Almost two weeks after the tragedy at Virginia Tech, Pipe Dream has been filled with columns discussing the shootings. It’s understandable. We’re college students with emotional reactions and opinions. But the one facet that has been discussed least, ironically enough, is the media’s reaction to the largest school massacre in modern U.S. history.

With the publication of the shooter’s videos, hours of footage documenting his logic (if you can call it that) for his violent rampage, Seung-Hui Cho’s face and words have been splashed across newspapers and television throughout the country. Some, however, oppose this flood of information, holding that it deflects the necessary attention from mourning the victims and focuses on other issues which do not correlate with the events of April 16.

Simply put, they are wrong. Regardless of the media’s motives, whether it is to raise ratings, to appear altruistic or to actually provide information, the killer’s manifesto, of sorts, needed be released.

It is unfortunate that his wishes are being carried out and that his name gets this sort of attention, but that’s it ‘ a name. Seung-Hui Cho. That is all that is left of the person responsible for the deaths of 32 innocent people: college students like us and professors just like ours. There will always be sick and twisted people in the world and there will be tragedy as long as there are people capable of such horrors. This aspect of human nature just sucks.

Yet to not look beyond what happened at Virginia Tech is a cop out. Yes, one individual was responsible. But to stop there is to guarantee repetition. If you don’t want history to repeat itself, you have to examine some components of what happened there to try to change them for the future. Raising debates on gun control or mental health screenings ‘ these don’t take attention away from the victims, but try, in some minuscule way, to make their senseless deaths effect some change.

‘ Nora Slonimsky is a junior English and history major and is assistant Opinion editor.