"

What happened yesterday:

When I first heard about the multiple shootings at Virginia Tech yesterday, my first thought was about my friends, and my second thought was "I bet it was Seung Cho."

Cho was in my playwriting class last fall, and nobody seemed to think much of him at first. He would sit by himself whenever possible, and didn't like talking to anyone. I don't think I've ever actually heard his voice before. He was just so quiet and kept to himself. Looking back, he fit the exact stereotype of what one would typically think of as a "school shooter" – a loner, obsessed with violence, and serious personal problems. Some of us in class tried to talk to him to be nice and get him out of his shell, but he refused talking to anyone. It was like he didn't want to be friends with anybody. One friend of mine tried to offer him some Halloween candy that she still had, but he slowly shook his head, refusing it. He just came to class every day and submitted his work on time, as I understand it.

A major part of the playwriting class was peer reviews. We would write one-act plays and submit them to an online repository called Blackboard for everyone in the class to read and comment about in class the next day. Typically, the students give their opinions about the plays and suggest ways to make it better, the professor gives his insights, then asks the author to comment about the play in class.

When we read Cho's plays, it was like something out of a nightmare. The plays had really twisted, macabre violence that used weapons I wouldn't have even thought of. Before Cho got to class that day, we students were talking to each other with serious worry about whether he could be a school shooter. I was even thinking of scenarios of what I would do in case he did come in with a gun, I was that freaked out about him. When the students gave reviews of his play in class, we were very careful with our words in case he decided to snap. Even the professor didn't pressure him to give closing comments.

After hearing about the mass shootings, I sent one of my friends a Facebook message asking him if he knew anything about Seung Cho and if he could have been involved. He replied: "dude that's EXACTLY what I was thinking! No, I haven't heard anything, but seriously, that was the first thing I thought when I heard he was Asian."

While I "knew" Cho, I always wished there was something I could do for him, but I couldn't think of anything. As far as notifying authorities, there isn't (to my knowledge) any system set up that lets people say "Hey! This guy has some issues! Maybe you should look into this guy!" If there were, I definitely would have tried to get the kid some help. I think that could have had a good chance of averting yesterday's tragedy more than anything.

While I was hesitant at first to release these plays (because I didn't know if there are laws against it), I had to put myself in the shoes of the average person researching this situation. I'd want to know everything I could about the killer to figure out what could drive a person to do something like this and hopefully prevent it in the future. Also, I hope this might help people start caring about others more no matter how weird they might seem, because if this was some kind of cry for attention, then he should have gotten it a long time ago.

As far as the victims go, as I was heading to bed last night, I heard that my good friend Stack (Ryan Clark) was one of the first confirmed dead. I didn't want to believe that I'd never get to talk to him again, and all I could think about was how much I could tell him how much his friendship meant to me. During my junior year, Ryan, another friend and I used to get breakfast on Tuesdays and Thursdays at Shultz Dining Hall, one of the cafeterias on campus, and it was always the highlight of my day. He could talk forever it seemed and always made us laugh. He was a good friend, not just to me, but to a lot of people, and I'll miss him a lot.

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this really shocked me. the columbine massacre is so infamous and all school-shootings post-columbine were always compared to it, and the virginia-tech shooting claimed 33 ppl including the shooter which is more than twice it. i read a couple of his plays that had been put on the internet from his uni classes. i dont really know how i feel, theyre obviously screwed and i dont really understand why nothing was done to stop this .. but then again what could have been done. i feel sick thinking about him and what he did . these are some extracts from plays they had to write in college.

From "Richard McBeef":

"What are you, a Catholic priest! i will not be molested by an aging balding overweight pedophilic stepdad named Dick! Get your hands off me you sicko! Damn you, you Catholic priest! Just stop it, Michael Jackson. Let me guess, you have a pet named Dick in Neverland ranch and you want me to go with you to pet him, right?"

"I hate him. Must kill Dick. Must kill Dick. Dick must die. Kill Dick... Richard McBeef. What kind of name is that? What an ass-hole name. I don't like it. And look at his face. What an ass-hole face. I don't like his face at all. You don't think i can kill you, Dick? You don't think i can kill you? Gotcha. Got one eye... Got the other eye."

From "Mr. Brownstone":

"I wanna kill him"

"I wanna watch him bleed like he made us kids bleed"

If you want to read them, here's the link:

Cho Seung-Hui

you really probably dont want to read it.

There's nothing really i can say about this.. one persons sadness and disturbia killed all these people. I don't want to hate, but i think i do. hopefully something better for him came after death. i feel for all those affected
that's all