Watching CNN's coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings, I've noticed some signs that conformity is a pretty strong impulse on that campus. Two of Cho Seung-hui's former roommates were interviewed on CNN wearing the exact same red T-shirts (emblazoned with "Maroon 20", whatever that mean), many of the students at the memorial convocation yesterday were wearing identical Virginia Tech sweatshirts, albeit in different colors, and quite a few of the shots of campus life have shown students in cadet uniforms -- Virgina Tech is one of the few public universities which maintains a corp of cadets taking full-time military training. I don't want to get into blaming society as the primary cause of Cho's apparent break with reality (if that's what it was), since there seems to be indications that he had emotional problems or perhaps even a full blown psychopathology, but I wonder if someone prone to feeling like an outsider and a victim of injustice might be pushed to the edge even faster by the pressure to conform?
(And since when are "late night bike rides" and "waking before dawn" examples of "bizarre behavior", CNN?)
Update: Here's something interesting - according to the Wikipedia article on Nikki Giovanni, the poet and professor at Virginia Tech:
She has a tattoo with the words "Thug Life" to honor the memory of Tupac Shakur, because she would "rather be with the thugs than the people who are complaining about them."
(The article cites this Barnes & Noble audio file.) And, despite her preference for thugs over their victims, she found Cho Seung-hui so "menacing" that she had him removed from the class she taught. She also denied that Cho was "troubled", and described him as "mean."
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Yes
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the story so far
unfutz: toiling in almost complete obscurity for almost 1500 days
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