might
have done under Napoleon); now, only a career in the Church offers
social advancement and glory. Alternative explanations are possible,
however: for example, red might stand for love and black for death and
mourning; or the colours might refer to those of a roulette wheel, and
may indicate the unexpected changes in the hero's career.
The novel ends with Stendhal's standard closing quote, "To the Happy
Few." This is often interpreted as a dedication to the few who could
understand his writing, or a sardonic reference to the happy few who
are born into prosperity (the latter interpretation is supported by the
likely source of the quotation, Canto 11 of Byron's Don Juan, a
frequent reference in the novel, which refers to 'the thousand happy
few' who enjoy high society)...
Prof. charged in 3 fatal shootings on
Ala. campus
YAHOO
By KRISTIN M. HALL, Associated Press Writer
Feb. 13, 2010
HUNTSVILLE, Ala. – A biology professor at the University of Alabama in
Huntsville who authorities say opened fire at a faculty meeting is
facing a murder charge after the shooting spree that left three dead
and three wounded.
Amy Bishop, 42, was charged Friday night with one count of capital
murder, which means she could face the death penalty if convicted.
Three of Bishop's fellow biology professors were killed and three other
university employees were wounded. No students were harmed in the
shooting, which happened in a community known for its space and
technology industries.
The husband of one of the victims said he was told those at the meeting
were discussing tenure for Bishop, who had been an assistant professor
since 2003. Authorities have not discussed a motive.
UAH student Andrew Cole was in Bishop's anatomy class Friday morning
and said she seemed perfectly normal.
"She's understanding, and was concerned about students," he said. "I
would have never thought it was her."
Bishop, a neurobiologist who studied at Harvard University, was taken
Friday night in handcuffs from a police precinct to the county jail and
could be heard saying, "It didn't happen. There's no way. ... They are
still alive."
Police said they were also interviewing a man as "a person of interest."
University spokesman Ray Garner said the three killed were Gopi K.
Podila, the chairman of the Department of Biological Sciences, and two
other faculty members, Maria Ragland Davis and Adriel Johnson.
Three others were wounded, two critically, in the gunfire, which Davis'
husband, Sammie Lee Davis, said occurred at a meeting over a tenure
issue. The wounded were identified as department members Luis
Cruz-Vera, who was listed in fair condition, and Joseph Leahy, in
critical condition in intensive care, and staffer Stephanie Monticello,
also in critical condition in intensive care.
Sammie Lee Davis said his wife was a researcher who had tenure at the
university.
In a brief phone interview, he said he was told his wife was at a
meeting to discuss the tenure status of another faculty member who got
angry and started shooting. He said his wife had mentioned the suspect
before, describing the woman as "not being able to deal with reality"
and "not as good as she thought she was."
Bishop and her husband placed third in a statewide university business
plan competition in July 2007, presenting a portable cell incubator
they had invented. They won $25,000 to help start a company to market
the device.
Biology major Julia Hollis was among the students who gathered to
support each other and try to make sense of the news.
"When someone told me it was a staff person and it was faculty I was in
complete denial," said Hollis, 23, who had taken classes with two of
the instructors who were killed. "It took me a bit for it to sink in."
Students offered varying assessments of Bishop.
Andrea Bennett, a sophomore majoring in nursing, described Bishop as
being "very weird" and "a really big nerd."
"She's well-known on campus, but I wouldn't say she's a good teacher.
I've heard a lot of complaints," Bennett said. "She's a genius, but she
really just can't explain things."
Bennett, an athlete at UAH, said her coach told her team Bishop had
been denied tenure and that may have led to the shooting.
Amanda Tucker, a junior nursing major from Alabaster, Ala., had Bishop
for anatomy class about a year ago. Tucker said a group of students
complained to a dean about Bishop's performance in the classroom.
"When it came down to tests, and people asked her what was the best way
to study, she'd just tell you, `Read the book.' When the test came,
there were just ridiculous questions. No one even knew what she was
asking," said Tucker.
But Nick Lawton, 25, described Bishop as funny and accommodating with
students.
"She lectured from the textbook, mostly stuck to the subject matter at
hand," Nick Lawton said. "She seemed like a nice enough professor."
Sophomore Erin Johnson told The Huntsville Times a biology faculty
meeting was under way when she heard screams coming from a conference
room.
University police secured the building and students were cleared from
it. There was still a heavy police presence on campus Friday night,
with police tape cordoning off the main entrance to the university.
The Huntsville campus has about 7,500 students in northern Alabama, not
far from the Tennessee line. The university is known for its scientific
and engineering programs and often works closely with NASA.
The space agency has a research center on the school's campus, where
many scientists and engineers from NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center
perform Earth and space science research and development.
The university will remain closed next week and all athletic events
were canceled to give students and staff time to grieve. Counselors
were available to speak with students.
It's the second shooting in a week on an area campus. On Feb. 5, a
14-year-old student was killed in a middle school hallway in nearby
Madison, allegedly by a fellow student.
Mass shootings are rarely carried out by women, said Dr. Park Dietz,
who is president of Threat Assessment Group Inc., a Newport Beach,
Calif.-based violence prevention firm.
A notable exception was a 1985 rampage at a Springfield, Pa., mall in
which three people were killed. In June 1986, Sylvia Seegrist was
deemed guilty but mentally ill on three counts of murder and seven
counts of attempted murder in the shooting spree.
Dietz, who interviewed Seegrist after her arrest, said it was possible
the suspect in Friday's shooting had a long-standing grudge against
colleagues or superiors and felt complaints had not been dealt with
fairly.
Gregg McCrary, a retired FBI agent and private criminal profiler based
in Fredericksburg, Va., said there is no typical outline of a mass
shooter but noted they often share a sense of paranoia, depression or a
feeling that they are not appreciated.
