It doesn’t seem so long ago that another tragic April day brought news of mass killings. Almost exactly eight years after the massacre at Columbine High School come reports of a lone gunman unloading round after round of ammunition inside a lecture hall at Virginia Tech. Cho Seung-Hui, a twenty-three-year-old senior and English major from Centreville, Virginia, allegedly shot fifty students and faculty members in two separate shooting incidents, killing thirty-three people, including himself.
Cho, an immigrant who came to the United States with his parents from South Korea in 1992, has been described in the news as being a “loner” and “extremely shy,” and was referred to counseling by one of his creative writing professors. Aside from vague descriptions of Cho’s behavior, no one could give any information about Cho’s personality—including his roommates and his professors, even the professor that referred him to counseling. It seems as if Cho cut himself off from the entire world, except in his writing. Of the work he would submit in class, violence and anger were the dominating themes. But because no one could say for sure if Cho’s violent emotions were intentionally imagined or purely creative, Cho walked around campus without anyone giving him a second thought.
Of the nearly 22,000 undergraduates attending Virginia Tech, over 15,000 students are white. Less than 1,000 are African-American, approximately 1,500 are Asian-American, and a little more than 500 are Hispanic. Overall, there are 26,000 students, including both undergraduate and graduate programs. Their football team plays in the Big East Conference. There are sixty-four nationally affiliated fraternities and sororities on campus.
In a large university like Virginia Tech, someone like Cho was bound to feel alienated. Under his shy exterior, he was probably simmering with malice toward anything and everything he was not a part of, and the only clue of his utter disenchantment was in his writing, which was largely dismissed until now. He was an English major at a technical college. He was a non-athletic loner in a school where there is a strong focus on sports programs and Greek life. He was one Asian man to one hundred white men. Where did he belong? Who could he relate to? How could he express himself or his feelings in a cathartic manner?
