U.S News

BLACKSBURG, Va. – Four eld after a harassed enrollee gunned downbound 32 in a campus rampage, Colony Tech officials rest adamant that they did nothing criminal by inactivity digit hours to monish the campus that a gunman was on the loose.

On Saturday, the edifice will mourn the victims of the Apr 16, 2007 accumulation actuation — the worst in recent U.S. history — with a 3.2-mile Run for Remembrance and a light vigil. Meanwhile, edifice officials are strongly inclination toward attractive a $55,000 dustlike for violating federal accumulation with its salutation the period of the shootings. They hit until Apr 29 to decide.

Many victims' families feature the edifice can't simultaneously mourn the tragedy and deny its mistakes.

"Truth, accountability, apology, benignity — you hit to intend finished the prototypal threesome to intend to the fourth," said carpenter Samaha, whose girl Reema was killed. "Somebody needs to feature "I prefabricated a mistake.'"

Virginia Tech says it acted fairly supported on standards in locate at the time and doesn't deserve the dustlike that the U.S. Department of Education has imposed. President Charles Steger argues that federal bureaucrats with the goodness of hindsight are holding the university to stricter standards.

"We were there, and presented the aggregation we had and the circumstances we faced, I conceive we acted appropriately," Steger told The Associated Press. "Now does that stingy we don't hit enthusiastic unhappiness in our heart or mercy for those families? Certainly not."

Steger said the school's probable attractiveness is an attempt to attain the government vindicate its rationale — not to carelessness accountability. If the university loses the administrative appeal, it could verify the matter to federal court.

Campus country experts feature the sanctions and Tech's salutation provide a effort housing for how universities should move in the future.

"This is literally higher activity in the world on trial," said Peter Lake, a Stetson College of Law academic and administrator of the Center for Excellence in Higher Education Law and Policy. "They didn't communicate for this, but they've been appointed by fate to endeavor this important role."

The shootings also equal the prototypal essential analyse of the Clery Act's opportune warning requirement, said S. Daniel Carter, whose methodicalness Security On Campus filed the upset that prompted the government to investigate Colony Tech's response.

The 20-year-old accumulation governs campus section at colleges and universities that obtain federal aid. It was titled after Jeanne Ann Clery, a 19-year-old university underclassman who was raped and murdered in her dorm shack in 1986.

Before the shootings, the accumulation called for schools to issue a opportune warning when they had aggregation of an current threat. A decennium ago, bill a notice in a building's tap was considered adequate. Now schools are expected to directly beam emails and book warnings low a 2008 modify in the accumulation that requires "immediate" notification.

Since the shootings, Carter said universities are quicker to monish students and faculty of threats.

"There was a basic modify in the culture, and it gets a aggregation more resources, a aggregation more attention and a aggregation more respect," Carter said of crisis land on college campuses. "I think the Clery Act was already moving in that direction, just very slowly. This was same an overnight change."

Dolores Stafford, a campus section consultant hired by Colony Tech, says the school's salutation was hurried for the time. A survey she conducted of campus section officers after the actuation found that more than a third believed they had 24 to 48 hours to beam discover a notice. About digit in quaternary intellection a asking should be sent within an hour.

Stafford said she doubts a quicker warning would hit obstructed the shooter, Seung-Hui Cho, who gunned downbound digit grouping in a bedchamber before walking crossways campus to blackball 30 more in a room building. He killed himself as police winking in.

"I conceive disregarding of what VT did that period or what individuals on the campus may hit finished or not finished that day, he was feat to shoot as many grouping as he could," said Stafford, whose company was paying $9,038 by Tech to appraise the university's actions in the environment of the Clery Act.

The Department of Education has said it would hit likeable to dustlike Colony Tech more than the maximum $27,500 for apiece of digit violations. It hasn't increased its fines to change for inflation since 1990.

Carter said it's not most the fine: "It's most accountability."

He adds that Tech is probable to pay more than $55,000 on its appeal. The journalism so far is unclear because Tech's in-house lawyers and the land attorney general's office aren't required to feature how much time they pay on individualist cases.

Tech has already reached an $11 million deciding with most of the victims' families, and is currently defending itself in a subject causa filed by digit other families.

To Steger, an attractiveness of the fines might support hold several nonreciprocal questions.

"The questions we hit are, one, why did it verify quaternary eld to produce the report?" Steger said. "Secondly, during those quaternary eld no digit from the Department of Education ever crosspiece to anyone at Colony Tech and they sure did not speak to me."

Department of Education spokeswoman Sara Gast said Tech had plentitude of possibleness to weigh in, but most of the impact was finished in writing.

"They were dead involved," she said.

Steger said the nature of the on-paper exchanges prefabricated it unclear how federal activity officials reached their conclusions, and attempts to intend that aggregation hit been fruitless.

"We conceive that not only for the interests of Colony Tech but the interests of every universities in Colony and higher activity crossways the United States, this demand of image and demand of due impact is not healthy for higher education," Steger said. "And to set back and play same it's OK is rattling not the correct thing to do."

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Dena Potter reportable from Hampton, Va.

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