"Yes, Virginia...There Are Monsters."

I do not even know where I should begin. Of course, when something like this happens, the first person you want to talk to are your eyewitnesses. Unfortunately, I've read the reports from the students of Virginia Tech; All I've found are larger questions, with implications so dark I find myself wondering if I want to know the truth.

The shooter (whom has finally been identified as Cho Seung-Hui) was an intelligent 23-year-old English major. He was smart, or slick enough, to purchase one of the most efficient personal killing-machines today (namely, the 9mm Glock 19) over a month before the most ruthless campus-slaughter in history. A year and a half before, his writings, tho not explicitly direct, were laced with enough general anger and malice that a professor pulled Cho from a creative writing class.

We know that he was a loner, a resident alien from South Korea. We do not know his motives, not exactly, but we do know that he wrote of his loathing for "debauchery" and "deceitful charlatans" in a note found in his dorm room. We know that he wrote two very graphic, violent plays, which I have no doubt will someday be sold in bookstores nationwide, just a shelf above Mein Kampf and A Modest Proposal. We know, from survivor testimony, that he was "very serious but very calm" as he walked from one classroom to another, firing indiscriminately into the student population.

What we do not know, and what I would like someone to tell me right fucking now, is why the school sent out a couple of e-mails at a time of day when their students were all rushing to their designated classes, why no-one was reading a prepared statement into an intercom, why nobody thought to call every local radio station and get a full-scale manhunt underway as soon as the first shooting was reported at West Ambler Johnston.

There is a very real possibility that I am doing my best to cope with a senseless loss of life and just want to lash out at someone. However, I do feel that my question is valid, as does one Virginia Tech student who commented "I think the university has blood on their hands because of their lack of action after the first incident".

Their were no public-address statements. Two hours after the first shooting, a killer came to Norris Hall. From the initial reports directly following the shooting, there were 22 dead, 21 if you ignore the body of Cho himself, who (it is reported) took his own life before he could be apprehended.

Now, a day later, the body count has climbed from 22 to 33, the obvious implication being that a large number of the "injured 12" did not have the luxury of a quick death.

To call this a tragedy would be the cruelest of understatements. There are so many things I want to know: why Cho was still a student when he had such obvious anger problems, why the only students warned were those who happened to be online, why we as a country are fighting a war and struggling to help others when we have such monolithic problems of our own that need solving. This event has only filled me with questions, and unfortunately, no-one has seen fit to offer an answer.

I can only do what we all should do: I can hold the ones I love close, and pray.