Virginia Tech victims’ families push for notification law

WASHINGTON

One week before the first anniversary of the Virginia Tech massacre, the families of two victims of the shootings urged Congress on Wednesday to force colleges to give quicker warnings of on-campus emergencies.

“If we do not learn the lesson, we will have lost our loved ones for nothing,” said Joe Samaha of Centerville, a Washington suburb. His daughter, Reema, was among 32 Tech students and staff members killed on campus on April 16.

Samaha supports legislation introduced Wednesday by U.S. Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, D-N.Y. It would require schools to use broadcasts, e-mail, text messages or other technologies to warn students and college staff within 30 minutes of confirming an on-campus emergency. The Tech victims were slain in two incidents on campus, with a lengthy gap between them. The families contend that at least some of the 30 people who died in the second incident, a rampage through Norris Hall classrooms by gunman Seung-Hui Cho, might have been spared had Tech officials issued a quick warning to students and staff.

No warnings were given until about two hours after the initial shootings at a dormitory across campus from Norris Hall. “Warning the students, faculty and staff might have made a difference,” a state commission concluded last summer. “The earlier and clearer the warning, the more chance an individual had of surviving.”

University President Charles Steger has defended Tech’s response. “I believe that based on what we knew at the time, we did the right things,” he said when the state report was issued. Federal law requires campus officials to give students and staffers “timely warnings” of threats on campus. But the law has no deadline, and Samaha argued that through the Tech shootings “we have already learned, tragically, what the terms 'reasonable’ and 'timely’ mean when there is no time limit.”

Holly Adams-Sherman of Springfield, whose daughter Leslie Sherman also was among those killed, said campus authorities should be able to sound alarms as fast as police and paramedics respond to 911 calls. Leslie Sherman would have turned 21 Wednesday, her mother said. “She would be very proud of us to know … that there are changes being made.”

Dale Eisman, (703) 913-9872, dale.eisman@pilotonline.com