My thoughts on Cho Seung-Hui

Horrified though I am at what he did, I find myself unable to hate him or even to hold him accountable for his actions, because he was obviously quite severely mentally ill. While nothing can possibly justify his brutal mass murdering spree, the fact is that he was psychotic and should have been committed to a mental institution before he reached the breaking point. I understand how difficult it is to help the mentally ill -- especially, as is usually the case, when they do not think they need help and do not want to be helped. Legally, the system’s hands are tied. However, in Cho’s case, he was absolutely failed by the system, as he had been hospitalized, evaluated, diagnosed to be a danger to himself, and yet released and simply told to seek outpatient treatment. He clearly was not going to do so, and since he had been deemed a danger to himself, he could have been involuntarily committed, as I understand the law.

Ordinarily, I don’t like to play Monday morning quarterback, but in this case, the warning bells had been chiming for at least a couple of years, and it is both tragic and frustrating that nothing substantial was done about them. There is a fair chance that this tragedy could have been prevented, and that makes me both angry and sad.

Furthermore, there are certain factors which clearly contributed to Cho’s psychotic meltdown and which infuriate and frustrate me because I can empathize to a degree with what he went through. I read in the news today how Cho was tormented in school when he was younger, due to the fact that he was different -- he didn’t speak the language, he was shy, his family was poor, and so he was mocked, ostracized, and bullied by his classmates in junior high. As someone who was also mocked, ostracized, and bullied in school for many years, my heart breaks for him. I was also “different” -- I wore glasses from first grade until I finally got contact lenses when I was fifteen. My family was not well off financially, and the clothes I wore were cheap, often hand-me-downs, ugly, and way, way out of style. I lost my two front teeth in an accident at the age of four, and so I had a huge gap in the front of my mouth until my adult teeth came in when I was eight. I was painfully shy, and to top it all off, I was an excellent student and so was also teased for being a “geek” and a “school-girl” (which was supposed to be an insult directed at smart kids). I had no friends in school, I was teased mercilessly, and on more than one occasion, I was physically beaten up by school bullies.

So, in short, I understand how painful it is to be the school outcast. Children are mean -- meaner and more thoughtless than most adults. Certainly, not everyone who is harassed and ill-treated by classmates as a child grows up to be a psychotic mass-murderer. Fortunately, Cho is in a tiny minority as far as that goes. However, I wish that children could be made to understand the effects their actions have on those they abuse. Even those who go on to move past such negative childhood experiences never really get over the pain they were caused. Low self-esteem and fear of rejection can last a lifetime. Cho was beaten down at a young age, for things that were not his fault, by people who were simply looking for a reason to be cruel, and he never got past it. The fact that he was prone to mental illness meant that it had a terrible, devastating result.

My heart aches for Cho’s victims, those who survived the attack but will be forever scarred, and those whose loved ones were brutally taken from them. It also aches for Cho, however. While I cannot relate to his psychosis or his actions, I do understand his pain.