Wednesday, April 01, 2009
Virginia Tech professor's thoughts unbound in book on April 16 shootings
The attack is the thread weaving together observations of how people at all levels reacted before and after.
The book
"No Right to Remain Silent: The Tragedy at Virginia Tech"
- 336 pages, $25
- Published by Harmony Books, an imprint of Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House Inc.
Excerpt
April 16, 2009
Your thoughts
Alan Kim | The Roanoke Times
Lucinda Roy
Virginia Tech shootings
Complete coverage
Virginia Tech: One Year Later
BLACKSBURG -- Virginia Tech English professor Lucinda Roy said the title of her book released Tuesday -- "No Right to Remain Silent" has multiple meanings.
It refers to the killer, Seung-Hui Cho, who harbored hateful thoughts only occasionally hinted at in his writings before he killed 32 people and himself on April 16, 2007. Roy said it also would refer to herself if she chose not to write about her experience tutoring Cho and question the university's actions before and after the shootings.
"I didn't want to shine a light on Virginia Tech again in a way that would be harmful or wounding to the institution. ... I just pretty much came to the conclusion Virginia Tech wasn't an anomaly, that this was going to happen again. If something else happened, and I had said nothing about my own experience, then I would be acting in a way that I think is unethical."
Some passages in the 300-page memoir imply that the title applies to university leadership. One suggests a "selective mutism" that Cho suffered from was passed on to some at the university after the shootings. Roy criticizes the university for a lack of meaningful discussion about Cho since the shootings and a bunker mentality with the media.
"I don't understand what that means," Tech spokesman Larry Hincker said Tuesday. "There was discussion every which way from Sunday."
Hincker referred to multiple investigations, reports and the release of thousands of pages of information as proof that the university was forthright in addressing questions.
But Roy gives a detailed account of being isolated from the administration after she spoke to the media the week of the shootings. Her interviews revealed that Cho was the focus of discussion among English faculty and university leaders more than a year before the killings.
Roy recounts multiple incidents and conversations with people at the university that indicated anyone reporting to Tech President Charles Steger was forbidden from speaking with her. Roy said Monday that the administration's attitude toward her hasn't changed, and she thinks the book's publication means it is unlikely she will remain at Tech. An alumni distinguished professor, Roy has been at the university for 23 years.
Hincker said he thought Roy's interviews with the media were moving and articulate, and he sees no reason why the publication of the book would lead to her leaving. He said Roy's decision to hire an attorney led to the lack of direct communication.
"When you get an attorney, that's what you're buying into," he said, indicating that communications went between Tech's legal counsel and Roy's attorney.
The book covers broad topics such as freedom of speech and the importance of parenting, and it gives detailed accounts of her experiences over three decades in education. She also recounts her work with Cho, who she tutored one-on-one after he caused problems in a poetry class in 2005.
"The memories themselves were actually quite disturbing," she said. "At the time it was a very uncomfortable thing for me to have to do. Going through it again was very difficult."
Roy said she did not intend for the release of the book to come two weeks before the anniversary of the shootings. It took her longer to write than she had planned, pushing the release date back to March 31. Proceeds from the book will go to aid families in Sierra Leone. Roy once taught in the war-torn nation.
Roy said she is careful not to glorify Cho in the book. Writing the book is her attempt at moving beyond the attack.
She said the goal of the book is to get across "the idea that it is possible to learn from what's happened and that we don't have to keep making the same mistakes."
