Fire Va. Tech's president, some shooting victims' families say

Virginia Tech's leaders need to be held accountable for their actions during last year's massacre, survivors and families told Gov. Timothy M. Kaine yesterday.

Some said that probably means Tech President Charles W. Steger should be fired.

In two days of meetings with the governor during the weekend, families said the pay increases and praise Tech officials received after the April 16, 2007, shootings in which 32 students and faculty members were killed has sent the wrong signal to Tech leaders and is stalling needed change. The gunman, student Seung-Hui Cho, killed himself.

"The one thing we have always wanted is truth and accountability," said Chesterfield County resident Greg Gwaltney, whose 24-year-old son, Matthew, was killed that day.

Survivors and families told the governor that Tech's mishandling of alerts during an incident this month underscores their concern that little has changed at Tech since the massacre, the largest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. The school's new emergency-alert system didn't reach many people with messages Nov. 13, and the alert wasn't sent until 50 minutes after the incident, which turned out to be a false alarm.

Families believe a delayed warning after the first two shootings on April 16 put their children and spouses at risk. Nearly 2½ hours later, Cho killed 30 more in a separate building.

"Accountability, they have raised in a very direct way," Kaine said, speaking after yesterday's session in the state Capitol.

"That's one area we are going to thinking about. Obviously we are going to be communicating what we heard to the board of visitors and leadership of Virginia Tech."

Survivors and families also told the governor they felt they'd received little support from Tech officials after April 16, with some saying they felt they'd been shut out of the Hokie community.

Speaking afterward, some said they tried to explain to Kaine how upsetting it was that Steger has never said he did anything wrong or would change any of his actions the day of the massacre. They said it makes them feel as if the school didn't care that so many died and were injured.

About two dozen survivors and victims' family members met yesterday for nearly three hours with the governor in Richmond, after Kaine met with about 35 in Northern Virginia on Saturday.

The meetings were required by the state's legal settlement with survivors and victims' families, as were sessions last month during which police and Tech officials revealed critical facts that contradicted the official state account of the tragedy.

"I realized that I'd been looking at the report differently," Kaine said. "I was looking at it for its recommendations, and they see it as a historical record."

Kaine told the families he would look at ways to work with them to correct errors in the report.

He also thanked them for their support this year on mental-health and other reforms recommended by the report, saying they played a key role in passing 25 pieces of legislation.

Families said they want to work with Kaine next year to protect mental-health funding and on legislation to regulate guns on campuses and sales of weapons at gun shows.

"He's one of the only people who have listened to us," said Short Pump resident Andy Goddard, whose son, Colin, survived being shot four times. "A lot of people have told us things they thought we wanted to hear and then wouldn't do them."

Kaine said state officials are moving to fix a problem with the settlement's mechanism for reimbursing medical and mental-health expenses related to April 16, by issuing checks through a different state agency.

"These meetings were productive and intense," Kaine said. "People came really wanting to share a lot of thoughts."

He said he wanted to take a little time to digest everything he heard and planned to contact survivors and families in the next few days with answers to questions and proposals to respond to their concerns.