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Yes, It Could Have Been Prevented John L. Perry You've seen and heard nothing yet of the political recriminations, finger-pointing, investigating and showboating, compared with what's ahead for Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. After "a decent interval," as Henry Kissinger used to say, it won't be long until every officeholder in the commonwealth, from quaint little Blacksburg to the hallowed capitol halls of Richmond, may be expected to seek out at least a few seconds of the illusive 15 minutes of televised glory. Count on dour-face presidential wannabes of every party to elbow their way into camera range. Right now, you can bet your bottom dollar chairmen of congressional committees are warming up subpoenas and planning "oversight" hearings on where the impossible burden of blame must be fastened and exploited ad nauseam. Just wait. Some leftist America-hater will be alleging it's all George W. Bush's fault because in his war on terror he did not anticipate this kind of homeland terror and "do something about it." It will be trotted out as one more idiotic reason "to bring our troops home." Making a Connection Don't forget: Bush is from Texas, and Texans shoot guns. (So do South Koreans, obviously, but don't mention that.) It might not be amiss to wonder aloud why Virginia Tech feels it must spend commonwealth tax dollars educating Asians in English literature while so many native-born Americans can't even master their own language.
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Shysters will have already dusted off the boilerplate blue jackets that will contain countless damage suits and class actions to be brought on behalf of distraught and inconsolable families of the innocents, following the televised parade of funerals ghoulishly "covered" by the vulture "news" media. The massacre at Virginia Tech came along just at the right moment to save the masscomm execs from having to decide how to tear themselves away from the perpetual saga of . . . what was the name of that self-centered, self-destructed dope-addict stripper they kept prancing across their screens day after day, night after night? Why, there's enough rotting fodder here to keep them going for months, for years. So what is Virginia Tech doing about it? No doubt everyone there means only the best. How could they not! That campus was their own model city, their safe haven of academe. Their own lives have to be in shatters.
So they're going to offer stunned students and faculty grief counselors. Who in the world wants consoling by some government employee at a time like this? Those who believe in God already know where and how to seek comfort in times of horror. Maybe those who don't believe in God will believe enough in the state to help them get through a life with no meaning at the end.
The university is holding press conferences. Great. What good will that do? It's already too late. Can't they see that? It's too late! The Virginia Tech president seems like a decent, lovable, avuncular fellow. But any parent who has lost a child knows that doesn't go very far. What those parents want — and will demand — is someone in charge who is tough, direct, competent and determined to do what needs to be done. Tragically, what needs to be done is already far, far too late to be done. What needs to be done now could have been done only back when there was still time to prevent this tragedy. This is what's known as pre-emptive action (not proactive action, which is just a lot of PR hokum for looking good first). Pre-emptive action was obviously not taken. What's being done now — absolutely everything that's being done now, and far into the future — is what's known as reactive action. Backlash Being reactive is the absolute worst position an institution, like a person, can ever be in. There are only two kinds of reactive actions — terrible and even-more terrible. They all get you in even-worse shape. What that governor of Virginia should have done, even before he stepped off the plane coming back from a business trip to Asia, was to have ordered the immediate replacement of the Virginia Tech administrative officers and that sorrowful campus police chief. It need not to have been done in a harsh or vindictive way. There is a perfectly humane, rational reason for taking such a step. Smart top executives, in private enterprise and in government (Virginia Tech is a government university), have learned to use it in hot-potato situations such as this. The head man says he knows that, after what all these good people endured in the initial hours of the massacre, it would be cruel and impossible to expect them to carry on, day after day, as if nothing had happened. Instead, he is placing them all on administrative leave — bureaucratic gobbledegook for get lost with full pay — until the situation is alleviated to the point where they can return to their jobs.
Meanwhile, he is replacing them with a whole new, fresh team of no-nonsense managers. Enough with hand-holding, brow-soothing press conferences that say nothing. On with the job of educating and protecting Virginia's youth. Granted, that's reactive action. But, inadequate as it would be, it's a whole heck of a lot more than what Virginia Tech is ladling out now. It wouldn't solve a thing. It wouldn't bring back one slaughtered life. But it would be the first in a long, long, painful trail of steps that must be taken if Virginia Tech is to expect caring parents ever again to send their boys and girls off to Blacksburg for an authentic education. Alright, then, what could have been done — back there sometime when it still wasn't too late? The first thing to do is to stop mouthing this inane platitude: "It could have happened anywhere." No! It could not have happened just anywhere. Where it very well could have happened — and did happen — was somewhere there was not a professional pre-emptive crisis-management/corporate communications plan in operation. Prescription for Failure Of course that does not mean this kind of nightmare could never happen where such a plan was in effect. What is does mean is that in the absence of such a pre-emptive plan in operation there is an iron-clad guarantee that the nightmare could strike there. Anyone want to play chicken with the lives of college students all across America? Virginia Tech did, and look what happened. It's beloved nickname Hokie will forever have an entirely different connotation. The university Web site had a catchy motto: "Invent the Future." Now it will have to do far more than invent its future; it must earn it all over again. Are your children or grandchildren enrolled in such a well-meaning, but unprepared, college? Better check. There are in this country a few highly qualified, experienced private entities that specialize in helping educational — and business — institutions take the kinds of pre-emptive actions that actually can stop massacres before they occur. For Whom the Headline Tolls If corporate and educational officers across America are not right now scouting out those private entities, then they will have none else to blame if, some awful day, they wake up to read about themselves in a headline like this one across the top of Page One of the local newspaper in Knoxville, Tenn.:
John L. Perry, a prize-winning newspaper editor and writer who served on White House staffs of two presidents, is a regular columnist for NewsMax.com. Read John Perry's columns here.
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