Thursday, July 30, 2009
Editorial: Correcting the Tech file
Recovery of Cho's counseling record doesn't warrant reconvening the Kaine commission.
From the RoundTable blog
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The state's official investigation into the Virginia Tech shootings should be updated to make it as complete and accurate as possible.
The sudden appearance of gunman Seung-Hui Cho's long-missing campus psychological records, however, does not automatically support calls to reconvene the state panel that investigated the mass murder.
Anything less will not satisfy the many surviving victims and families of victims who are asking Gov. Tim Kaine to call back the panel he appointed to dig into the circumstances surrounding Cho's killing spree. The petitioners' anguish makes their request hard to dismiss.
Yet the Kaine commission's purpose was to learn what happened on April 16, 2007, so that it could recommend what changes in law and policies the state needed to make to reduce the risk of such a slaughter ever occurring again. That is the measure by which to judge any call to reopen the investigation.
Families and survivors say independent investigations have uncovered new information and revealed errors in the official record. But commission chairman Gerald Massengill, former head of the Virginia State Police, says he has yet to hear anything that would change the panel's recommendations.
Cho's newly recovered records from Tech's Cook Counseling Center remain confidential, though the state has asked his family to release them. If they do, the contents conceivably could justify revisions in the panel's conclusions and recommendations. Nothing so dramatic is expected from the file, though.
Kaine, meanwhile, says he'll reopen "the factual narrative" of the commission report so that staff members can determine whether corrections need to be made to the official findings. One is evident: the results of the current state police investigation into how Cho's confidential records ended up in the home of the Cook Center's former director, and came to light only this month.
Whatever the file's contents, the breach in the university's own procedures created an obstacle for the Kaine commission and left a nagging loose end when it completed its work.
The state should tie it up.
