Orville W. Taylor

He walked across the street, kicked down the door and fired indiscriminately, killing several innocent people, whom he considered not human enough to live. Inasmuch as this is a reference to the mad Korean in Virginia, it is the sort of thing that inner-city residents have said about a lot of latter-day Jamaica gunmen and some policemen.

Cho Seung-Hui, a 23-year-old resident alien from South Korea, went berserk on the campus of Virginia Polytechnic last Monday. After a killing spree that lasted two hours, 33 persons were dead, including Cho. It was mass-murder/suicide as Cho died at his own hand before the authorities had an opportunity to apprehend him. The harsh truth is that he chose to end the massacre and therefore, if he had more ammunition and desire, he would have murdered more people.

Storm in a teacup

In a month when much criticism is levelled against our local security arrangements, especially with regard to the death of Pakistan's English coach Bob Woolmer, one has to raise questions about the most secure country on Earth. Two weeks ago, a storm blew up in a teacup about sexual violence on the campus of the University of the West Indies (UWI). Indeed, rape does occur there and in particular, date rape, perpetrated by a familiar. Oftentimes he thinks that by having the young lady and sometimes young man, voluntarily enter his room, this implies consent. However, there is no epidemic of (sexual) violence on campus.

Nevertheless, we are a violent country and we murder each other at will. However, was the tragedy in Virginia avoidable or even containable to a smaller number of victims? The name 'Cho' sounds like a Jamaican utterance expressing sexual frustration and the ultra lonely, loverless Asian shooter, perhaps would have felt more at home in 'Norfolk,' Virginia than in 'Blacksburg,' Virginia. Even the name of the town suggests that one would have to lengthen one's imagination for Cho to belong.

He was a loner, stalker, mentally ill, suicide-prone person, who scared his colleagues and professors, was reported to the police on several occasions and was determined by the courts to be 'psycho.' Cho had even been 'voluntarily' committed to a mental institution. Ejected from the creative writing class of African-American poetic legend, Nikki Giovanni, he was seen as a psychopath and sociopath. Forget the clinical psychological terms; "Him mad!" and everyone knew it. Yet, he was allowed to slip under the radar and even allowed to buy two guns. Tell me, aren't these officials in Virginia the ones who are crazy?

Virginia is actually connected to the capital of the United States, Washington, D.C. In fact, the District of Columbia, (D.C.) is technically part of Virginia. So, security in its capital must be better than Norfolk style. It is a big mystery that the killer could have had time to start his onslaught, then traverse the campus, a distance of more than a kilometre, and continue his mayhem.

Unlike the UWI, University of Technology (UTech) and Northern Caribbean University, American universities typically have fully armed police officers and response teams. These are trained personnel, skilled in the art and science of urban policing and SWAT-type operations. It is not like the normal 'watch-people' on Jamaican campuses, for whom 'train' means a 'locomotive' and not capacitation. Yet, I doubt that he would have had so much leeway here.

Students like Cho, who have loco motions and who threaten students and staff, are not easily ignored and I bet that if such a student were on Chancellor or Taylor Hall at UWI or Farquharson (Far Q) Hall at Utech, he would be given an 'arson' before being allowed to burn down the school. Chancellorites and Taylorites would beat him like Bangladeshi cricketers. Across the road they would give a different meaning to the word 'Papine' and tell him "UTech way youself." He had better behave because if asked where he was going he would not dare respond "Far Q."

Paranoid schizophrenic

At Mona or Papine he would have been referred to counselling. Several students have been diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic and at the slightest sign of an episode, other students respond. Propriety prevents me from further discussing them because I don't want them to get the impression that this article is about them.

Nonetheless, the point in all this is that with the limited security resources that we have here in Jamaica our university culture is different. Perhaps, being a more aggressive community, our male students only 25 per cent of the matriculated population would not cower simply because a 'psycho' had guns. Somebody would have tackled him. At UWI, if he entered one of the first- or second-year classes in the Faculty of Social Sciences, such as Sociology for the Caribbean or Introductory Psychology, he would have been so overwhelmed by the sheer number of students that after his first salvo he would have been trampled underfoot.

Don't be mistaken, it is not my contention that Jamaican university campuses are secure. Quite the contrary! At least one UWI lecturer was kidnapped on campus and executed and another was killed in his flat by 'familiars.' A female student was brutally assaulted by her estranged lover and another of her countrywomen raped on hall by an intruder. More recently, the abduction of my blood bredren and colleague ragamuffin lecturer has made me decide that my next car will have no back door and limited trunk space.

Still, in Jamaica we have learnt not to get complacent. In Virginia it was not the students who let their guards down; it was the guards who let the students down.

Dr. Orville Taylor is senior lecturer in the Department of Sociology, Psychology and Social Work at the University of The West Indies, Mona.