Massacre Exposes America’s Dirty Campus Secret

There were two monstrous tragedies at Virginia Tech. The first was the colossal shock and horror of the murder of 33 people. The second was that as monstrous as the rampage was, it is only the most extreme form of the violence that has quietly torn many campuses apart. The exhaustive white paper on campus violence issued by the American College Health Association in 2005 was an early warning that campus violence is a far bigger problem than many campus officials are willing to admit. The report found that many campuses are not the safe and idyllic bastion of student tranquility and peace that campus administrators like to present to prospective students, parents, alumni, donors and the general public. The white paper ticked off a high rate of rapes, assaults, physical harassment, taunting, stalking, and suicides that plague many college campuses.

However, the 23 murders or non-negligent manslaughters that have taken place on American campuses was only the tip of iceberg of campus violence. Only 25 percent of the violent crimes were actually reported. A significant number of faculty and students flatly told the researchers that they actually feared for their safety. One of their biggest fears was gun violence.

This was not unfounded. Guns were involved in more than one-third of all violent student crimes. Researchers also blamed the continued and possibly escalating campus violence on “male competition and aggression.” In almost all cases, the shooters and aggressors were male. The student killer was typically profiled as a frustrated, socially isolated male who killed to settle a grudge with a professor or a failed sexual or love relationship with another student. Police officials speculate that this might have been the possible motive of the Virginia Tech killer.

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