fuckyeahreslife:

reslifelamentations:

We found out today that the second victim of the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre was an RA. Apparently, he heard the first gunshot and went out to the hallway to investigate.

I know most of you have probably been somewhat trained in school shooting emergency protocol (Shots Fired, anyone?). What I’m…

1) I’m surprised that you are just now hearing this as that was major news and a huge reason why they thought it was a contained incident. 2) the guy wasn’t trying to save a life or be stupid heroic, he was investigating noise/a fight and was shot for just being present. Sounds like you got a scare presentation today.

Hmmm…no, we didn’t get a scare presentation at all; in fact, it’s the third time I’ve sat through that presentation, it’s just that this new bit of information struck a chord with me. I understand that I may have been a little vague or dramatic in what I have written, and given what I said I can totally see where you got that. Let me clarify:

To answer the first point, I’m sure I heard that specific part in 2007, but it was my junior year of high school and I was in outer space back then. Also, res life and RAs weren’t really in my vocabulary, and by the time I was a part of res life, years later, it was old news.

I certainly did not mean to imply the RA was trying to be heroic, and I did not intend this as a “don’t be a hero” spiel, though, rereading it, I can see how it could have been construed that way (throwing around the word “martyr” probably wasn’t the best idea). Let me be very clear when I say that every single victim of that horrible massacre could not have prevented what happened, and that the RA in question did everything he should have.

What I mean is this: as an RA, my first instinct would be to investigate the situation; if we hear a struggle we definitely have to assess the situation. However, if some astronomical event occurs and I hear something that sounds like a gunshot, before that presentation, I still may have gone outside. Now I realize that that is something that I am neither trained nor expected to do.

That being said, I hope my original post wasn’t too alarmist. Training makes me a little insane…