Gov. Kaine says don’t fire Virginia Tech officials

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine said today that Virginia Tech officials shouldn’t be fired for their actions surrounding the April 16, 2007, massacre.

“Look, that was the worst day in Tech’s history,“ Kaine said. “Those people have done great things at the university. . . . Would you want to be judged only on the basis of the worst day in your life?“

But the governor said he has long felt that Tech officials failed to follow up on earlier concerns about killer Seung-Hui Cho and that they shouldn’t have delayed issuing a warning after Cho’s first two murders in a campus dorm the morning of April 16, 2007.

During the past several months, a Richmond Times-Dispatch review of Tech records also showed that top officials—including a member of the group that delayed issuing the warning—acted to secure their own offices and facilities long before telling the campus about the first shootings that day.

The records, some of which are in an archive Tech made public today, also show at least 10 instances of bizarre or threatening behavior by Cho in which the university did little except to suggest he get counseling. In one case, he ended up with a “A” for a course he did as an independent study after a professor insisted he be removed for scaring other students.

“Maybe you don’t want to judge people on the worst day in their lives, but there were other worst days,“ said Suzanne Grimes, whose son, Kevin Sterne, was injured and nearly died that day. “It wasn’t just April 16 when they didn’t do their jobs. There were plenty of times before then when people at Virginia Tech didn’t do their jobs.“

Kaine said he felt Tech officials are communicating well now with families of the 32 students and teachers who died that day.

He said he was pleased that the board will begin meeting injured survivors of the massacre this month, saying it was important that the first effort to reach out be to those who are still on campus.

Kaine said lawsuits, settled eight months ago, had complicated the university’s communications with families. Most of the lawsuits were filed in October 2007.

Asked if he felt it had taken a reasonable amount of time from last summer’s settlement to the first meetings with on-campus students, Kaine said there had been scheduling difficulties.

Kaine also said his office is still working out the mechanisms for considering any corrections to the official state account of the massacre that families want to suggest.

The archive, accessible through one computer at the Library of Virginia in downtown Richmond and one at Tech’s Newman Library, drew little interest today.

Jessica Schultz, a sophomore from Erie, Pa., had no idea she was sitting at Tech’s April 16 archive computer in the library in Blacksburg as she used it to look up a book on crocheting.

She wasn’t aware that Tech was releasing documents about the massacre.

“It’s not that good to dwell on the past,“ she said.