Fire Virginia Tech’s president, some shooting victims’ families say

Virginia Tech’s leaders need to be held accountable for their actions during last year’s massacre, victims and families told Gov. Timothy M. Kaine today.

Some said that probably means Tech President Charles W. Steger should be fired.

In two days of meetings with the governor during the weekend, families said the pay increases and praise Tech officials received after the April 16, 2007, shootings in which 32 students and faculty members were killed has sent the wrong signal to Tech leaders and is stalling needed change. The gunman, student Seung-Hui Cho, killed himself.

Survivors and families told the governor that Tech’s mishandling of alerts during an incident 11 days ago underscores their concern that little has changed at Tech since the massacre, the largest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. The school’s new emergency-alert system didn’t reach many people with messages Nov. 13, and the alert wasn’t sent until 50 minutes after the incident, which turned out to be a false alarm.

Families believe a delayed warning after the first two shootings on April 16 put their children and spouses at risk. Nearly two and a half hours later, Cho killed 30 more in a separate building.

About two dozen survivors and victims’ families met for nearly three hours with the governor in Richmond today, after Kaine met with about 35 in Northern Virginia on Saturday.

The meetings were required by the state’s legal settlement with victims and families, as were sessions last month during which police and Tech officials revealed critical facts that contradicted the official state account of the tragedy.