RICHMOND, Va. - Federal education officials stand by their finding that Virginia Tech broke federal law when officials waited two hours to notify the campus that a gunman was loose at the outset of the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.
In a report issued Thursday, the Department of Education rejected Virginia Tech's contention that its response to the 2007 shooting rampage met standards in place at the time.
"Virginia Tech's failure to issue timely warnings about the serious and ongoing threat deprived its students and employees of vital, time-sensitive information and denied them the opportunity to take adequate steps to provide for their own safety," the report stated.
The department found in January that the university violated the federal Clery Act, which requires notification of on-campus threats to students and employees.
The federal report found the school broke the law by failing to issue a timely warning to the Blacksburg campus after student Seung-Hui Cho shot and killed two students in a dormitory early on the morning of April 16, 2007. The university sent out an email to the campus more than two hours later, about the time Cho was chaining shut the doors to a classroom building where he killed 30 more students and faculty, then himself.
The report also determined that the school failed to follow its own procedures for providing such notification.
Virginia Tech could be fined $27,500 for each violation, for a total of $55,000. The school also could lose some or all its $98 million in federal student financial aid, though such an outcome is considered unlikely. A determination will be made by a Department of Education panel.
Virginia Tech spokesman Larry Hincker said the school likely will appeal if it is sanctioned.
A state commission that investigated the shootings also found that the university erred by failing to notify the campus sooner. The state reached an $11 million settlement with many of the victims' families. Two families have sued and are seeking $10 million in damages from university officials. A judge recently ruled those lawsuits could move forward.
One victim's mother said she was glad the university was finally facing punishment for its actions, but she took more satisfaction from the inclusion in the report of actions that Virginia Tech officials took to protect themselves that morning. Victims' families had long wanted those details included in the report of the state commission.
"They couldn't fine enough money for what happened that day and how it altered our lives," said Suzanne Grimes, whose son Kevin Sterne was injured in the shootings. "It's more about the truth of what happened. That's what I sought for all these years."
Grimes and other victims' families fought for the state report to include documentation that some Virginia Tech staffers informed family members and others about the shootings long before the notice went out to the entire campus.
The university says that one official advised her son to go to class anyway, while another only called to arrange for a baby sitter.
But the federal report notes a few actions by the university after word of the shootings spread but before the email was sent to campus: a continuing education centre was locked down; an official directed that the doors to his office be locked; the university's veterinary college was locked down; and campus trash pickup was suspended.
"If the university had provided an appropriate timely warning after the first shootings (in the dormitory), the other members of the campus community may have had enough time to take similar actions to protect themselves," the report said.
Virginia Tech argues that, relying on campus police, it first thought the shootings were domestic and that a suspect had been identified so there was no threat to campus. The education department rebuffed that argument, saying officials should have treated it as a threat because the shooter was on the loose.
The university argues that the Department of Education didn't define "timely" until 2009, when it added regulations to require immediate notification upon confirmation of a dangerous situation or an immediate threat to people on campus.
"Both the law and purposeful reasoned analysis require that the actions of that day be evaluated according to the information that was available to the university and its professionals at that time," said Hincker, the Virginia Tech spokesman. "Anything else loses sight of the unthinkable and unprecedented nature of what occurred."
University president Charles Steger was travelling and unavailable for comment, Hincker said.
The report said that since 2005, the Department of Education has stated that the determination of whether a warning is timely is based on the nature of the crime and the continuing danger to the campus.
"The fact that an unknown shooter might be loose on campus made the situation an ongoing threat at that time, and it remained a threat until the shooter was apprehended," the report said.
