Cho case highlights knee-jerk laws

By Darrell Laurant

Published: April 18, 2008

One of the most disturbing pieces of information that dribbled out from the flurry of “first anniversary” stories on the 2007 Virginia Tech shootings was this: Apparently, Seung-Hui Cho’s parents weren’t told by school or public health officials that their son had been deemed a “danger to himself and others.”

That’s certainly information I would have wanted to know, had I been in their situation. But because of (sh-h-h-h) privacy laws, they were kept out of the loop. I wonder what the fallout from that would have been had Cho gone back to Northern Virginia and shot his tragically uninformed parents, rather than more than 40 of his schoolmates and teachers (32 of whom died).

To me, this is a symptom of a larger problem—public officials of all sorts abdicating responsibility by hiding behind inflexible laws.

If a law is inflexible, it absolves those operating under its jurisdiction of all coherent thought. Sure, it probably would have been a good idea to inform the Chos that their son might be dangerous, but a law is a law. Privacy, you see.

The premise to these hard-and-fast rules always seems reasonable on the surface. People should be entitled to keep the rest of the world from learning of their mental or emotional problems. Kids shouldn’t bring weapons to school. Incarcerated criminals shouldn’t be paroled before they’re ready to be reintroduced into society.

The problem is, making these inflexible—all the “zero tolerance” statues, for example—ignores the fact that situations vary widely.

There is a trend now to make everyone suffer for the worst or most troubled among us. Because a handful of lunatics flew airplanes into the World Trade Center, everyone—even 90-year-old women in wheelchairs—have to take off our shoes while passing through airport check-in. Because some people enter the country illegally, we all have to fill out forms at work asking us to prove that we’re U.S. citizens.

In Virginia, this started when former Gov. George ("Tough on crime") Allen decided to ingratiate himself with the electorate by eliminating parole. Never mind that some of those state prisoners might have been more than ready to return among us—because the parole board could concievably make a mistake, it was no parole for anybody.

On the public school level, “zero tolerance” has led to kids being expelled from school for being in possession of nail files or playfully shouting at a classmate: “I’ll kill you for that.”

Sure, that particular decision seemed outlandish, But, you see, it’s zero tolerance.

Or zero thought.