Heroism.

[heidi]

Yesterday was Yom Hashoah - Holocaust Remembrance Day - which has, since the 1950s, been observed five days after the end of Passover, the day of the uprising at the Warsaw ghetto. It is the date on which we remember those who died in the Holocaust, because for almost all of those who were murdered then, we do not know the date on which they died, and as Jews, we need a day on which we can say Kaddish for someone's yahrrzeit (the anniversary of one's death).

And as I've seen in the news today, and on my flist, a Holocaust survivor was killed at Virginia Tech yesterday. Liviu Librescu, a Romania-born engineer and mathematician, blocked the door with his body and told his students to flee and he saved lives and he was murdered.

He wasn't the only one, of course, who gave his life for others yesterday, but the irony of the fact that he was a survivor of the Shoash - and then was murdered on Yom Hashoah - makes my head spin. Thank God for all the heroes yesterday, and all the heroes through the ages, whose lives give life to dozens and hundreds and thousands and millions as the years go by.



As far as the school not going into lockdown, I understand why they didn't, when the murders happened in the dorm, but I hope that this causes schools to send emails more rapidly in the future when something happens on or near a campus - and I've seen a few people comment that the schools send emails to students' and teachers' "official .edu" accounts, which a lot of people don't use - I hope that after this, schools set up to text students and email them at secondary/tertiary accounts in emergency situations - not just things like this, but also if a school is closed because of snow or storm or anything like that. I've pushed for a similar type of notification system in our public schools, and they have it by phone now - we get a call if there's something Big going on, or just to notify us of upcoming events and such (and while I was writing this, I got one regarding an event next week!); it works, as a system, pretty well. It should be implementable on school-wide scales.

Comments

[seaislewitch.livejournal.com]

What an amazing man! A true hero. (Thanks for the cultural info too.)

I'm still in the camp that if they didn't have the gunman from the earlier incident, the entrances to the campus should have been blocked, and the school should have been locked down. I watched the press conference, and it was clear the university president and university police chief were in shock. They made a mistake, and it would be better if they just admitted it rather than defend it. Unfortunately, they are thinking about the legalities of the situation and trying to protect their jobs. (I can't say I blame them, though, but still...)

[sundancekid.livejournal.com]

Matt told me about him -- one of his professors is leaving today to attend his funeral; the man was an aerospace professor and several of Matt's professors knew him personally. :/

It all just sucks, so bad, and I don't even have any other words for it.

[heidi8.livejournal.com]

No, there's just no more words.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Thank you for posting this; I didn't know much of this, and I'm glad to have read it.

[sandy-phoenix.livejournal.com]

I read about Dr. Librescu in the news reports. Extraordinary man. I wasn't aware it was Yom Hoshoah, though. I'm glad you mentioned that. Also extraordinary. I share your head spinniness. That is quite something.

You are quite right about notification and I hope adjustments can be made to make it more efficient and, consequently, safer.

[fishzilla.livejournal.com]

i can see why hey didnt put the school into lockdown also, but i think they should have at least cancelled their classes. ad the whole email thing drove me nuts. why didnt they find this guy within the TWO HOURS between the shootings? well, they also thought it was a murder suicide, which i guess makes sense. and you can tell the entire school board is going to lose their jobs over this.

[goddlefrood.livejournal.com]

This is all appalling news. Peace be with you.

[(Anonymous)]

Posting anonymously only because I'm trying to avoid talking about work in a public form.

Speaking as an employee of a major state university (40,000+ students), I can state with a fair amount of assurance that many, if not most, schools just plain aren't set up for global mailings, especially including addresses outside .edu accounts. My department isn't even consistently database-driven. E-mailing anything en masse involves sending a request to someone else on another team to export the list and send it over, after which we have to copy and paste it into the mailing. It's a pain in the ass and it takes a while.

It's entirely possible that we're just way behind the times, but we can't be the only school that is. In my experience, state institutions can move very... very... slowly, and in any school of size, disconnect between departments happens as a matter of course. Frankly, I'm kind of amazed the whole thing runs. So while in an emergency everyone SHOULD move as quickly as possible to notify everyone, sometimes it's just not possible. I wish it were. It's not where the money goes until it has to, though.

[ex-greythist387.livejournal.com]

Yup. And large schools with databases can address the students who have entered e-mail addresses into their registrar records, but if the student decides a service sucks and switches from Yahoo! to Hotmail, say, the university won't know till the student remembers to update their record. For grad students, more tightly tracked than undergrads, much of the time their department won't know till the grad says something.

It's not as though one's required to have an e-mail address, campus or otherwise....

(Would a university really be able to communicate details of an emergency clearly and efficiently in 150 chars or fewer? The texting idea seems well-intentioned but silly, to me. E-mail makes better sense.)

[pengolodh-sc.livejournal.com]

It may not be able to give full details within the limits of a textmessage, but it can give a brief summary, and advise to check e-mail/university homepage/etc. It might also be possible to set systems up so that all important messages (not just emergency messages, but also for instance information for a subject, information about exams or registration, etc. etc.) are always sent out to the .edu addresses, so that if the student absolutely wants to use Hotmail/Yahoo/GMail/etc. eh/she would have to set up a forwarding of emssages, or miss the info.

[ex-greythist387.livejournal.com]

so that if the student absolutely wants to use Hotmail/Yahoo/GMail/etc. eh/she would have to set up a forwarding of emssages, or miss the info.

True--but my sense is that students would miss the info, often, which defeats the point of what various news services have been suggesting.

[pengolodh-sc.livejournal.com]

Well, what I'm thinking is to introduce this to the extent that it also includes important class info. Meaning that students will be at severe risk of failing lcasses or similar, if they don't themselves take some responsibility - since if they don't take steps to make sure they receive mail sent to their university address, they will not get e-mail about changed exam-schedules, revised deadlines for term-papers, changed schedules for required lab-classes, etc. etc. If this was done, then most students would by default be much more easily reachable by e-mail - and for those who don't keep their e-mail forwarding up-to-date, on their heads be it. At some point the student has to be responsible for keeping his/her contact information up to date.

[acusa-dora.livejournal.com]

I saw his son on television tonight. It's such a huge loss to his family and to the school, but Professor Librescu is such a hero. I'm in awe of him and the others who were heroic in such a stressful situation.

As far as locking down the school, how do you do it? Is this a commuter school or mostly residential? Domestic shootings happen every day in this country. I don't think they could have predicted that this would happen. The one mystery to me is how did this guy get two guns? I want to know if they were registered or stolen.

[jessryn.livejournal.com]

I read in the news that he purchased the guns legally.