Additionally, those who make what could be life or death decisions can and will be held accountable. That is a tremendously heavy burden for any individual who happens to be in charge “at the moment,” should something like a shooting or other unforeseen incident occur. Unfortunately, this has become the legal and societal threshold that has been set by this verdict, as well as others. [See the article by Sara Lipka in The Chronicle of Higher Education, “Jury Holds Virginia Tech Accountable for Students’ Deaths, Raising Expectations of Colleges,” for additional insight.]
Ignorance, unpreparedness, and ineptitude are never acceptable in any personal or professional environment but when lives are at stake in an emergency, they are even more intolerable.
It is now part of the price and challenge that come with today’s leadership of institutions and facilities of all types. Educators become educators because they want to teach, just as administrators become administrators in institutions because they want to lead them. The same holds true for building managers, business owners, shopkeepers, sports stadium operators, and so forth. Every person in positions of these types does what they do for unique and personal reasons, but there is now the added responsibility of safeguarding people in their care from hazards of all types. I think that is an impossible, if not unbelievable, standard to set.
Damage to the World Trade Center caused by the 1993 car bombing. A jury found the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey responsible for the fatalities suffered due to the attack. ATF photo via Wikimedia Commons
No one, not Nostradamus, nor the crystal ball reading gypsy at the beach, can accurately tell you how events will play out. In terms of emergencies, trying to read what is going to happen in those situations is even more problematic, but unfortunately, it has become the unattainable standard that the public and now juries are willing to impose.
Think of it this way: If the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey can be found doubly liable for the actions of terrorists in the 1993 World Trade Center attacks that killed six and wounded hundreds more, given the fact that they didn’t bomb the buildings, it goes without saying that jurors would similarly find Virginia Tech negligent for the murders committed by Seung-Hui Cho on its campus. That is exactly what happened in these two tragic cases.
In so many ways, this type of unattainable standard does not make sense, especially given the fact that the Port Authority and Virginia Tech officials had no hand in the bombings or murders that took lives at their respective facilities. They were an office building complex and university campus, respectively, going about their daily business when all hell –literally – was let loose by forces that were beyond their control. All of the security efforts, emergency protocols, and preparedness efforts they may have had prior to these tragic events occurring seem to make no difference to a jury when it tells you, “ You’re negligent,” “You’re liable,” and “You should have seen it coming.”
The 9/11 Commission was absolutely right to castigate our government and its citizenry for its “failure of imagination” in not thinking a spectacular terrorist attack might occur, but unless someone has a time machine that allows them to see the headlines of the next 24 hours, the added burden of liability is an absolute guarantee for anyone following a truly “bad day.”
I guess it goes along with the historical scar that will be there forever more, never forgotten by history.