The Asian American perspective on the Virginia Tech tragedy.


8/20/07 Wall Street Journal: "From Disturbed High Schooler to College Killer,"
By Daniel Golden
    Of seven students taking music theory at Westfield High School in Chantilly , Va. , in 2001-02, six were "pretty cozy and friendly with one another," recalls one of them, Greg Moore. The seventh, Cho Seung-hui, "was sort of there in the corner, just getting by," Mr. Moore says. "In that entire year, I don't think I ever heard him say as much as a single word."
    The first time Mr. Moore says he heard Mr. Cho speak was on TV in April -- on a videotape the Korean immigrant mailed the same day he murdered 32 students and faculty members before killing himself at Virginia Tech.
    Mr. Cho didn't need to talk to succeed academically at Westfield . Diagnosed with "selective mutism," or anxiety-related refusal to speak, he was placed in special education under the "emotional disturbance" classification. As a result, he was largely excused from making oral presentations and answering teachers' questions in class; oral participation was de-emphasized in his grading. Aided by such "accommodations," or efforts to compensate for his disability, he achieved A's and B's in regular and Advanced Placement courses and was admitted to Virginia Tech.
    Details of Mr. Cho's experience in special education, which are only now coming to light, suggest that high schools may be paying too much attention to the academic advancement of bright but troubled students and not enough to their emotional disorders. "The focus is, 'What do we need to do to help him get through school?' " says Dewey Cornell, a clinical psychologist and professor of education at the University of Virginia .
    When the students move on to college, schools are rarely warned, students get help with special needs only if they seek it, and psychological problems can flare up, sometimes with devastating consequences. At Virginia Tech, because federal law shields students' mental-health histories, administrators and teachers didn't know about Mr. Cho's earlier troubles. Eventually, his strange behavior set off alarm bells and he was ordered to seek counseling by a judge, but there's no indication he complied.
    Most colleges ask applicants if they have been disciplined in high school or convicted of a crime, but they don't inquire about disabilities or accommodations. The lack of information about applicants' emotional health "is a glaring problem" brought to light by the April 16 massacre, says Pomona College Admissions Dean Bruce Poch.
    It's impossible to know whether a different approach by officials in Fairfax County , Va. , where Mr. Cho attended elementary and secondary schools, would have changed his path. He wasn't considered a behavior problem in high school and showed few if any signs of violence. A panel appointed by Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine to investigate the massacre is examining Mr. Cho's years at Westfield , including his special-education program and transition to college. It is expected to issue its report this week.
    In an earlier era, students with emotional disorders often dropped out of school or were educated in separate facilities. Today, they typically take mainstream classes -- with accommodations as needed -- and many go on to college.
    Often, students with emotional disorders don't qualify for special education. Under federal regulations, they require special education only if their disabilities "adversely affect educational performance." But whether that adverse impact is limited to test scores and grades or also includes anxiety and lack of friends is disputed.
    In 2004, a Maine school district denied special education to a girl with Asperger's Syndrome -- a form of autism -- who had attempted suicide. After her parents objected, an administrative hearing officer upheld the district's position that her condition didn't hamper her academic performance. This past March, concluding that education is more than academics, the U.S. First Circuit Court of Appeals ruled her eligible for special education.
    Michael Viega, who taught the music theory course at Westfield but no longer works for the district, thinks Fairfax County failed to address Mr. Cho's social and emotional issues. Mr. Cho's individualized education plan -- a federally mandated document for special-education students -- "had nothing about any kind of inner work for him, any self-expression," says Mr. Viega, who is certified in music therapy, which is sometimes used to draw out nonexpressive students. "He fell through the cracks. He made the grades, he passed" state achievement tests, "but his soul was as empty as could be."
    Fairfax County officials declined to comment on Mr. Cho. The district has also declined numerous requests for Mr. Cho's educational records, citing privacy restrictions. Some Westfield teachers say the district also advised them not to speak to the media about the case. Dede Bailer, director of psychology and preventive services in Fairfax County , says the district "addresses deficits in social/emotional development, either through special education or preventively outside special education," through social skills groups run by counselors, psychologists and social workers.
    Although most students with selective mutism aren't placed in special education, she says, Fairfax has a "very high success rate" with them. In 2005, she says, two school psychologists started a research project in the district to study the condition. Immigrants like Mr. Cho are particularly prone to selective mutism because they are often self-conscious about their ability to speak a second language.
    Amy Copeland, a Fairfax County mother whose son was too anxious to be able to speak to adults when he entered kindergarten in 2005, says he wouldn't have conquered mutism without his dedicated teachers at Cherry Run Elementary in Burke , Va. He communicated with them in stages, first using a teddy-bear tape recorder, then leaving phone messages for them at night and relaying responses in class discussion via a fellow pupil.
    Mr. Cho's mutism was more severe -- and persistent. Family members couldn't be reached for comment, but people familiar with his background say that, from an early age, he rarely spoke at home or school.
    Mr. Cho entered Westfield High as a sophomore when it opened in 2000. His lack of speech soon had repercussions. His English teacher asked students to read aloud, says classmate Chris Davids. When Mr. Cho's turn came, he was silent until the teacher threatened to give him an "F" for class participation. "He was really mumbly," Mr. Davids adds. "Kids started picking on him, chuckling and snickering."
    A teacher referred Mr. Cho for a special-education evaluation in fall 2000. The education plan developed for him set goals such as learning to interact verbally with adults and peers, share knowledge in group projects, respond to greetings and farewells, and answer factual questions in at least five words, according to Hollis Stambaugh, deputy project director for the Kaine panel.
    To attain these goals, the school encouraged Mr. Cho's parents to provide counseling. The family arranged for him to see a "dedicated therapist who cared about him deeply and worked with him one-on-one at a culturally sensitive location," says Ms. Stambaugh.
    The school also offered him 50 minutes of speech and language therapy a month on site. When one of his private therapists asked why Mr. Cho wasn't given more time, says a person familiar with the matter, school officials responded that they didn't want to interrupt his academics by pulling him out of class more often.
    "Fifty minutes a month of speech therapy isn't enough for somebody who isn't speaking and has the ability to," says Lindy Crawford, chairwoman of special education at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs .
    School officials also urged Mr. Cho to participate in clubs related to his academic strengths, Ms. Stambaugh says. He joined the science club, but rarely spoke there, according to other members of the club.
    Following his education plan, teachers were encouraged to meet with him one-on-one and didn't require him to engage in group or class discussions. Prof. Crawford says such accommodations should be a "last resort. If the immediate solution was to require less of him, that's not how we train teachers here."
    Theresa Fayne, who sat next to Mr. Cho in world history, says he attempted to participate in a group presentation about the Vietnam War. "You could see his mouth moving, but not a single word was coming out," she says.
    Ms. Fayne says she tried to be friendly. "There was no point in ignoring him," she says. "You don't want to answer, that's fine." But she stopped, she says, when her teacher told her not to bother him.
    Although colleges can't ask school guidance counselors directly about students' mental health, they can ask them to assess how an applicant relates to teachers and peers, says Gary Pavela, a teacher at the University of Maryland who is also a legal consultant to colleges. If the counselor answers candidly, the school might be alerted to potential psychological issues.
    Mr. Pavela also says colleges increasingly ask essay questions on applications to try to shed light on a candidate's "emotional intelligence." The Massachusetts Institute of Technology tells applicants it wants to know how they "bring balance" to their lives and asks them to "tell us about something you do simply for the pleasure of it."
    On Virginia Tech's application, essays are optional. Once enrolled on the Blacksburg campus in 2003, Mr. Cho didn't seek accommodations. "The accommodations that are made possible through the cooperation of the school system can't be continued beyond high school without the student's request," Ms. Stambaugh says. "You do get the sense that they're carried along to a certain point, and then they fall off the cliff."

5/24/07 Chicago Tribune: “High school essay writer in the clear,”
by Carolyn Starks
    The final chapter took less than a minute and the lead character didn't attend, but the case of a high school senior arrested for writing a violently descriptive class essay ended Wednesday when prosecutors dropped charges.
    With the court case behind him and graduation set for Saturday, Allen Lee, 18, a student at Cary-Grove High School , will focus on re-enlisting in the Marines, which had canceled his enlistment, one of his attorneys said after the brief hearing at the McHenry County Courthouse in Woodstock .
    Asked if Lee was sorry about writing his controversial essay, attorney Dane Loizzo said: "I don't think sorry or remorse has ever been part of the lexicon. Allen regrets what this turned into and the unwanted attention it brought to him and his family."
    Lee, who did not attend the hearing, declined to comment Wednesday. He had been charged with two misdemeanor counts of disorderly conduct.
    Prosecutors said that they determined that the straight-A student wasn't a threat but didn't back down from the decision to charge him. Because of the fear of an imminent attack at school, the arrest was warranted, said McHenry County State 's Atty. Louis Bianchi.
    When investigators acquired enough information to believe Lee wasn't a danger, prosecutors felt comfortable dismissing the charges, he said.
    " Hope fully, Mr. Lee has learned an important lesson,"
    Bianchi said. "While freedom of speech is an invaluable right we have in this great country, it is not an absolute right."The essay spurred discussion of how far students can go in expressing themselves.
    After the 1999 Columbine High School and recent Virginia Tech massacres, tensions are raised whenever students make veiled violent remarks or threats.
    Prosecutors have been quick to bring charges.
    Two weeks ago, for example, a Crystal Lake Central High School student was charged with felonies after he wrote threats on a bathroom wall that referred to Virginia Tech and implied something might happen on the Columbine anniversary. It was the fourth local arrest in recent weeks in which teens were charged with making threats in school.
    Bianchi said teens are having a difficult time getting the message that freedom of speech doesn't mean the right to infringe on another person's liberties. It took awhile "for Mr. Lee to understand" that lesson, he said.
    Lee's attorneys said teachers should be mindful of their class assignments.
    "Had this assignment not been given, we wouldn't be here," attorney Tom Loizzo said. "It's the old saying, 'Be careful what you ask for.' "
    On April 23, teacher Nora Capron asked Lee and other students in her creative-writing class to write freely for 30 minutes without making corrections and without judging or censoring what they wrote.
    Lee wrote about blood, sex and booze and described a dream of "shooting everyone" and then having sex with the dead bodies. The 342-word essay also had sentences aimed at Capron, including: "No quarrel on you qualifications as a writer, but as a teacher, don't be surprised on inspiring the first [Cary-Grove] shooting."
    Capron gave the essay to her superiors, who notified police. Lee was arrested as he walked to class the next day. His parents posted $75 bail. School officials did not suspend or discipline Lee, who was taught off-campus for eight days because of what officials called safety concerns.
    "Our problem has always been that they jumped to a criminal complaint without talking to the student or his family," Dane Loizzo said.
    Bianchi said it was clear that Capron has no desire to continue the matter.
    "As prosecutors, we have to consider the wishes of the victim as well as the likely result of what can be gained if the case were to proceed," he said.
    Community High School District 155 officials said they supported the prosecutor's decision to drop charges.
    "They've done a lot of assessment on their own and in conjunction with us, and we definitely support their findings," said Jeff Puma, a school spokesman.
    Lee has said he still wants to join the Marines, which canceled his enlistment through their delayed entry program when charges were filed.
    A Marine Corps spokesman said Wednesday that they would have to determine whether Lee is eligible to re-enlist.

5/20/07 Chicago Tribune (Associated Press): “Professors tested by level of violence in students' essays,”
    Boulder , Colo. -- Writing teachers are being tested themselves these days in trying to discern whether a student is another Stephen King, a Seung-Hui Cho, Eric Harris or Dylan Klebold. 
    "It's a subjective phenomenon, being able to identify the difference between art and pathology," Sidney Goldfarb, a University of Colorado professor told the Camera.
    Goldfarb, who has taught creative writing for four decades, once assigned 21 students to write short stories. Two wrote of suicide; the other 19 murder. 
    Last month an Illinois student was arrested after writing an essay describing his dreams of shooting people and having sex with dead bodies. Attorneys for the Cary-Grove High School senior, Allen Lee, have said they hope the disorderly conduct charges he faces will be dropped. 
    Columbine gunmen Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris portrayed hit men in a video they made for a high school government and economics class. The English Department at Virginia Tech referred Cho to the school's counseling service because of his violent writing. 
    Jeffrey DeShell, chairman of the CU English department, said he couldn't recall a student in the creative-writing program ever being referred to counseling for homicidal writing or odd classroom behavior. Some students have been referred to mental-health professionals when their writing reveals that they could be suicidal. 
    "We live in a violent society," said Matt Burriesci, associate director of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs of Fairfax, Va., which represents creative programs at 400 colleges and universities. 
    "There is a very thin line between monitoring someone with psychological problems and someone who is just writing about violence. Pick up a Stephen King novel or a John Grisham novel." 
    King, in an essay posted on EW.com, said after all the school violence his own college writing would have raised red flags, "For most creative people, the imagination serves as an excretory channel for violence. We visualize what we never actually do." 
    He added, "On the whole, I don't think you can pick these guys out based on their work, unless you look for violence unenlivened by any real talent." 
    DeShell said murder is a common way for novice writers to kill off their fictional characters. In one of Shakespeare's earlier plays, Titus Andronicus, nearly everyone dies. Students also may be trying to shock professors. 
    "A lot of students are trying their imaginations out," he said. "We should be a place that is somewhat safe for that."
    Lorna Dee Cervantes, a faculty member who teaches poetry workshops, said teachers should not encourage students to write about violence. 



5/5/07 Chicago Tribune: “Attorney says teen who wrote violent essay is returning to school,”
    Chicago -- A Cary-Grove High School senior arrested for writing a violent essay for an English class last week can return to school and will be allowed to graduate with his class, his attorney said Friday. 
    The decision to readmit Allen Lee, an honors student with a 4.2 grade-point average, came after lengthy negotiations with Community High School District 155, according to attorney Dane Loizzo. 
    "We all reached the same conclusion, which is that he's not a threat and never was a threat and he should be treated as such," said Loizzo. 
    Lee wrote the essay April 23 on assignment from first-year teacher Nora Capron, and was arrested on misdemeanor charges of disorderly conduct the following day on his way to school. 
    The charges were a product of paranoia, born of the previous week's massacre of 32 students at Virginia Tech by a social outcast who then killed himself, Loizzo contended. 
    The essay read in part, "Blood, sex and booze. Drugs, drugs, drugs are fun. Stab, stab, stab, stab, stab, s...t...a...b...puke. So I had this dream last night where I went into a building, pulled out two P90s and started shooting everyone, then had sex with the dead bodies. Well, not really, but it would be funny if I did." 
    The teacher told students: "'Be creative; there will be no judgment and no censorship,"' Loizzo said last week. "There was never any warning from the teacher that if she determined the paper to be offensive, she would then pass it along to the authorities." 
    Lee had planned to enlist in the Marine Corps after graduation, but the disorderly conduct charges led the corps to discharge Lee from its enlistment program. Marine officials said, though, that Lee could reapply if the charges were dropped. 
    Loizzo said he will ask McHenry County prosecutors on Monday to drop the charges. 
    "We're willing to consider the matter," Assistant McHenry County State 's Atty. Tom Carroll said Friday. 
    District 155 officials declined to comment on Lee but released a statement that said, "As we have stated repeatedly, safety is our first priority and will continue to guide our actions and decisions." 
    Despite his arrest, Lee wasn't suspended or disciplined by the district and was being taught off-campus because of what school officials called safety concerns.

5/5/07 Chicago Tribune: “Voice of the People: Lessons for Allen Lee,”
    This is in reference to "What to make of Allen Lee" (Editorial, April 28).
    I have followed the story of the senior essay with interest.
    As a teacher with 32 years of experience, whose husband graduated from Cary-Grove High School , I was sympathetic to the district.
    As the mother of a fall 2007 college freshman, I am interested in safety on all school campuses.
    However, knowing firsthand how second-semester high school seniors often act, I am aware that they are often sick of school and sarcastic.
    In addition, as my daughter is Asian, one of my fears after Virginia Tech was that there would be some racial reactions in the aftermath.
    For all of these reasons, I was very pleased to read the actual essay in the April 28 edition of the Tribune. After reading the essay, I am less sympathetic to the teacher and school district, however well-intentioned their reactions may have been.
    I think the student should get an F on a poorly written assignment; make him rewrite it or bake for the homeless if additional consequences seem warranted.
    The teacher should take the time to construct and communicate assignments with more clearly defined boundaries.
    The parents can levy additional consequences on their child, perhaps diverting graduation present money to the lawyer.
    As for Allen Lee, he has learned the valuable lesson that when superiors say, "Please speak freely," don't.
    Kathleen Mathews, Frankfort  

5/5/07 Chicago Tribune: “Voice of the People: Society's role,”
    I have two sons near Allen Lee's age, and I see how our society soaks them, 24/7, in a marinade of sex and glorified violence. I also remember what it was like to be a teenage boy. What do we expect, folks?
    Straight-A student Allen Lee's only crime was following the explicit directions of his teacher, and horrifically bad timing.
    He should not be punished (let alone arrested!) for parroting back, at his teacher's request, what he sees, hears and reads every day.
    He has done us a service.
    He is the canary in the coal mine.
    David Keeney, Oak Lawn

5/5/07 Chicago Tribune: “Voice of the People: Pushing Lee,”
    My question about the handling of Allen Lee: If he was truly a threat to himself or others, as demonstrated by what he wrote, how would embarrassing him and locking him up in jail improve his emotional state? Wouldn't a better course of action have been to take him immediately to a hospital to meet with an adolescent therapist, rather than directly to the police station -- particularly because he hadn't done anything wrong? If he was teetering on the edge before, these recent events seem more likely to push him over in frustration and anger than to pull him back into the social norm.
    Toni Milak, Elmhurst

5/5/07 Chicago Tribune: “Voice of the People: The world's watching,”
    In regards to the Cary-Grove student and his writings, I am lucky to be old enough to remember a time when if a student acted badly, wrote the wrong thing or said the wrong thing, it was handled by the school, the principal and the parents. The student was not arrested and featured on the front pages of newspapers. What a radical idea, school officials and parents sitting down together to discuss the student and his actions. Now we push responsibility off on the police, expose the students to the public for ridicule, let the media exploit them for a week and then move on to somebody else. I am remembering a time of privacy, the right to be human, make mistakes and not have the whole world know about it the next day. I remember my mother's words when we acted badly: "What would the neighbors think?" It's not the neighbors anymore, Mom; it's the whole world.
    Robert Keaty, Chicago

5/5/07 Chicago Tribune: “Voice of the People: Essay's many flaws,”
    However alarming the theme of Allen Lee's "essay" may in reality have been, an additional and probably broader societal concern should be the woeful incompetence in simple spelling, grammar, punctuation and story composition exhibited by a "straight-A student" at Cary-Grove High School.
    Charles Remsberg, Wilmette

5/5/07 Chicago Tribune: “Voice of the People: Out of line,”
    Virginia Tech happened and Allen Lee got caught in the cross-hairs. Our society glorifies boys who participate in rough and often violent sports. We pay little attention to the kids taking AP calculus, as Lee was doing. We refuse to enact meaningful gun-control measures even after Columbine and other school shootings. We claim to want young people to get counseling when they have problems, yet the insurance system penalizes them if they do.
    Try sitting down and writing, non-stop, for 30 minutes and see if your imagination doesn't start wandering into strange territory as you struggle to complete the assignment.
    I hope English departments all over the Chicago area are re-evaluating their writing assignments and especially how they respond when the adults are upset with what the kids are saying. Attention is appropriate. Police handcuffing a straight-A student with a plan for his life is totally out of line.
    Linda Erf Swift, Chicago

5/5/07 Chicago Tribune: “Voice of the People: Fear-based reaction,”
    I taught creative writing for five years. Why would the teacher wait until the last six weeks of school to have a problem with a student's writing? If the student didn't exhibit problems earlier in the semester, then a sit-down would have been enough.
    This is a fear-based reaction to the media and possibly racist; I can't imagine a white football player having to go through this in suburban academia.
    The teacher knows darn well that if William Burroughs followed the same instructions, he would have come up with something far worse.
    Thomas P. Huston, Oak Park

5/5/07 Chicago Tribune: “Voice of the People: Essay mistakes,”
    Forget, for the moment, about the "provocative" content of Allen Lee's essay. The kid managed to incorrectly spell "write," "their," "ballot," "compliments," "mean," "partake" and "your" -- and the kid is, reportedly, an A-student! What might that suggest about the quality of education in Community High School District 155?
    Tom Jozwik, Wauwatosa , Wis.

5/5/07 Chicago Tribune: “Voice of the People: Scary situation,”
    Allen Lee was arrested for doing his homework. He never threatened anyone. His arrest was based on the worst possible imagination of Cary-Grove High School officials. Lee criticized people with power. People with power arrested him for his criticism. Tyrants scare me much more than their critics.
    Larry Puch, Glenwood

5/5/07 Chicago Tribune: “Voice of the People: Teenage males,”
    The Cary-Grove High School administration and police should be ashamed of their handling of the Allen Lee essay incident. I mean really, haven't any of these people ever raised a teenage boy? Being edgy and provocative is synonymous with being a high school senior, especially when given the license to do so by a teacher.
    In fact, to a large degree, we as a society encourage teenage boys to be that way. We find it amusing, macho and charming in its own way. We glorify these behaviors on TV, in literature and in our "boys will be boys" attitude, so we shouldn't be surprised when they respond accordingly. For heaven's sake, we broadcast Virginia Tech and Seung Hui Cho's rage 24/7.
    Certainly the Virginia Tech incident was a terrible tragedy, but let's not lose all perspective and common sense by victimizing the whole universe of teenagers because of it. Allen Lee is obviously a smart, high-achieving student who simply followed directions and mirrored back to us the images we have fed him his whole life. Yes we would have liked him to connect the dots and realize that it had been a bad week to write such an essay, but young people don't always see themselves in the context of the bigger world. In response, it would have been appropriate to sit him down to talk, and yes, maybe bring in a mental-health professional.
    But calling the police and vilifying this young person in the press? No way. That strategy is more likely to create the very disaffected youth we are seeking to avoid.
    Ironically this unfortunate incident may have saved Allen's life. By being refused by the Marines (apparently guilty until proven innocent), he will avoid an ill-conceived and deadly war.
    To Allen, I say, step back and re-evaluate the violence in your essay and your desire to be a warrior. Now is your chance to choose to work for non-violence and peace.
    Wendy Siegel, Chicago

5/5/07 Chicago Tribune: “Voice of the People: Violent writing,”
    Now that we are arresting young high school writers for including violence in an assignment in which they were told to write about anything they wanted to, are we going to go after the Hollywood script writers who fill our movie theaters on a regular basis with cruel, horrific, often intensely, relentlessly violent films? This is just one more example of our society's ridiculous double standards.
    Lois Roewade, Evanston

May 3, 2007
In light of the tragedy that occurred at Virginia Tech, the National Council on Asian Pacific Americans (NCAPA) offers the following safety tips and advice to ensure the health and safety of everyone. If you have any questions, suggestions, or other resources that should be included in this page, please contact the OCA National office at 202-223-5500 or oca@ocanational.org.  For more information and updates, please check www.ocanational.org for more information.

1.       Counseling and Mental Health

The National Asian American/Pacific Islander Mental Health Association (NAAPIMHA) (www.naapimha.org) has a guide (http://www.naapimha.org/resources/Dealing%20with%20Trauma.pdf) to help cope with the issues at hand. Topics that are discussed are:

Dealing with Trauma

Typical Reaction to Trauma and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

What to do and not do

Working with Children After a Disaster

Tips for Educators.

2.       Bias and Backlash

Report emergencies immediately, call 911 and get in touch with local law enforcement.

Be sure to document the incident yourself and with the appropriate authorities or campus security.

If the incident does not need local authorities, please report any such incidents to 202-223-5500 or e-mail to oca@ocanational.org with the subject “Bias Incident” for centralized tracking or submit online here (http://www.ocanational.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=110&Itemid=).

Resources for students, parents and teachers can be found at www.ocanational.org 

3.       Hotline Information

Asian Pacific American Legal Resource Center (www.apalrc.org) in Washington , DC can take calls for those looking for legal help and response. The line is available Monday thru Fridays from 10am - 6pm. Please leave a message if someone does not pick up immediately.

APALRC's number is (202)393-3572 
Chinese ext. 18 
South Asian ext. 19
Vietnamese ext 20
Korean ext 21
Main Hotline ext 22

4/30/07 Urbana IL News-Gazzette: “Asian-American students worry about image,” after tragedy
by Julie Wurth 
    Urbana – When news of the Virginia Tech tragedy broke, Asian-Americans reacted with the same horror as everyone else.
    But another concern loomed as reports surfaced that the shooter might be Asian, first from China and then South Korea .
    Would there be a backlash against immigrants, or Asian-Americans in general, as in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks? Should they feel any responsibility? Or shame? Or fear?
    Anne Saw, a University of Illinois graduate student and counselor, said she "didn't sleep a full night all week" in the days following the shootings.
    "It's been hard for me to reconcile all my different feelings – sometimes guilt, sometimes anger, sometimes confusion," she said.
    Saw and a dozen other Asian-American students aired their feelings Sunday night in a meeting with Eric Byler, a Chinese-American director in town for the Ninth Annual Roger Ebert's Overlooked Film Festival. Byler, who grew up in Virginia , has worked to promote Asian-American political candidates and more Asian-American representation on television.
    In the days since the shootings, Asian-Americans at the UI have reported some backlash. 
    One student was asked, as she sat down in class, "Do you have a gun in your backpack?" Another had his chair shoved by a man who walked by him in a bar. When he asked why, the man replied, "Figure it out." A Filipino-American student walking through an off-campus parking lot said someone drove by her and shouted "Gook, go home!"
    Asian-American students say they're getting "more looks and stares," and their friends at other campuses have been spit on, said graduate student Matthew Lee, who is also a counselor at the UI.
    "It's kind of sad to say, but it's about what I expected," Saw said.
    International students, especially those from Asia , are concerned about the affect on visas and their own safety. They typically don't have the same support network or access to services as Asian-Americans, students said Sunday.
    Almost everyone at the meeting felt the media, at least initially, overplayed the racial background of the shooter, Virginia Tech student Seung-Hui Cho, whose family moved from South Korea to the United States when he was 8.
    Networks created taglines for their coverage with tense music accompanying floating mug shots of Cho "like a trailer for a scary movie," Byler said.
    "It didn't hit me what the potential backlash might be until I started watching the news, and how the media was portraying him as Asian, foreign, different," Lee said.
    Others said race probably wouldn't have been mentioned if the shooter had been an Italian-American immigrant, for instance.
    Besides, Cho was more American than Korean, they said. Unofficially, he was a "1.5," neither first- nor second-generation Asian-American because he moved here before age 12, said UI senior Tina Wei, who is Chinese-American.
    "This is someone who was part of campus, who grew up in American culture, just like me," Wei said. "It's not Korean culture who produced something like this, it's American culture."
    Ironically, Byler thinks the tapes Cho sent to NBC explaining his motivations for the shooting actually helped mitigate the negative racial impact. He sounded completely American, Byler said, with references to Columbine and Christianity and a speech pattern much closer to "Napoleon Dynamite" than Korean.
    "He's as American as anybody else," Byler said.
    After that, media coverage focused more on the mental health issue, he said.
    And that is the central point, students said Sunday. Cho was mentally ill, and committed suicide.
    "This isn't an issue of Asian-American mental health," Saw said. "It's an individual act that doesn't necessarily reflect something wrong with our community."
    Saw hopes to edit the video of Sunday's discussion and post it on YouTube, and eventually use it in Asian-American studies classes.
    Byler was part of a group of Asian-American leaders in Virginia who convened by phone after the shootings to come up with a consistent public response. The group decided not to mention fears of a backlash because they didn't want to be insensitive to the victims' families.
    "I did suffer my own sense of trauma, some sense of responsibility and shame," Byler said. "It was good to talk it through with people."
    Byler, who later attended a meeting between Virginia 's governor and leading Korean-Americans in the state, eventually crafted a statement called "In defense of fear." It said neither side should be judged for being afraid of violence and retaliation, because it's happened in the past. It's good to discuss those fears and find ways to prevent violence from happening again, he said.

4/27/7 Asian Week: “Echoes From Blacksburg ,”
By Phil Tajitsu Nash
    Although 224 miles separate the Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg , Virginia and the University of Maryland campus in College Park , Maryland , the shootings that took place in Blacksburg on Monday, April 16 had repercussions that were felt in College Park throughout the last week.
    The April 19 issue of The Diamondback, the University of Maryland newspaper, reported that Jen Park , president of the Asian American Student Union, had heard reports of Asian Pacific American students on campus who had to deal with people whispering "there goes another one," or that they should "go back where they came from." To the minds of immature and ill-informed people on campus, the actions of the shooter in Blacksburg, a Korean American named Seung Cho who had immigrated as a child and attended American K-12 schools, had made all APAs suspect.
    Fortunately, University of Maryland President Daniel Mote sent a strong, clear and compassionate email message to the entire University of Maryland community on April 20, reminding everyone that the actions of one profoundly disturbed man in Blacksburg were not an excuse to blame or target an entire group of people. Entitled, "A Time to Come Together," it was a perfect example of how a community leader can set a tone that allows the voices of reason to prevail over the voices of hysteria and hate after a catastrophic event. 
    Meanwhile, a few miles down Route 1 in the nation’s capital, APA organizations struggled with the question of whether to send out official press releases on the Blacksburg shootings and, if so, what to say in those releases. Never in all my days here since the late 1970s as a reporter and civil rights advocate have I seen such trouble in deciding what to say. 
    The crux of the problem was that while the main actor in a devastating tragedy was Asian Pacific American, his troubled mental state was to blame for the tragedy on April 16, not his racial and ethnic identity. Yet many APA groups, based on past experience, wanted to vaccinate the country against the kind of backlash that had led to anti-Muslim actions after 9/11 and the internment of Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor . 
    Adrian Hong, director of the Mirae Foundation, which mentors Korean American students, wrote an important op-ed piece in the Washington Post on April 20. He explored why the South Korean government and high profile Korean American such as Washington State Senator Paull [yes, it has two L’s] Shin felt compelled to issue formal apologies for Cho’s actions on April 16, based on a "collective sense of guilt and shame." 
    In but one example, South Korean ambassador Lee Tae Shik called on the Korean American community to "repent," suggesting a 32-day fast (one day for each of Cho’s victims), to prove that Korean Americans were a "worthwhile ethnic minority in America." 
    Hong’s opinion piece, which was another good example of timely, strong, clear-headed leadership, clarified the difference between being sad about what happened and feeling to blame for what happened. He concluded, "I ask the Koreans of America to please continue expressing your heartfelt condolences. They are helping the healing process. But please do not apologize. The actions of Cho Seung Hui were not your fault. If our heads are hung low, they should be in grief, not in apology and shame. This tragedy is something for all of us to bear, examine and try to prevent as Americans, together." 
    After a long and difficult week here in the Washington area, I have distilled three lessons that APA groups can take out of the unfortunate killings in Blacksburg : 
    1. organization RAPID RESPONSE: Rapid-response systems should be set up so that organizations can effectively keep in touch with members in an emergency. Group members should know the phone numbers and email addresses of the people who will be collecting information about anti-APA violence or other ways in which the APA community is being impacted. Meanwhile, national groups such as the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF) were monitoring events and offering legal assistance, so contact information for AALDEF (212-966-5932 and info@aaldef.org) or similar groups in other cities should be distributed to group members. 
    2. RAPID LEADER DECISIONMAKING: A similar rapid-response system should be set up so that the leaders of the organization can make a quick decision about what to say to the press and then disseminate that information. The email addresses of reporters and opinion-makers can be found at http://tinyurl.com/2hlpfs. We are living in a 24-hour news cycle now, so the group that gets their views out there first oftentimes can shape subsequent discussions about breaking events. 
    3. FUNDING: More money and emphasis needs to be given to the National Asian American Pacific Islander Mental Health Association (www.naapimha.org) and its related organizations, so that we as an APA community can address the serious mental health concerns that affect members of our community. While we cannot undo the tragedy that engulfed Blacksburg last week, we can help those who are suffering reverbs from post-traumatic stress while taking other actions to give mental health services the importance they deserve.

4/27/07 Wall Street Journal: “Commentary: Commitment Phobia,”
by E. Fuller Torrey
    Dr. Torrey is president of the Treatment Advocacy Center and author of "Surviving Schizophrenia" (Collins, 5th ed., 2006).
    The question inevitably follows the carnage at Virginia Tech: Are individuals with severe mental illnesses more dangerous than the general population? Since the 1960s, when the emptying of public mental hospitals went on fast forward, this question has recurred with each publicized psychiatric tragedy. And each time, mental health organizations have replied with an identical mantra: Psychiatric patients are not more dangerous than the general population.
    This answer may be politically correct, but it is factually incorrect. To be precise, mentally ill individuals who are taking medication to control the symptoms of their illness are not more dangerous. But on any given day, approximately half of severely mentally ill individuals are not taking medication. The evidence is clear that a portion of these individuals are significantly more dangerous.
    Since 1994, nine U.S. studies have illustrated this fact. The best known, the Violence Risk Assessment Study, funded by the MacArthur Foundation, followed 961 seriously mentally ill individuals for one year after hospital discharge. During that time, these individuals committed 608 acts of serious violence (physical injury, threat of or actual assault with a weapon, or sexual assault), including six homicides. The most important finding: Those who regularly attended treatment sessions had less than one-quarter the rate of violence compared to those who did not. This is one of the clearest demonstrations that treatment markedly reduces violence.
    Studies in Scandinavia , where national case registers exist, are also useful for quantifying the dangerousness of mentally ill individuals. Separate studies in Denmark and Finland both found the conviction rate for violent crimes of individuals with schizophrenia to be seven times the rate for the general population.
    Specifically regarding homicides, a 1985 study in Contra Costa County , Calif. , found that individuals with severe mental illnesses were responsible for 10% of homicides. Multiple European studies have reported a range from 5% to 18%. Using the most conservative estimate of 5% for the United States , individuals with severe mental illness would have been responsible for 885 of the 16,192 total homicides in 2005. And if this 5% were applied to all homicides in the U.S. between 1966, when deinstitutionalization got underway, and 2005, the total would be 37,969 homicides. Most of these would not have happened if the perpetrators had been receiving treatment.
    The Virginia Tech tragedy is a special type of homicide in which several people, usually strangers, are killed at one time. Such "rampage murders" are much more likely than the usual homicides to be carried out by mentally ill individuals like Cho Seung Hui. One published study of rampage murders found that almost half of the perpetrators were seriously mentally ill. There is also evidence that the incidence of rampage murders has increased significantly in the past two decades.
    All of this is known but assiduously ignored by most mental health organizations. The reason usually given is that to talk publicly about violence increases stigma against all individuals with mental illness. The problem with such reasoning is that the violent episodes themselves are the main source of stigma -- until the issue of violence is addressed the stigma will remain. This was illustrated by a 1996 survey that found that 31% of Americans associated mental illness with violence, an unexpected increase from a similar survey in 1950 that had reported that only 13% did. The general public apparently bases its opinion on actual events, not on mythology fashioned by mental health organizations.
    The most remarkable aspect of psychiatrically related tragedies is that most of them can be avoided. Studies suggest that problems of violence are associated with a small percentage -- approximately 10% -- of all individuals with serious mental illnesses. These are often the same individuals who are intermittently homeless, incarcerated and rehospitalized. Because of their brain disease, these individuals have little or no awareness of their illness and will not voluntarily take medication, because they believe there is nothing wrong with them.
    There are two solutions. First, state commitment laws must be modified to reflect current scientific knowledge. For example, Virginia is one of only five states to require people to be imminently dangerous before they can be treated, and many other states have commitment criteria that impede access to treatment. Having an imaginary girlfriend who flies through space and stalking female students merely got Cho an overnight stay in a hospital, but no effective treatment. The present laws in most states are based upon discredited ideas about mental illness from half a century ago. The Treatment Advocacy Center , the only national organization working for legal reform of these laws, has a model law designed to ensure treatment for those who need it -- and also protect individual rights.
    Second, court-ordered assisted outpatient treatment must be utilized to ensure that the Chos of this nation take the medication needed to control their symptoms. Assessments of assisted outpatient treatment have shown it to be highly effective in producing an increase in medication compliance and a decrease in rehospitalization, homelessness, victimization and arrest. A study of assisted treatment in New York ("Kendra's Law") showed that those on it "physically harmed others" only half as often as before being placed on it; a similar reduction in violent behavior was shown in a North Carolina study. Despite such data, assisted outpatient treatment is rarely used in most of the 42 states in which it is available and does not even exist in the other eight states.
    The tragedy of Virginia Tech is a microcosm of our failed mental health system and our confusion about civil rights. Mentally ill individuals have a civil right to receive treatment, even when their brain disease precludes awareness of their illness. And the public has a civil right to be protected from potentially dangerous individuals. We are failing both the patients and the public.

4/26/07 Chicago Tribune: “Student writes essay, arrested by police,”
by Jeff Long and Carolyn Starks
    High school senior Allen Lee sat down with his creative writing class on Monday and penned an essay that so disturbed his teacher, school administrators and police that he was charged with disorderly conduct.
    "I understand what happened recently at Virginia Tech," said the teen's father, Albert Lee, referring to last week's massacre of 32 students by gunman Seung-Hui Cho. "I understand the situation."
    But he added: "I don't see how somebody can get charged by writing in their homework. The teacher asked them to express themselves, and he followed instructions."
    Allen Lee, an 18-year-old straight-A student at Cary-Grove High School , was arrested Tuesday near his home and charged with disorderly conduct for an essay police described as violently disturbing but not directed toward any specific person or location.
    The youth's father said his son was not suspended or expelled but was forced to attend classes elsewhere for now.
    Today, Cary-Grove students rallied behind the arrested teen by organizing a petition drive to let him back in their school. They posted on walls quotes from the English teacher in which she had encouraged students to express their emotions through writing.
    "I'm not going to lie. I signed the petition," said senior James Gitzinger. "But I can understand where the administration is coming from. I think I would react the same way if I was a teacher."
    Cary Police Chief Ron Delelio said the charge was appropriate even though the essay was not published or posted for public viewing.
    Disorderly conduct, which carries a penalty of 30 days in jail and a $1,500 fine, is filed for pranks such as pulling a fire alarm or dialing 911. But it can also apply when someone's writings can disturb an individual, Delelio said.
    "The teacher was alarmed and disturbed by the content," he said.
    But a civil rights advocate said the teacher's reaction to an essay shouldn't make it a crime.

4/26/07 Dallas Morning News: “Asians on edge after Virginia deaths,”
by Esther Wu
    Like many people last week, I was glued to the television as news of the shooting rampage at Virginia Tech unfolded. 
    I recalled my family's anxious moments in 1966 as we waited to hear from my older sister, who was a student at the University of Texas when Charles Whitman killed 16 people and injured 31 others. 
    I was watching the news from Blacksburg , Va. , when I heard those ominous words from a reporter at the university: "The suspect is an Asian male." 
    Suddenly this heinous crime took on a new dimension.
    And like many people of Asian descent in this country, I began to worry about a possible backlash after Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 people and himself. 
    Though Mr. Cho had lived in the United States since he was 8 years old, initial media reports focused on the fact that he was a South Korean national. Headlines in several major newspapers used "Korean" or "Asian" in headlines. Reporters in South Korea interviewed Mr. Cho's great-aunt, a woman who had not seen him since he left the country. CNN interviewed a Korean-American psychologist and asked if Koreans were more prone to mental illness. 
    The New York Times published a story that suggested Mr. Cho may have been influenced by the Korean film Oldboy, directed by Park Chanwook. The South Korean government issued an apology to the people of the United States for the actions of Mr. Cho. 
    The Asian American Journalists Association put out a media advisory stating that race should be used as an identifier in stories only when it is pertinent. After the advisory was issued, the group's national office received more than 100 e-mails, letters and calls – most of them negative, according to Janice Lee, the association's deputy executive director. 
    "Some accused us of being racists," she said. 
    Is Mr. Cho's race a part of the story, or is the story that, as Asians, we will always stand out? 
    Why is race an issue for Mr. Cho, but not for the UT sniper or Columbine killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold? 
    But it should be no surprise that the backlash has begun. 
    Some Korean merchants have told reporters they are bracing for the worst in Los Angeles , where civil unrest among the Korean, black and other minority communities erupted in a riot in 1992. 
    A few Korean churches have reported receiving threatening e-mails. 
    Reports of Asian students receiving threatening messages, being spat upon or having their car tires slashed are trickling in from different parts of the country. One Asian student in Alabama was badly beaten last week, but it's not clear whether that attack was related to the Virginia Tech shootings. 
    "It may be difficult to track these hate crimes, much less link them to what happened at Virginia Tech," said Ms. Lee of the Asian journalists group. "Many of these reports are just beginning to surface." There is a tendency among Asians not to go public or report such crimes. 
    But what has been very public are the anti-immigrant and anti-Asian blogs posted after the Virginia Tech massacre. One blogger has listed "major" crimes or mass shootings committed by "foreigners" in this country. However, these figures would be minuscule compared with similar crimes committed by U.S. citizens. 
    Nevertheless, it is easy to understand why Asian-Americans are nervous. 
    "Many members of the community have been apprehensive," said Thomas Park, chairman of the Korean American Coalition in Dallas and Fort Worth .  But there have been no problems in this area so far."  
    Mr. Park also said the Korean Council of Churches and Pastors' Association held a memorial service for those affected by the shooting Sunday at the Binnerri Presbyterian Church in Richardson . 
    "Korean-Americans, as all Americans, are shocked and horrified by the senseless killings that occurred at Virginia Tech and grieve for the victims and their families," Mr. Park said. 
    Chong Choe, president of the coalition, said that while the crime was horrific, "we must understand that it was the act of one individual who happened to be Korean – not because he was Korean." 
    "The shooter could have come from any country – and the outcome would have been the same. It was a horrible, horrible thing. His race was not a factor.
    But what was a factor was that this young man had some serious emotional problems." 
    Mr. Choe also explained that the Korean-American community has two perspectives on the shooting. 
    "The first generation tend to take on the responsibility of the entire community," he said. 
    "It is part of the Korean culture to act on behalf of the collective consciousness – in other words, the actions of one Korean reflects on the entire community," Mr. Choe explained. "Perhaps this is why the Korean ambassador to the United States felt it necessary to apologize." 
    It is this same mind-set that led South Koreans to demand an apology they never received after a U.S. serviceman struck and killed two young girls in South Korea during the 2002 World Cup. The serviceman was driving a tank along a country road and did not see the girls. 
    However, Mr. Choe added, second-generation Korean-Americans understand and accept that one can act independently of the community. 
    "The actions of one Korean does not necessarily reflect on the rest of the community," he said. "And this is what many of us follow." 
    Mr. Park and Mr. Choe both said the media's interest in Mr. Cho's ethnicity is understandable. 
    "People were hungry for any information. It was a part of the story," Mr. Choe said. "The trouble is, it was not the only story." 
    He's right. 
    As a journalist, I understand the need to immediately feed the public's thirst for any and all information about Mr. Cho. But I can't help but feel that some in the media missed an important part of the story. 
    Mr. Cho's history of emotional instability has been well-documented. Yet he had no trouble going to a store and purchasing guns and massive amounts of ammunition. 
    This is as much a story about the state of this country's health-care system and lack of gun control. 
    I think this says more about what happened at Virginia Tech than whether Mr. Cho played video games or watched a violent movie. 
    But don't get me wrong. I'm sure race played a role in Mr. Cho's life – just as it does in the lives of every immigrant living in the U.S.  
    A statement made by Mr. Cho's sister, Sun Kyung Cho, haunts me. 
    "This is someone that I grew up with and loved. Now I feel like I didn't know this person. ... My brother was quiet and reserved, yet struggled to fit in." 
    Those words could be used to describe many young people in the United States – regardless of race.

 

4/22/07 Los Angeles Times: “Bright daughter, brooding son: enigma in the Cho household: Silent and withdrawn boy was eclipsed by his sister in a culture emphasizing male success. But no one expected what was to come,”
    By Bob Drogin, Faye Fiore and K. Connie Kang
    Centreville , VA. — The three-story beige town house on Truitt Farm Drive stands as the Cho family's symbol of middle-class success, precisely what they were searching for when they left a dank basement apartment and a life of struggle in South Korea 15 years ago.
    But the dream house is empty now, abandoned by a family on the run, not from the law but from a world seeking some sort of explanation.
    Like millions of other immigrant families, Sung-tae Cho and his wife, Hyang-im, struggled to speak English, worked grueling hours and made countless sacrifices to lift their young family upward.
    Out of that tough and potentially scarring experience came two very different children: a scholarly, idealistic daughter who graduated from an Ivy League university and a friendless, brooding son who retreated into a dark world of his own and committed the worst mass shooting in modern American history.
    Seung-hui Cho's rampage at Virginia Tech Monday killed 32 teachers and students and wounded more than two dozen others. It also left the Korean American community and the rest of the world to wonder what went so horribly wrong. Family members have offered few answers, speaking only to the FBI for the first few days and then saying in a emotional statement Friday that they felt "hopeless, helpless and lost."
    No one can know what went through Cho's mind as he prepared and carried out his grisly acts. But there are clues.
    Cho, 23, grew up on a quiet cul-de-sac where neighbors waved a friendly hello, but would later say they hardly knew he existed. He attended a mostly white high school that installed round tables in the lunchroom to encourage students to interact, but Cho barely spoke a word. And he was raised in a South Korean family and culture that so values boys his mother once told her employer that she wished her son had attended Princeton instead of her daughter.
    Asian immigrants tend to emphasize education and success, and by all accounts, the Chos were no exception. From a South Korean immigrant's perspective, said Edward T. Chang, professor of ethnic studies at UC Riverside and an immigrant himself, you are either a success or a failure.
    "There is no middle ground."
    Poor, rural roots
    Cho's parents have always struggled to make ends meet.
    Sung-tae Cho, the killer's father, came from a poor rural area. He was a "country bumpkin" and considerably older than his wife, the daughter of a refugee, said Seung-hui Cho's great-aunt, Kim Yang-soon. "We practically forced her to get married."
    Hyang-im's father had fled south during the Korean War that separated the south from its communist northern neighbor, according to Korean news reports.
    Sung-tae and Hyang-im Cho were ambitious and apparently educated because after they settled on the still semi-rural outskirts of Seoul , they bought a used-book store. One could make a decent living selling secondhand books in the 1970s, before South Korea 's economy began to boom. But one relative said the bookstore just eked out a profit.
    To ease his family's plight, Sung-tae Cho left his wife behind to be a laborer in the Middle East, working on oil fields and construction sites in Saudi Arabia for most of the 1980s.
    Back home, his wife gave birth March 22, 1982, to their daughter, Sun-kyung. On Jan. 18, 1984, Seung-hui was born.
    For the first few years of Seung-hui Cho's life, the family lived in a dark, damp basement apartment on a busy commercial street in Shinchang, a suburb of Seoul . They lived at the bottom of a three-story, red-brick home, and paid $150 a month, a bargain even then.
    Cho attended an elementary school a short walk from his home. About 950 students attend today, about half the number when Cho was there. The cluster of three-story buildings frames a large, U-shaped dirt courtyard.
    The school files contain only a single sheet of paper on Cho, showing he left the school in August 1992, at age 8, after partially completing second grade.
    "We don't know anything about that student," said the vice principal, who refused to identify himself. "And I'd like to point out that he did not graduate from here."
    The young Cho left little impression on those he might have met. Sketchy recollections in the South Korean media all emphasize his shyness, a trait that would follow him throughout his life.
    "He was a quiet, well-behaved boy," said Lim Bong-ae, the family's former landlady.
    His grandfather and great-aunt, both in their 80s, still live in Seoul . Though they met Seung-hui only twice, and had not seen him for years when his face appeared on front pages and TV screens last week, they said they remembered him as a troubled boy uncomfortable with affection.
    Kim Hyong-shik, his grandfather, recalled "a grandson who was so shy he didn't even know how to run into my arms to be hugged."
    Cho's great aunt, Kim Yang-soon, remembered a child who was quiet and strangely remote.
    "He was docile and well behaved," she said. "But his mother used to say he does not speak, that he only looked at her but did not reply to her. And that symptom got worse when they went to America . It was his mother's greatest heartburning grief that her son did not talk."
    But Cho's future seemed bright. Members of the extended family lived in America . The father's younger brother persuaded them to join him in the Washington , D.C. , region, home to what is believed to be America 's third-largest South Korean population after Los Angeles and New York .
    The Chos arrived in America in September 1992. Their early years were difficult. Apparently unable to afford the airfare, Cho's mother did not return to Seoul for her mother's funeral. She called her relatives in South Korea only on holidays and kept the calls short.
    But by 1997, they had earned enough to buy a $145,000 town house on Truitt Farm Drive , one of scores of cookie-cutter developments in the area. They were so proud of their new home that they sent photos to loved ones in South Korea .
    Silence in high school
    People on the block are friendly from a distance, but rarely get to know one another. Neighbors say Cho's mother would always smile. His father didn't say much, though once, at his wife's urging, he cleared the snow from a pregnant woman's car. Most of the neighbors didn't know the Chos had a son.
    Cho graduated from Westfield High School in 2003. But there is no mention of him in that yearbook, not so much as a senior picture.
    The high school, which opened in 2000, is stocked with high achievers. Newsweek magazine once ranked it among the 50 best public high schools in America . Its football team won the state championship the year Cho graduated. But with 1,600 students then, Cho was the odd boy who never spoke, former classmates recalled. He joined the science club but just sat there. He carried around an instrument that earned him the name "Trombone Boy."
    School officials went to some lengths to encourage students to interact. They put round tables in the lunchroom so no one would feel left out. The "Westfield Welcomers" club formed to help wallflowers and outcasts fit in. But none of it seemed to work for the lonely, acne-plagued boy in glasses who was so quiet that some wondered whether he could speak at all.
    In an advanced-placement Spanish class, students made recordings to practice for final exams. The teacher brought the tapes in one day and the class begged to hear Cho's.
    "We wanted to know what his voice sounded like," said Regan Wilder, a classmate of Cho's from middle school through college.
    "It was almost as if he was backed into a corner whenever you tried to talk to him," said Patrick Song, a Virginia Tech classmate who took AP calculus with Cho as a Westfield senior. "You took it as like he just wants to be left alone."
    Luice Woo, another senior at Virginia Tech who was in Cho's high school calculus class, said: "I thought he was … a recent immigrant who didn't know English."
    At Virginia Tech, he was the same, though a search warrant revealed that he phoned his family nearly every Sunday night.
    Indeed, the profane, rambling diatribe Cho recorded between the shootings, widely broadcast after he ended his rampage with a bullet to his head, may be the most the outside world has ever heard him say.
    Sibling differences
    While her brother tried to disappear at Westfield High, Sun-kyung Cho was soaring. She'd had offers from Harvard and Princeton and chose the latter because the scholarship was better.
    By junior year, Sun, as she came to be called, had developed an interest in global economics. She traveled on an internship to the Thailand-Myanmar border to see factory conditions in a developing country.
    The experience was transforming. "They were the most amazing three months of my life," Sun Cho told the Princeton Weekly Bulletin. The experience launched her career with a firm that works with the Iraq Reconstruction Management Office.
    Her college social life was as rich as her brother's was barren. As a member of a dining co-op, she took turns shopping and cooking for 25 people. For nearly two years, Alan Oquendo ate meals with her almost every night. He remembers "a very humble person," a deeply spiritual woman who did not smoke or drink and wore little makeup. She worked at the college library and spent much of her spare time at prayer meetings and Friday night Bible studies with the Princeton Evangelical Fellowship.
    She refrained from pushing her faith, but would discuss it after dinner with a few close friends. "That would be the only time she would talk about it," Oquendo said. "She was a very tolerant person."
    It was Sun Cho, 25, who spoke Friday for her distraught family, issuing a statement that broke four days of silence:
    "We are humbled by this darkness…. This is someone that I grew up with and loved. Now I feel like I didn't know this person," she said. "He has made the world weep. We are living a nightmare."
    Daily struggles
    The pressures to succeed were intense.
    Seung-hui Cho's father pressed pants six days a week at a dry cleaner in Manassas , Va. , west of Washington . Cho's mother worked at another Korean-run dry-cleaning business in nearby Haymarket.
    She pressed men's suit jackets from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. six days a week, a small woman maneuvering between hisses of steam and lines of hanging laundry.
    "I knew life was hard for her," said Susana Yang, owner of the dry cleaner. "Her health was not good, and her husband suffered from a back problem."
    Hyang-im Cho finally quit because her arm hurt too much.
    "The only time she ever asked for time off from work was to attend her daughter's graduation from Princeton and to take her son to Virginia Tech," recalled her employer.
    Yang described Hyang-im Cho as diligent and polite, utterly devoted to her children. "She was so proud of her daughter," she said. But, according to Yang, Hyang-im also said, "I wish it had been my son who was graduating from Princeton instead of my daughter."
    Perhaps it was just South Korea 's Confucian-steeped culture, where parents often expect boys to be more successful than girls.
    Seung-hui Cho's mother never discussed her son with Yang. "Whatever burdens she carried, she kept them to herself."
    Yang believes neither parent worked after 2004 because of poor health. When she first heard the identity of the Virginia Tech shooter, she did not immediately connect the name. Then she saw the pictures.
    "In the two smiling photos of him in the car, I caught glimpses of Mrs. Cho," she said. "How can this be? I don't have words to describe the pain the family must be going through."
    Indeed, rumors spread quickly among South Koreans worldwide that Cho's father had committed suicide and his mother had overdosed on pills.
    The rumors were false. But In-suk Baik, president of the Korean-American Assn. of Northern Virginia, paid a visit to Seung-hui Cho's uncle in Edgewater , Md. Baik assured him that Americans wouldn't blame the Korean community for the massacre.
    "Because of their upbringing, Korean parents blame themselves for everything that goes wrong with their children," Baik said. "But in America , people say, 'Not me.' "
    Family reclusion
    Though America 's South Korean American community can be insular, the Chos seemed unusually reclusive. They did not regularly attend church, a center of social activity and networking for many immigrants.
    Even more important is the cultural emphasis on education and success. Failures are often viewed as dishonorable.
    "Our life is governed by chae-myon, what other people think about us," said Tong S. Suhr, a Korean American attorney and an unofficial historian of Los Angeles ' Koreatown. "Consulting someone outside the family is admitting that you can't handle it. It is shameful. So we keep everything to ourselves."
    Chang, of UC Riverside, offered a darker view of the Cho family dynamic.
    "The sister epitomized the immigrant success story, while the brother represented its failure," he said. "Cho was nerdy. Students made fun of him. He was a psycho who needed help. His parents and friends failed in that regard. Society failed too."

4/22/07 Boston Globe: “Closer look reveals Cho's isolation: Hard-working student let few inside his world,”
by Raja Mishra and Marcella Bombardieri
    Centreville , Va. -- They were playful geeks. The members of Westfield High's science club would fiddle with liquid nitrogen and conduct enthralling lab experiments -- including one boy who said little but diligently attended after-school meetings.
    Seung-Hui Cho kept to himself, but fellow club members recognized him as intelligent and a science-loving kindred spirit.
    "He was genuinely interested. It didn't seem like a resume builder," said Chris Davids , who recalled Cho from science club sessions at the high school in Chantilly , Va. , a Washington suburb. "He seemed like a really bright guy. I thought he was just really shy."
    In the days since Cho massacred 32 people at Virginia Tech, much has emerged about his withdrawn personality and inner rage, which bubbled to the surface in vicious college papers and his shocking final testament: a multimedia package mailed to NBC News during a lull in his rampage. The shootings stunned the rural Blacksburg campus, made headlines worldwide, and inspired national expressions of grief.
    However, interviews with authorities and people from his hometown draw a more complex picture of the man who committed the worst mass shooting in US history -- though answers about what drove him to kill remain elusive.
    Nearly everyone who crossed paths with Cho say he was painfully shy, including his Virginia Tech roommates. But he was academically sound, taking advanced high school classes at Westfield and gaining entry into a university where the average SAT score was 1200. Even the physician who proclaimed Cho a danger to himself in 2005 found him quite lucid, writing, "His insight and judgment are sound," according to court papers.
    Cho struggled to come of age in a tight-kni t community of entrepreneurial Korean immigrants in Centreville, strivers driven by deeply felt Christianity and the quest for material success. For all Cho's accomplishments, his older sister Sun-Kyung Cho outshone him, winning admission to both Harvard and Princeton -- the ultimate validation in his community.
    Once at Virginia Tech, his reticence deepened but Cho did express himself in one way: Through his computer keyboard. He typed up bizarre plays and poems. Virginia authorities have suggested there may be more antisocial writings on the hard drive seized from his dorm. Cho also made awkward and intrusive attempts to reach out to young women online. He may have sent e-mails to one of his first victims, 18-year-old Emily Hilscher , according to a police search warrant.
    And Cho took the first step toward his blood-soaked final act using his computer: Three months ago he purchased a Walther P22 handgun from an online gun dealer, according to federal authorities.
    "Thanks to you," Cho wrote in his final message to the world, mailed to NBC, "I die like Jesus Christ to inspire generations of the weak and the defenseless people."
    One student reaches out 
    Davids, who went to both Westfield High and Virginia Tech, appears to be one of the few classmates who made a genuine effort to reach out to Cho. Davids, the child of a Korean-born mother and US-born father, said he sympathized with the shy boy.
    He recalls trying to strike up a conversation with Cho in the ninth grade.
    "I said 'Hi, my name is Chris.' "He looked at me with that blank look, and then looked back at his food," said Davids, a senior history major in Blacksburg . "I was shy, so I thought he was just really shy or didn't understand English well and was shy about using it."
    But despite his isolation, Choseemed to excel in the classroom: he enrolled in advanced placement Spanish and science classes. He turned his work in promptly, said fellow students. He won admission to Virginia Tech and completed three years of study. And there was the science club.
    Club members whipped up homemade ice cream frozen with liquid nitrogen. They donned goggles and watched excitedly as a teacher lit hydrogen fireballs. Cho showed up every week and participated in all the experiments, said Davids.
    "From what I could tell he always did his work and turned in his assignments," said Davids.
    He said the few times Cho spoke often drew racially tinged comments from other students, who were unaccustomed to hearing his voice. On one occasion, Davids said that kids told Cho to "Get out of this country."
    "That one moment was burned into my head, because they were so mean," said Davids. "I felt like they were talking about me, too."
    Cho faced racist comments, but Davids and others said they were no more severe than the abuse heaped on many Asian students who came to Centreville as part of a 1990s wave of immigrant families who drew some hostility from locals.
    "People would make catcalls to him in the hallway," said Davids. "They would call him chink or Chinatown ."
    Later, on the Virginia Tech campus, Davids would see Cho in the dining hall, wearing a hoodie and seated in the corner alone.
    "I never saw any malice or violence from him," Davids recalled, "just shyness."
    Success-driven community 
    After first immigrating to Detroit from South Korea in 1992, the Chos wound up in Centreville, a rapidly expanding Washington suburb where successful Korean immigrant families often move after initially settling in poorer communities.
    Cho's father worked long hours at a dry-cleaning businesses. The family lives in a town house in a modest cul-de-sac amid dozens of sprawling new subdivisions and strip malls. But the family appears to have kept others at arm's length.
    "There's usually one or two degrees of separation between everyone in our community, but no one seems to have known the family," said Thomas Kim , a Korean issues lobbyist who lives near the Cho family in Centreville. "I've talked to a lot of the leaders in the community, trying to find out more about them, but no one seems to really have known the Chos. That's odd."
    Churches are the Korean community's primary organizing force, places where many issues confronted by Koreans are aired. One perennial topic is the pressure to succeed, said local Christian pastors.
    "There is a pretty strong history of Koreans here intensely pushing their children academically," said Peter Chin , pastor at Open Door Presbyterian Church in nearby Herndon, which has many members from Centreville.
    As the youngest sibling, Cho had to follow in the footsteps of his sister, who rejected Harvard for Princeton and now works for a contractor with the US State Department that handles billions of dollars in aid money to Iraq . Meanwhile, Cho's silence left family members wondering about his ability.
    "My grandson was shy even as a little boy and he would never run to me like my other grandchildren," Cho's maternal grandfather, Kim Hyong Shik , told Korean reporters in Seoul . "The boy was so different from his super-intelligent older sister. His extreme shyness worried his parents. I thought he might be deaf and dumb."
    Esther Chang , youth pastor at the Central Korean Presbyterian Church, one of the largest Korean churches in the area, said the Virginia Tech tragedy has spurred introspection among the many families in Centreville.
    "It's causing a lot of parents and a lot of children to think deeply about what's important in life," she said.
    In the end, even his family seems puzzled by the boy who grew up in their midst: "My brother was quiet and reserved, yet struggled to fit in. We never could have envisioned that he was capable of so much violence," said his sister in a statement.
    For his first two years in Blacksburg , Cho, an English major, appears to have continued shielding himself with silence, with classmates saying they rarely heard him speak. But in the fall of 2005, he started to emerge in a different way, through writing and the Internet. His ultraviolent misanthropic writings prompted English professors to pull him out of a class and instruct him in private.
    In September 2005, and again that December, he contacted female students online, as well as with text messages, cellphone calls, and once in person. Two students complained to police, but neither pressed charges. A psychological evaluation determined Cho had mental problems, but after his release from a brief stay at a psychiatric hospital, Virginia Tech mental health officials said they had no contact with him. That harassment of female students, however, may have continued up to the massacre.
    Police have filed a search warrant for Hilscher's laptop and cellphone, saying in court papers that Cho might have communicated with her via computer before his rampage. Hilscher, along with the resident assistant in her dorm, Ryan Clark , were Cho's first victims. After killing them, he paused for two hours, mailing off his manifesto to NBC News, then entered Norris Hall. There, he forced himself into four classrooms, gunned down terrified students, reloaded from a vest bulging with ammunition clips, and fired through doors when students tried to block him.
    Searching for clues to his motives, Police seized Cho's computer and obtained warrants for his cellphone records. They said the computer contained voluminous material and could yield more information on Cho's mindset, through his writings, and on his other online activities.
    "They are trying to make a connection between Cho and the first two victims, to answer the question of why" he went to the dorm first, said Corinne Geller, spokeswoman for the Virginia State Police. "The purpose of the warrants is to . . . answer the how and the why."
    One website he visited was thegunsource.com, according to federal officials. The site is run by TGSCOM, Inc. of Green Bay , Wis ., and company officials confirmed that Cho used his credit card on Feb. 2 to order a Walther .22-caliber handgun. Authorities have said that Cho used two guns in the massacre, a .22-caliber pistol and a Glock 9 mm semi automatic purchased March 16 from a Virginia gun shop.
    The gun was shipped to a federally licensed gun dealer in Blacksburg , where Cho picked it up on Feb. 5, according to TGSCOM, Inc. officials.
    It is unclear how much more of Cho's written communications authorities will release. Many who complained about NBC airing his manifesto would just as soon never hear his chilling words again.
    "This is where it all ends," says Cho in one of the video excerpts. "End of the road. What a life it was. Some life."

4/19/07 www.slate.com: “Cho Seung-Hui or Seung-Hui Cho?  How the media chose a name for the Virginia Tech gunman,”
by Michelle Tsai
    On Tuesday morning, Virginia Tech and police officials revealed the identity of the student gunman behind the Virginia Tech shootings. In the media blitz that followed, many news organizations referred to the killer as "Cho Seung-Hui"; others used the Americanized version, "Seung-Hui Cho." How did the news outlets decide which name to use?
    They made their own decisions based on the little information they had at the time. Reuters, the Associated Press, the Washington Post, and the New York Times, among others, went with Cho Seung-Hui, putting the family name first because that was how authorities had released the information. News desks in Asia tend to follow the tradition of listing the family name first, but in America , it's often left up to the subject of the article. In general, a reporter would ask an interviewee what name he or she prefers, but in this case, Cho was dead, and no one from his family could be reached. Virginia Tech, meanwhile, had concluded that "Cho" ought to be listed first because a state trooper of Korean origin who was working on the case recommended the more formal expression.
    At the Washington Post, editors debated the matter of the name several times. The paper heard from people who knew the student that he sometimes went by the single name "Cho." By Thursday it was clear there was a conflict, as the paper had learned that the gunman had written the Americanized name on a speeding ticket and on a mental-health form. (At this point, they're still calling him Cho Seung Hui.)
    The Asian version of the name ”Cho Seung-Hui” appeared to be more widespread, in part because of its use in the ubiquitous wire stories from Reuters and the AP. As a result, some Korean-Americans felt media groups were playing up Cho's foreign-ness, according to the Asian American Journalists Association, which advised reporters to use the American order. As of Wednesday, Reuters was sticking with the Asian version, partly to conform with coverage from other news organizations. The AP, on the other hand, is investigating the name because of inconsistencies among various documents. (The wire service has its own inconsistencies: Official AP style eliminates hyphens for North Korean names like "Kim Jong Il " but includes them for South Koreans like "Roh Moo-hyun.") 
    National Public Radio, ABC News, the Los Angeles Times, and others went with the American format of the name. They reasoned that Cho had been in the United States since 1992, and there was other evidence to suggest he preferred the American way. For instance, he used "Seung Cho" when he handed in work for his playwriting class. The L.A. Times also learned that a name tag found in Cho's suite said "Seung" and that Princeton University records showed that his sister had also Americanized her name.  ABC News arrived at its decision after talking to its own producer in South Korea , producers in the United States, and staffers of Korean descent. CBS News made a decision late Wednesday to switch to the American style after it learned from the shooter's former principal that he was known as Seung-Hui Cho in high school. 
    Bonus Explainer: In between the two rounds of shootings, Cho sent NBC a manifesto containing videos and photographs, some of which have been shown by other broadcasters. Did the rival networks have to pay for the images? 
    No. The package falls under the doctrine of fair use, which gives networks the ability to borrow unique and newsworthy information from each other. Another example might be an important interview with a high-ranking official that only one network scored. That meant that the networks were able to take the Cho footage from NBC at no cost, immediately after it aired.
    Explainer thanks Janice Lee of the Asian American Journalists Association, Robert McCartney of the Washington Post, and Jeffrey Schneider of ABC News.
    Michelle Tsai is a writer living in Jersey City , N.J.

4/19/07 New York Times: “Korean-Americans Brace for Problems in Wake of Killings“
By Jennifer Steinhauer
    Los Angeles, April 18 — An unidentified man called into a show on Radio Korea here to say that his young son had been spat on by two students at school, said Charles Kim, executive director of the local Korean-American Coalition, who was a guest on the show.
    Soojin Lyuh, 25, a graduate student at the University of Southern California , was advised by relatives in Korea to “stay home as much as possible and to not tell anyone that I was Korean.” 
    For Junette Kim, 27, the images of Koreans standing with shotguns in front of their shops during riots in Los Angeles over a decade ago here are indelible, like the memories of her parents frantically closing their restaurant and collecting her early from school. “We’re worried a lot about Koreans being harassed now,” she said Wednesday. 
    Across the nation, Koreans have braced for harassment in the wake of the Monday shooting rampage on the Virginia Tech campus that left 33 dead, including Cho Seung-Hui, the South Korean-born gunman. 
    Fearful of the backlash that Arab-Americans and others encountered after the Sept. 11 attacks and disquieted by what many Koreans interviewed perceive to be ominous portrayals of their culture — the stereotypical Asian loner becomes a killer — Koreans around the country have watched the events in Virginia unfold with particular unease.
    In South Korea , political and religious leaders issued messages of condolence for the victims. President Roh Moo-hyun called his shock “beyond description.”
    Policy makers worried about the potential impact of the killings on relations with the United States and, more immediately, on Seoul ’s efforts to win Congressional support for waiving visas for thousands of South Koreans traveling to the United States each year. 
    Fears are particularly acute here in Los Angeles, home to roughly half a million people of Korean descent, many with deep and painful memories of the 1992 riots that brought down more than 2,000 Korean businesses and exposed deep fissures between Koreans and other minority groups. 
    “The Korean-American community is really concerned,” said Kyeyoung Park , an associate professor of anthropology and faculty member of the Center for Korean Studies at the University of California , Los Angeles . “Particularly here, where the Korean-American was scapegoated in 1992 civil unrest,” she said, referring to the violence here that followed a deadly confrontation between a Korean store owner and a black teenager.
    In cities with large Korean populations, a refrain with recurring themes could be heard this week. “The first thing I thought was please, please don’t let him be Korean,” said Chong Duk Chung, 47, who works in a beauty salon in New York . “As a member of the Korean-American community, I’m a little embarrassed and a little ashamed,” she said.
    Joseph Park, 65, a resident of Alexandria , Va. , echoed that view.
    “As a Korean, I apologize,” said Mr. Park, who was visiting Flushing, Queens , on a business trip. “I feel I need to apologize because innocent people were killed by someone from my same nation.
    “Everyone feels so sorry for what happened, so sorry about it. They’re scared. They’re shocked, shocked to death. When the news media said it was an Asian, we prayed, we prayed, ‘Not Korean, not Korean.’ ”
    In Chantilly , Va. , Sung Han Kim, 36, said his friends have agreed that they should probably avoid bars dominated by whites “because people are more likely to point out you are Korean.” 
    Peter Chin, the pastor of Open Door Presbyterian Church in Herndon , Va. — roughly five miles from the home of Mr. Cho’s family — said he had received reports of hateful comments aimed at Koreans being posted on Facebook and various blog sites.
    Professor Park in Los Angeles said she was troubled that Mr. Cho’s ethnicity had quickly become central to the narrative of his crime. “Calling him a South Korean native, as if he arrived yesterday, doesn’t make sense to me,” she said of Mr. Cho, who arrived in the United States with his parents at age 8.
    “If the person arrived yesterday or last year, he is not familiar with this kind of guns,” Professor Park said. “A person who majored in English — a newly arrived student is not majoring in English. Whatever characterization about the young man as a loner and antisocial fits the stereotype about Asian-American men, when in fact this person seems like a psycho.”
    Yul Kwon, 32, of San Mateo , Calif. , winner of last year’s television contest “Survivor” and a lawyer, raised a similar concern. 
    “One of the reasons I went on a reality show is that I wanted to change stereotypes about Asians, and particularly Asian-American men,” Mr. Kwon said. “The fear is this will perpetuate that Asian-American men are socially maladjusted.” 
    The shooting at Virginia Tech, which the police now say was a heinous coda to a pattern of disturbing behavior on the part of the gunman, has also highlighted what some mental health and Asian studies experts say is the cultural reluctance of Koreans and other Asians to seek mental health care here.
    A recent national study financed by the National Institute of Mental Health found that Asian-Americans are less likely to seek care for mental health problems than other groups. The study, which sampled 2,095 Asian-Americans of various backgrounds, concluded that Asians born in the United States and those who immigrated as children had higher rates of mental disorders, especially depression, than Asians who immigrated to the United States as adults.
    “Korean culture does not recognize mental illness,” said Professor Park , the anthropologist. “People do not recognize it or get help. There is a huge stigma.”
    Roughly two million ethnic Koreans live in the United States , where Korean emigration gained momentum with the adoption of thousands of war orphans after the Korean War. 
    Today, thousands of South Koreans send their children to the United States each year, or move as families, to help them learn English and benefit from an education away from what they see as their home country’s overly competitive, overpriced school system. The nation takes exceptional pride in Koreans who have become successful in the United States .
    An estimated 93,000 South Koreans are enrolled in colleges and universities in the United States , forming one of the largest foreign student communities, with about 460 South Korean students reportedly enrolled at Virginia Tech alone.



4/19/07 New York Times: Asian American Victims at Virginia Tech