Trying To Wear Bigger Shoes

I just stuck my blog on Technorati.com. I'm not entirely sure why or what good it will do, but there it is. You can check out technorati links in my sidebar. You know, if you want. And stuff.

In a more topical thread, I've been thinking about the real failure of emergency warning systems for campuses after the Virginia Tech massacre. See, here's the thing: VT police saw two bodies in a dorm room after shots were fired, and initially thought it was a domestic dispute, a murder-suicide. The problem is that in the case of a murder-suicide, there's usually one person left holding a weapon of some kind. They had two hours to search the scene and didn't find a gun (since there wasn't a gun there to find).

That means this was not a murder-suicide. There was a third person involved, and failure to notice the fact that there was no weapon, and then the subsequent failure to tell anyone, are both examples of bad police work. If the police on the scene had been thinking, they would have done their jobs right and realized there was a shooter still out there, possibly on campus.

So there was no warning to announce - when there finally was, Virginia Tech's loudspeakers blared out that there was an emergency on campus and that people should get inside. That's fine, and relatively effective.

But at Washington University, where I work, there is no such system that I'm aware of. I've never heard a voice over loudspeakers. There might be a system in place, but the most I've ever heard is the monthly test of the tornado sirens. I can't help but worry that Washington University's warning system is just silence that administrators hope will seem alarming.

I could be wrong, I hope I'm wrong, but I have to admit that I don't know.