One especially poignant hero was professor Liviu Librescu. He barricaded the door to buy time for his students to escape, then threw himself in front of the gunman when the attacker finally got through. Nearly all of his students survived…

Holocaust survivor saved students’ lives

By LAURIE COPANS, Associated Press Writer

Romanian-born Liviu Librescu, 76, an engineering science and mathematics professor at Virginia Tech, who was killed in the Virginia Tech massacre, is seen in this reproduction of an image taken in Bucharest, Romania, in the year 2000, when he was awarded the Doctor Honoris Causa title by the Romanian Polytechnic University, where Librescu graduated in mechanics and aviation construction in 1953. Librescu, was born in the southern Romanian city of Ploiesti, emigrated to Israel in 1978 and later moved to the United States, and received U.S. citizenship.

The e-mails from grateful students arrived soon after Liviu Librescu was shot to death, telling how the Holocaust survivor barricaded the doorway of his Virginia Tech classroom and saved their lives at the cost of his own.

Librescu, an Israeli engineering and math lecturer who survived the Nazi killings and later escaped from Communist Romania, was one of several foreign victims of Monday’s shootings, which coincided with Israel’s Holocaust remembrance day.

…

Initially I had thought this was a joke, but apparently two gunmen killed at least 22 people at Virginia tech today. The identities of those killed are not currently known, except it definitely include students.

UPDATE: At least 25 killed, 20+ in the hospital, fatalities expected to rise. Shootings began at 7:15, but cops did not respond in time. A second round of shooting began 2 hours later…. The police response will most likely be heavily scrutnized in the days to come.

UPDATE 2: 29 dead

UPDATE 3: 32 dead… I don’t think I am going to give any more updates on this number.. this is getting rather depressing

Shooting at Virginia Tech / Statement by President Charles W. Steger

By Larry Hincker

BLACKSBURG, Va., April 16, 2007

The university was struck today with a tragedy of monumental proportions. There were two shootings on campus. In each case, there were fatalities. The university is shocked and horrified that this would befall our campus. I want to extend my deepest, sincerest and most profound sympathies to the families of these victims which include students There are 22 confirmed deaths.

We currently are in the process of notifying families of victims. The Virginia Tech Police are being assisted by numerous other jurisdictions. Crime scenes are being investigated by the FBI, University Police, and State Police. We continue to work to identify the victims impacted by this tragedy. I cannot begin to covey my own personal sense of loss over this senselessness of such an incomprehensible and heinous act The university will immediately set up counseling centers. So far centers have been identified in Ambler Johnston and the Cook Counseling Center to work with our campus community and families.

Here are some of the facts we know:

At about 7:15 a.m. this morning a 911 call came to the University Police Department concerning an event in West Ambler Johnston Hall. There were multiple shooting victims. While in the process of investigating, about two hours later the university received reports of a shooting in Norris Hall. The police immediately responded. Victims have been transported to various hospitals in the immediate area in the region to receive emergency treatment.

We will proceed to contact the families of victims as identities are available.

All classes are cancelled and the university is closed for the remainder of today. The university will open Tuesday at 8 a.m. but classes are cancelled. The police are currently staging the release of people from campus buildings.

Families wishing to reunite with the students are suggested to meet at the Inn at Virginia Tech. We are making plans for a convocation tomorrow (Tuesday) at noon at Cassell Coliseum for the university community to come together to begin to deal with the tragedy.

—————–

Counseling is available in the Bowman Room in the Merriman Center (part of the athletic complex) for employees who seek assistance following today’s events.

Faculty and staff on the Burruss side of the Drillfield are being released and asked to go home effective immediately. Faculty and staff on the War Memorial side are asked to leave at 12:30 p.m.

—————–

Virginia Tech has closed today Monday, April 16, 2007. On Tuesday, April 17, classes will be canceled. The university will remain open for administrative operations.

There will be an additional university statement presented today at noon.

All students, faculty, and staff are required to stay where they are until police execute a planned evacuation. A phased closing will be in effect today; further information will be forthcoming as soon as police secure the campus.

Tomorrow, there will be a university convocation/ceremony at noon at Cassell Coliseum. The Inn at Virginia Tech has been designated as the site for parents to gather and obtain information.

—————–

In addition to an earlier shooting today in West Ambler Johnston, there has been a multiple shooting with multiple victims in Norris Hall.

Police and EMS are on the scene.

Police have one shooter in custody and as part of routine police procedure, they continue to search for a second shooter.

All people in university buildings are required to stay inside until further notice.

All entrances to campus are closed.

First person account from SomethingAwful

ME (1:08:03 PM): so he came into your class?
Bro(1:08:08 PM): yeah
Bro(1:08:17 PM): i didnt think there was any way id live
Bro(1:08:52 PM): he finally left and me and the one other guy that wasnt shot ran to the door and held it shut
Bro(1:09:04 PM): and he tried to come back in and was shooting through the door
me(1:09:27 PM): holy shit
me(1:09:48 PM): what kind of gun was it
Bro(1:09:55 PM): pistol
Me(1:09:52 PM): and did he line people up
Bro(1:10:08 PM): no just shooting at people on the ground
me(1:11:34 PM): do you think it was random
bro(1:12:57 PM): i dont know
Me(1:14:03 PM): so what did you do then
bro(1:14:21 PM): i just started helping people that were bleeding
Me(1:14:39 PM): my god
Me(1:17:17 PM): and then what
Me(1:17:25 PM): sorry if you dont want to talk about it
Me(1:17:33 PM): everyone wants to know what happened
bro(1:18:15 PM): its fine
Me(1:18:40 PM): so did the cops arrive quickly or did you call them or what
bro(1:19:08 PM): yeah
bro(1:19:38 PM): we called

Apparently, a student has a video of the gun shots on his cell phone and has uploaded it to CNN.

High school students who compete in math team competitions have probably heard of the American Regions Math League, or ARML for short. Many states struggle to come up with enough funding to send their kids to this prestigious competition, so I decided to look through their tax forms to see how efficient this organization is. (All non-profit tax forms are available at guidestar free of charge). The below chart is what resulted from my analysis (note this is not all of ARML’s expenses, executive compensation and conference costs have been left out on purpose):

There are several things of note here.

1. How does the current arml.com cost $1,000 to develop and $215 a yr to maintain?
2. Granted ARML is not an easy competition to write, but does it really warrant an average of $5,000 annually to develop the competition? (That’s excluding the $2,800 paid to the head question writer annually.)
3. ARML claims to be an organization dedicated to its participants, then why is the amount dedicated to student awards so low in 2005? (2003: $11,171, 2004: $18,116, 2005: $7,566)

Outside of the purely quantitative data, I’m also increasingly annoyed at ARML’s board for making ARML a cesspool of commercial spam. At last year’s Penn State ARML award ceremony, some prizes were given alongside what amount to sales pitches for companies. If ARML is going to be TI’s lapdog, they should at least charge significantly more than a few calculators.

It is also infuriating to see teams spending significant amount of money just on traveling to one of three designated test sites. It seems like this year, two teams from Turkey will be participating in ARML via the web (news release here), why can’t teams from the US do that as well?

Two decisions regarding technology were handed down by US courts today and I am once again disappointed by the result. Incidentally, the two cases just happen to be my two pet peeves, personal privacy and patents.

In the case of Vonage vs Verizon, a judge has issued an injunction against Vonage barring them from acquiring new customers on the grounds that Vonage has violated 3 very very broad software patents of Verizon’s. Not delving into the issue of whether software patents should be issued at all (and most of the world in fact do not issue software patents), Verizon’s own patents seem to cover nothing more than “obvious extensions” to current technology. See Clint Ricker’s brilliant analysis of the patents involved at his blog. Why can’t the US patent office do their job properly?!

In a much murkier case, a university student who was hacking sites like ebay.com was convicted based on evidence that the systems administrator of the network collected while hacking the student’s computer! Wire has published an article summarizing this case pretty well: Court Okays Counter-Hack of eBay Hacker’s Computer. This precedent can have potentially horrifying repercussions downstream. What stops Microsoft from deleting all of your files because they *think* you have a pirated version of Windows? or are we now going to let the RIAA hack computers that they *think* might contain pirated songs? Bruce Schneier, the CTO of Counterpane has written a great editorial about the subject: Vigilantism Is a Poor Response to Cyberattack.

Our civil liberties and our ability to innovate continue to get stymied by bad policies from the US government. Perhaps 1984 wasn’t nearly as fictional as people had thought.