Feds say Virginia Tech violated campus security law; University disputes finding

Feds: Virginia Tech violated law in 07 massacre

RICHMOND, Va. — The U.S. Department of Education found that Virginia Tech broke federal campus security laws by waiting too long to notify students during the deadliest shooting rampage in modern U.S. history, a report released Tuesday said.

Tech disputed the department’s findings, saying university officials met standards in effect at the time of the shootings three years ago and that the report is colored by “hindsight bias.” It argues that the government is trying to retroactively apply regulations that were added two years after the shooting.

The report is the latest to criticize the school’s response to the killings of 33 people, including the student gunman, on April 16, 2007.

The school could be fined up to $55,000 for two violations alleged in the preliminary report, but no one will face criminal charges, according to the Tech official who drafted the response. Federal officials will consider the response from the school before they finalize their conclusion.

The Department of Education’s report said Tech violated the Clery Act’s requirement that universities offer a timely warning when possible danger arises. About two hours elapsed between the shootings of two students at a dormitory and an e-mail alert to the campus, sent at 9:26 a.m.

The massacre in the classroom building Norris Hall began at 9:40 a.m. when a mentally ill gunman, Seung-Hui Cho, chained the doors and killed 30 more people before committing suicide.

The delay was previously criticized in a state report and has drawn the ire of victims’ families.

The Department of Education said the warnings “were not prepared or disseminated in a manner to give clear and timely notice of the threat to the health and safety of campus community members.”

The university countered that before the shootings at its Blacksburg campus, federal education officials had never defined what “timely” meant in the Clery Act. Tech said Department of Education guidelines in effect in 2007, as well as industry practices, called for notices to be released within several hours or days.

A 2005 Department of Education handbook guiding schools on implementation of the Clery Act says: “The warning should be issued as soon as the pertinent information is available because the intent of a timely warning is to alert the campus community of continuing threats.”

The university also said education officials wrote in a 1994 entry in the Federal Register that the education secretary at the time “does not believe that a definition of ‘timely reports’ is necessary or warranted.”

The department added regulations in 2009 that require immediate notification upon confirmation of a dangerous situation or immediate threat to people on campus. Tech contends the government is trying to apply those modifications retroactively.

“It’s not realistic or appropriate to impart standards that were not in place in 2007,” the author of the response, Tech emergency management director Michael J. Mulhare, said in a telephone interview.

The Department of Education did not respond to a request for further comment on its findings and Tech’s response.

The department issued the report to Tech in January, but the university declined to release the report until it prepared a response. The documents were released in response to Freedom of Information Act requests from four media organizations, including The Associated Press.

Tech’s rebuttal of the latest report was criticized by the mother of one a shooting victim and the nonprofit organization that had asked federal education officials to investigate whether the security law was broken.

“I’m just extremely disappointed that instead of taking this as a lesson learned, they’re being incredibly defensive,” said S. Daniel Carter, director of public policy for Security On Campus

The Department of Education will take the university’s response into consideration in drafting a final report, Tech spokesman Larry Hincker said. It was unclear when the final report will be issued.

Tech also still faces a $10 million civil suit by the families of two slain students. Families of most of the other victims shared in an $11 million state settlement.

Suzanne Grimes, whose son Kevin Sterne was injured in the shootings, said it’s unfortunate the school continues to deny that it failed to keep the campus safe. She said a warning should have come immediately after the first two shootings.

“If they would have notified the community that there was a double homicide, 30 other deaths wouldn’t have happened and my son wouldn’t have been injured,” she said in a telephone interview.

Associated Press Writer Zinie Chen Sampson contributed to this report.