您现在的位置: Language Tips> Audio & Video> Special Speed News  
 





 
Va. Tech report criticizes school action
[ 2007-09-06 10:26 ]

Download

This is the VOA Special English Education Report.

A committee gave its findings last week about the Virginia Tech shootings in April. The committee appointed by Virginia's governor and led by a retired state police official called for more than seventy changes. The goal is to prevent a similar tragedy in Virginia or anywhere else.

On April 16, Seung-Hui Cho, a student, killed thirty-two people and wounded seventeen before killing himself. Among other things, the Virginia Tech Review Panel discussed his mental health history.

In 1999, he wrote in middle school about killing himself and others. This was after the Columbine High School shootings in Colorado. His teachers thought he should get treatment, which he did.

He also received services in high school. But school officials thought privacy laws prevented sharing this information with Virginia Tech.

There, he caused a number of troubling incidents. The report says the university in Blacksburg did not intervene effectively. It says no one knew all the information and no one put it all together.

The committee pointed to problems with Virginia's mental health system. It also found widespread misunderstanding about federal and state privacy laws.

In 2005, a court judged the young man a danger to himself and ordered him to get treatment. But he was not ordered into a hospital. Still, his name should have been added to federal and state lists of people barred from buying guns.

Virginia law did not make that clear. Governor Tim Kaine has moved to deal with this. But Virginia officials found that less than half the states report any mental health information to a federal database used for gun purchases.

At Virginia Tech, emergency services reacted quickly after two people were killed early that morning. But the report says police may have been too quick to decide that a possible suspect was probably no longer in the area. And top administrators are criticized for failing to send out a warning message about the shooting for almost two hours.

Minutes after that, the shootings began in Norris Hall. Still, the committee says quickly securing all buildings would not have been possible.

Some victims' families want the university president and police chief to resign or be dismissed. The governor rejected that idea.

Virginia Tech began a new school year August 20, a day after a ceremony for a memorial to the thirty-two victims.

And that's the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Nancy Steinbach. I'm Bob Doughty.

点击进入更多VOA慢速

(英语点津姗姗编辑)

 

 
 
相关文章 Related Stories
 
         
 
 
 
 
 
         

 

 

 
 

48小时内最热门

     
  Lewis Hamilton 刘易斯•汉密尔顿
  “爽约”怎么说
  下午茶的起源
  全球变暖 海象“搬家”
  安妮斯顿获封“封面王”

本频道最新推荐

     
  女孩的心思谁能猜:Suspended from class
  《说点什么吧》:Say something anyway
  Mountain and cowboy culture meet in Jackson Hole
  Livestock disease spreads in Britain
  Working magic in the garden with beans

论坛热贴

     
  “净脸联盟”两周年——迎国庆特别活动启动
  how to translate“三局两胜”
  知青 农民工 怎么翻译
  "魅力城市" 英文怎么说?
  请教:统一口径的译法
  Mountain Story 大山的故事