Deborah Sturm – 4/24/07

This page was last updated on April 24, 2007.

Blame massacre on PC; Deborah Sturm; Beaver County Times; April 24, 2007.

Below is a detailed critique of the subject letter.

“Regarding the massacre at Virginia Tech by the student gunman, Cho, it is amazing that his suitemates were apparently unable to recognize Cho’s anti-social personality and behaviors that he allegedly exhibited on a daily basis.

“Cho’s roommate described him as expressionless and non-engaging, and that he had no friends nor made telephone calls. He mostly sat at his computer putting together documents.

“No doubt Cho’s nonjudgmental roommates, products of the current trend of political correctness that assigns equal validity to all viewpoints and behaviors and exhorts college students to refrain from making any judgments, rendered them constitutionally incapable of recognizing Cho’s anti-social personality and acting appropriately.

“Isn’t it possible that a suite full of college men could have confronted Cho, and this massacre might have been averted?”

[RWC] I don’t understand why Ms. Sturm is dumping on Cho’s roommates. Cho had been before a judge and received professional psychological examination/treatment and the professionals apparently didn’t foresee his killing spree.

“Political correctness only helps to create evil persons like Cho.”

[RWC] Heaven knows a lot of bad things can be attributed to political correctness, but I don’t believe this massacre is one of them. From what had been reported to date, Cho was a troubled person since birth. The world is full of troubled people who probably exhibit similar behavior traits as Cho, but they won’t go on a murdering rampage.

As much as we’d all like there to be something we can blame Cho’s actions on, most of the time the only person to blame is the killer himself.