Good Morning America's Chris Cuomo gave VA Tech a rough going-over today regarding its failure to have removed Cho from campus before he murdered 32 people. Cuomo introduced the segment, entitled "Were Warning Signs Missed on Campus," this way:
CHRIS CUOMO: Now students, their parents and friends are left with many questions of whether or not the university did everything it could to prevent all this.
Cuomo then played a video clip of Anne Atkinson, the parent of a VA Tech student, asking: "why did they allow him to stay? I think this could have been prevented."
Cuomo then interviewed Dr. Christopher Flynn, the director of the VA Tech's counseling center, and posed some tough questions.
CUOMO: A harsh lesson for the university and with what you do. Looking at the history that now we've put together, on Cho, this manifesto an ugly example but also harrassment claims from two different women, mental health assistance that the university had to know about. Looking at all these details, do you feel now it's pretty clear the university did not do all that it could have here?
Flynn demurred: "I'm not prepared to say that." He managed to work in a complaint about how funding for mental illness "has been cut since the Reagan years. Our mental health system is underfunded."
CUOMO: But it does raise the question, what do you need to do to get removed from the general population of this university? You harrass two different girls, you have five different professors saying they're worried about you, you have an acquaintance saying you think you're going to kill yourself, you then get taken for psychiatric help and are found to be a threat to yourself. What do you need to do for the university to step up and say 'we're going to have to remove this person'?"
FLYNN: Well, after someone is released from a mental health facility, they can only be released when they are no longer a threat to self or others.
Yes, Flynn really did say that.
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