The Tech tragedy never ends

As shocking and tragic as the mass shootings at Virginia Tech were more than four years ago for Blacksburg and the nation, the drawn-out machinations of the federal government’s investigation into how the university conducted itself during and immediately after the crime spree is turning into a tragedy all its own.

Both the investigation by the U.S.cDept. of Education and the subsequent appeal of its findings (and a $55,000 fine) by the commonwealth’s office of attorney general this past week seem to raise more questions than answers.

For now we’ll withhold any final judgment on whether Ken Cuccinelli’s appeal of the DOE report is justified, along with his frank characterization of the report’s findings as “shoddy at best.” But what is apparent is it’s highly unlikely the official follow-up to the events of April 16, 2007, will bring much closure to the families and friends of those 32 students and faculty who died that day.

Perhaps paramount is the basic ques­tion of why it took four years to conduct the DOE investigation. Perhaps there’s a good reason, but we haven’t heard it yet. Washington’s finely honed bureau­cracy notwithstanding, 48 months is a very long time to have scrutinized the activities of university officials, local police, students and others involved in a specific set of activities within a time span of basically one day.

Also troublesome is a charge from the attorney general’s office that not one federal investigator ever visited Blacksburg to speak face-to-face with anyone. Over the course of more than 1,400 days following the shootings, this charge alone is, frankly, hard to believe.

Yet so far the charge notably went un­answered by the DOE in a brief rebuttal to Virginia’s appeal. (And of lesser con­cern: If DOE’s report and subsequent fine were handled in such a haphazard manner, why did it take Cuccinelli’s of­fice a month to formally respond?)

Apart from the government’s findings, other investigations and media reports since 2007 have laid varying amounts of blame at the feet of university offi­cials for, among other things, not acting quickly enough to protect the campus community after the first two initial shootings. While in hindsight there ap­pears to be little doubt that better steps could have been taken that may have lessened the bloodshed, it still doesn’t answer Richmond’s charges of sloppy investigating by the government and whether, according to Cuccinelli, the education department’s “indifference to the facts on the ground [was] shocking.”

At the same time, at the risk of bring­ing political philosophy into the debate, maybe in this case there’s also some­thing to be said for the spectacle of a federal office of education, in effect, telling a longstanding state-run univer­sity how it should have conducted itself all these years later in a weapons-re­lated criminal matter.

Already the government fine and subsequent appeal are likely to become factors in a pending civil state trial on the shootings coming up later this year.

It’s another complication that could make this very tragic issue even more tragic and unsettling, especially for the families of the victims.