DEAR VIRGINIA TECH

I would like to take this opportunity to extend my condolences to everyone whose lives were affected in the seemingly meaningless tragedy that occurred yesterday, Monday April 16th, 2007. Your grief is no doubt overwhelming and your sense of loss and devastation incomparable. I can only try to imagine the amount of anguish that people close to those who died are feeling, but my sympathy goes out to everyone affected by this tragedy, and anyone else who has ever lost a person in a tragedy.

The reason I say this is because this occurrence is unique, but also not unique, in US history. It is unique because this is the largest massacre in this country's past, because of where it happened, and who committed the atrocity. These are details. This event is not unique, because violence is not unique. It is not new. It is not surprising. It is the details that lead us to believe that they are.

First of all, school shootings are not new to the US. This trend of violence was highlighted by one of the most notorious shootings of recent history; in Columbine, Colorado. Even before this milestone however, gun violence has been prevalent in the worst parts of this country, where the level of education and the standard of living is low due to lack of money in the educational system and the neighborhood. Gang violence has been happening for as long as gangs have been around, and no one had bothered to do anything about it. No one has questioned why the shootings occurred, why a kid had to die; it was just explained away as gang violence. The straight answer is, no one cared that much. No one wanted to look at the root of the problem. No, not video games. Not the movies that they watched. Not the television shows. The problem is EVERYONE.

No one cares enough to look at themselves as the source of the problem. We are all too busy pointing fingers at others rather than look at the decisions that we all make in our own lives. We are caught up being too important to feel guilty about the lack of a general social consciousness that we are all born with, but are bred out of us. Every single one of us is too important to look outside our immediate sphere of existence in order to come together and solve larger social issues such as gang violence.

This quest for uniqueness and individuality is killing us all. School shootings by one person is a form of gang violence that has changed and mutated with the times. With the advent of personal media and technology, it is easy to surround yourself with inanimate objects that entertain and amuse us for periods of time. Unfortunately, this is not how its meant to be. People were meant to be social creatures, and in this day and age, it has become easier and easier to isolate oneself. By doing so, you are not just choosing to isolate yourself, you choose to alienate a person, alienate people around you. There must be an effort to reach out and care enough about someone other than yourself and just be aware.

I believe Cho Seung-Hui was a victim of such alienation. I do not know whether he was the source of the alienation, or whether he was alienated by others. I did not know Cho Seung-Hui. However, I am a Korean-American, living in this country. I am a male. Most importantly, I am a person. As I listen to the news reports of the kind of person he was, and things that other people remembered about him, before he became legendary in his horrific deed, I realize that, at one point or another, I felt how he did, I went through experiences that others recounted about Cho Seung-Hui.

There were those who made an effort to reach out to this young man, to touch him, despite his obvious anger, and not so obvious desires to commit homicide. These were good efforts, but they weren't good enough. I hope that, before we blame his influences and his environment, and HIM that killed 32 people, we blame ourselves. I have never seen or heard of this young man before this past Monday. It is my fault. It is your fault. For any such tragedies, whether in Compton or Columbine, it is all our faults. No one should dare rest easy and think that there was nothing they could've done. There's ALWAYS something to be done.