Here are just a few of the countless links about Derek O’Dell, President of the Virginia Tech Chess Club. He was in the German Class at the time of shooting. Thankfully, he survived the tragic ordeal.
Chess Daily News from Susan Polgar
Surviving tale from Virginia Tech
When I read about this disaster, I simply want to cry to let out my grief. Just terrible.
This incident has convinced me that teachers should have a gun to help protect the students. The teachers should receive yearly proper training from the state police in proper safety and what to do.
5 teachers were killed, if those 5 teachers had a gun and were properly trained, they definitely would have stopped the killer and saved many lives.
Also this country must stop spending so much money to make war and devote money to education and health. The killer should have been receiving mental health help to help him to adjust to the world. We saved a few dollars on his mental health so we could drop bombs in Iraq and we lost some of our finest students in America.
We need to learn to think clearly and correctly. Chess teaches that. Hopefully with clear thinking we will come up with some solutions that benefit the world and mankind instead of making things worse.
My solution to most world problems is to reduce the world population. We need to decrease the population but we seem to want to increase the population so the governments will have more people to send into war. Rediculous thinking.
The present population of the world is spiraling upward out of control. we have gone from 2 billion to 7 billion in the present lifetime. This growth is not sustainable. All populations when the density goes up find more mental health issues, diseases and other problems. We are seeing the same thing with humans. Everything will only get worse with increasing population.
One can buy a semi-automatic more eaily in the USA than a ‘this is not a plastic bag’ bag.
In the circumstances, it would be surprising if some of those who feel disconnected with society and wish to ‘end it’ didn’t reach for their weapon and make a final statement, taking out some of their ‘enemies’.
Yes, it is tragic: it is also surprising that it doesn’t happen more often. And as life is arguably getting tougher, it will happen more and more often. Cho is not among the list of those “we will remember” on the Virginia Tech website: perhaps he should be.
There’s a conflict between good governance and good politics: no-one who wants to get elected can ban guns.
Isn’t a list of ‘those involved who played chess’ rather missing the point?