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 [1]. Apparently the University and the state mental health system were roundly criticized. The Roanoke Times generously provides pdfs of the entire report [2].

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.