IME everyone checks their email right before class, and RAs can be paged/called to patrol the halls. Obviously it's hard to say now whether a lockdown should have been called for, but if the police thought the killer was still alive, it really should have happened, and I'd be surprised if the school didn't have procedures in place for making school-wide announcements.

Right -- at the very least, RAs could have been informed and kept their residents inside. Off-campus students would be harder to notify, but probably not very, once people start calling and text-messaging.

Thinking of the campuses where I've been a student and also worked the word that keeps coming to mind is that they are very porous places -- every building has so many entries/exits, people coming/going, etc.

everyone checks their email right before class, and RAs can be paged/called to patrol the halls

and some people won't check their email, because they're late, or "right before class" means they're commuting and parking the car, and RAs are students who don't always sleep in their own beds, etc., etc.

It's been a few years, but I remember MSU being really freaking efficient about locking down dorms, but to be fair, this was usually at night after sporting events when they were expectings riots.

I don't miss the tear gas.

Reading the eyewitness accounts people linked to earlier, it seems like there are a lot of 8am classes at V. Tech. To which I say 1) wow, that would never fly here and 2) makes it harder to keep people corralled.

It's possible to email everyone on campus here, but that decision is only made at the very highest level, and I can totally see a college administration taking from 7 to 9 am to do that. Ours, anyway, which indeed takes like 2 hours to decide "It's snowing."

and I'd be surprised if the school didn't have procedures in place for making school-wide announcements.

Especially considering that there was an incident with an escaped prisoner there on campus just last Fall where a sheriff's deputy (? a law enforcement guy) was killed.

(I couldn't stand watching Flavor of Love for more than about ten minutes, but Charm School was kind of entertaining.)

Thank god someone else has admitted to watching this first. I am still ashamed to say that I've seen the Flavor of Love show, and even more horrifingly, the New York show, though only in about five-minute bursts, since that's all my poor brain can take.

The New York show was a lot more entertaining once I decided that she was based on Miss Piggy.

I got stupidly into I Love New York, and had to force myself not to watch the finale.

And when I was last in school, I lived way off campus and checked my school email sporadically, and would totally have shown up well after an announcement to stay home had gone out. Yikes.

There's another angle to consider. There will be lawsuits -- it's just the way things are in our society.

And even if VT eventually wins, there's going to be a lot of expense involved. Lawyers will have to defend the university, and even if there are in-house counsel to do that, their salaries can't be chickenfeed. Plus those lawyers will have to talk to a lot of people at the university -- who'll spend their time explaining things to the lawyers instead of doing their regular jobs.

Plus, let's face it, the publicity will decidedly not help the university attract students.

The Washington Post has a Q&A with a student from about an hour ago: [link]

There's nothing new here, but a flavor of what this student's mood is and what it's like on the campus.

So, I'm watching Work Out on Bravo for the first time, and it is truly amazing how people can make their living on reality tv -- one of the trainers is Rebecca from the Amazing Race (with the ex-boyfriend with the wierd hair)!

I've been watching this season. I want to like it, but so much of it seems canned, or at least, exaggerated for TV.