The grotesquely evil act that occurred this week at Virginia Tech challenges the imagination's capacity to respond. I cannot say that I have some kind of comprehensive analysis to offer. I would like to say a few things, though, from my perspective as a college professor.
Let's begin by naming this as an act, and not just a “tragedy.” It was a product of a young adult's human choices, an act of will, a decision involving premeditation, planning, and determination. It was not like a tornado or a hurricane. A human being decided to conduct a massacre, and he did so.
This act of human will should be described as wicked. It involved the descent of a person into evil. Murder is objectively evil. Whatever we might say about the psychological wellsprings of this action, it was wicked. It was sin, on the grossest scale.
This is not to say that we should dismiss evidence of Cho Seung-Hui's psychological maladies. Nor does it mean that pity towards a sick young man is inappropriate. Whatever diagnostic category one might employ, Cho was clearly not well. But we give away too much ground morally when we treat evil acts as entirely the product of psychosis or mental illness.
The Christian tradition has ancient language available that is at least as compelling as any psychological diagnosis. That is the language of the demonic, of dark supernatural forces that purpose to seduce people away from goodness and God and toward moral and spiritual darkness. I wonder if one can really improve on the explanation the church would once have offered: Cho gave himself over to Satan and to evil.
The pictures of Cho in his sick Captain Commando get-up reminds us that however psychotic or demonic, no one gets their scripts for doing evil out of nowhere. Cho's writings indicate his sympathy for the Columbine killers. His tough-guy, two-gun, ammo-toting persona seems drawn either from Columbine or from some of the kinds of movies that inspired Columbine killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold.
One really doesn't have to go very far into the “weekend” section of the newspaper to find plenty of material that someone like Cho could find inspiring. Are we really surprised that a certain tiny slice of the population goes into buildings armed to the teeth and ready to kill people when our own entertainment choices depict people doing exactly the same thing? Anyone up for a trip to see Grindhouse this weekend? Perhaps we could just stay home and rent Pulp Fiction? In this sense, Cho's sickness is our own.
Then of course there is the issue of America's inability or unwillingness to arrive at laws that would prevent people like Cho from walking into a gun shop and walking out a short while later with the guns and ammunition he needed to conduct a campus massacre.
The weaknesses that were revealed about Virginia Tech on Monday were not unique. Campuses are open spaces with endless buildings, open doors, and young faces milling about. College presidents are academics, not Marine commandants. Campus police officers are not quite the Green Berets. American universities reflect the openness of our society. At least, they did until Monday.
The fact that Cho was not removed from school despite the manifest warning signs point to huge but familiar problems. Confidentiality requirements oftentimes keep a university and its employees from having and sharing the full range of information about their own students. (Plus, parents are kept out of the loop.) Student affairs offices are overworked and understaffed. Their discipline policies are often vague and sometimes unevenly enforced. Psychological services on most college campuses are pretty thin. Health coverage for psychological needs is spotty all across our nation. Lawsuit threats discourage active intervention with troubled students unless absolutely necessary. Faculty members are evaluated by students, and these evaluations matter to our careers. Therefore we are motivated not to make enemies.
Colleges -— large ones, especially -— are vast repositories of young, volatile human beings. As it seems that nearly everyone goes to college these days, these schools are just a cross-section of the population at any given time. Young people need identity, self-esteem, community and meaning. I would say that they, and all of us, need God. Cho lacked any of these.
And so he bought his guns and strapped on his vest and went to work on killing people Monday morning in Blacksburg.
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— David Gushee is university fellow and Graves Professor of Moral Philosophy at Union University in Jackson, Tenn. www.davidgushee.com