Okay, sorry for two blog entries one right after the other about the same event... but this is a different topic.

I work on campus at Duke University, and I was talking with some coworkers this morning about the Virginia Tech shooting, and we were wondering.. what if it happend at Duke?

Virginia Tech, from what I've heard, has a campus wide PA system that went unused during this tragedy.  I know the powers that be at Duke must be contemplating what they would do if something like this happened. 

We have emergency call boxes all over campus, in the parking lots and such - but of course those don't help at all when the tragedy is occuring inside the building.

Like disaster recovery, it's hard to plan for something like this, because you don't think it'll ever happen.

Our building will never be blown up, and there will never be a mass shooting on campus.

Or will there?

Hopefully, people will have learned at the very least that emailing the student body in an emergency situation is not an option.  I mean c'mon.  We know that tech geeks like myself check email every 3 minutes during the day, but I don't think that's common.  If you've got a real emergency situation, there's got to be SOME OTHER PLAN in place to disseminate that information.

Here's an example, on a much smaller scale and not an emergency:

Yesterday, a tree fell part way in the Campus Drive lot, endangering a number of cars in the lot.  The lot is shared by people who work in a variety of locations on campus - mostly in 6-7 buildings right on Campus Drive, but others work down in the Perkins Library or in other locations down on west campus.

These 7 endangered cars needed to be moved... but how to contact their owners?  In theory, Duke Police could contact the vehicles owners by looking up the parking permits in the parking database, and contacting the owners of the vehicles individually.  That never happened though.  My co-worker went out to see if one of the cars was his, and it wasn't.  But he had the sense to write down the licence plate numbers of the other cars and gave them to someine in our office, who emailed everyone the licence plate numbers.

I don't know how it all worked out, but I don't think any cars were damaged.

But it still makes me wonder... what would we do if a tragedy struck?

I was listening to Neil Boortz tonight on my way home from bowling.  Normally I don't because he's a hater of democrats and liberals, which I generally align with.  But I do like some of the ideas he supports, like the Fair Tax.  Read up on it.

Anyway, Neil mentioned something called the Bystander Effect, a pyschological phenomenon where bystanders to a violent crime are less likely to do anything about it if there are more people witnessing the crime.

He brought up the case of the murder of Kitty Genovese - a woman who was attacked and murdered on the street outside her New York apartment building in 1964.  The attack lasted 30 minutes, and nobody called the police until AFTER the murder was completed and the murderer had fled the scene.  A police investigation determined that 38 people heard he call for help, and not one of them did anything about it.  Some of them WATCHED the attack from their windows high above the street.

So how does this relate to the tragedy at Virginia Tech?

I don't know.  I wasn't there, thank god.  But the gunman shot over 50 people, and over 30 of them died.  He obviously unloaded a lot of bullets, and probably had to reload multiple times.  Maybe he was quick.  I wonder if anyone attempted to subdue him - putting their own lives at risk to do so, of course.

What would I do?  Honesty compels me to tell you that I'd probably run and hide.

I don't know if the Bystander Effect really applies here, because there were no bystanders.  There wree only victims.

I'd wager that the police were notified pretty quickly once the second shooting started.  But did anyone try to stop the guy?

BTW, this is not about gun control.  I don't want to hear anyone tell me that gun control could've prevented this, and I don't want to hear anyone tell me how the liberal media wants it to be all about gun control.  It's not, and they don't.  A few people might bring it up, but it's not "the media."