Viewpoint: Virginia Tech's President Should Resign

[DeepModem Mom]

TIME: Viewpoint: Va. Tech's President Should Resign
By JOHN CLOUD


Virginia Tech President Dr. Charles W. Steger.
(Mannie Garcia/AFP/Getty)

...assuming that an unknown murderer won't leave the scene and keep shooting people — something almost no murderer does — is different from assuming that a person who has long been identified as a threat, as Cho had, won't hurt someone. The fateful decisions that cost the lives of 30 more people at Virginia Tech weren't made on Monday morning; they were made in the previous 18 months.

From a legal standpoint, this distinction is crucial. As law professor Michael Krauss of George Mason University in Virginia points out, "We never judge negligence in hindsight. We always judge it in foresight." And you can make a good case that the Virginia Tech cops and other employees who knew of Cho's erratic, self-destructive, and possibly criminal behavior since the fall of 2005 should have done more to help him or expel him....

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...here was a man who was actively intimidating other students and who had inappropriately and repeatedly photographed and contacted female students. His own suite mates say he was a stalker. That the university did not suspend Cho for such violations makes a solid case for negligence.

In a rational legal system, the school would be held accountable for its errors. But Virginia Tech is a state institution, and Virginia is a state where the doctrine of sovereign immunity remains quite robust. That doctrine, a relic of English common law, essentially says the state can do no wrong because the state creates the law and thus cannot be subject to it. Many states have relaxed sovereign immunity and made it possible for victims of, say, botched operations to sue state hospitals. But Krauss of George Mason University says the Virginia Tech victims' families would probably have to seek an exception to sovereign immunity from the Supreme Court of Virginia in order to sue the school.

There's a simpler way: (Dr. Charles) Steger, the university president, should stop withholding documents on how the university mishandled Cho and take responsibility for his school's lax approach. And then he should resign.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1612492,00.html