Too obsessed with Sen. Craig's misbehavin' and the sordid details of airport bathroom sting operations, I entirely missed the news on the release of the Virginia Tech Report. Apparently the University and the state mental health system were roundly criticized. The Roanoke Times generously provides pdfs of the entire report.

As someone who works in university administration, I sort of, well, sympathize. As much as we can prepare for an emergency, when they really hit is a different story--especially the worse case scenario-type emergencies, the ones you've never experienced in your lifetime. Universities are sort of like a continual, bureaucratically-slow birthing of a several thousands-headed beer-guzzling monster. How do you wrangle it when hell breaks loose?

I haven't read the report fully yet, and I'm sure human errors abounded that day. My roommate the conspiracy theorist, of course, thinks they weren't errors at all. I think that must be because he hasn't worked at a university, and doesn't know how much it takes to plan anything.

And though I despise the labyrinthine mental health system we have in place (having dealt with it via my mother), I also know that social workers and other public mental health professionals have a fricking hard job in a seriously underfunded and legally complicated sector. I hope that as a result of all this we see MORE FUNDING.