Two Hours, Eleven Minutes

That was the time between the first 9-11 call to police about shots being fired and the first warning sent out to faculty and students, via e-mail, that a gunman might be loose on campus at Virginia Tech. A little over twenty minutes later 31 more people are shot to death in a educational building across campus.
I realize that this is a big campus (at 26,000 students, 10,000 more than live in my hometown), and that hindsight is 20/20, but there seems to have been some sort of communication breakdown. Should they have locked down the campus earlier? Perhaps some sort of public address system that wasn't e-mail? What was Cho Seung-Hui doing during that time? Why weren't his behavioral warning signs better investigated? (For some of Seung-Hui's literary work - he was an English major, but his dramatic skills seemed lacking - click here).
Sadly, everyone is shocked and outraged, just like the last school shooting (the Amish schoolhouse), and the one before that, and the one before that. And our underlying culture of violence hasn't changed, and probably won't. Personally, I'll still like a good violent movie, say Kill Bill, as much next week as I did last week. An Italian newspaper called the Virginia Tech shooting "as American as apple pie.", and they're right. Though those closest to the tragedy will never forget, for the rest of us it will fade into collective memory, so we can shocked and outraged anew when the next shootings come along.