I predict the following short-term results: a rapid increase in talk about funding for highway maintenance at Federal and state levels, and a slew of scary stories on your local news about bridges in your area that are about to collapse from neglect. [...]
Band-aid on a hemorrhage. It's happening here in Blacksburg, too. In the aftermath of the Virginia Tech shootings, the biggest change has been this hugely publicized roll-out of "
VT ALERTS": instead of receiving emergency messages via e-mail, you can opt-in to receive them by text message instead. (So that next time someone shoots thirty-two people on our campus, an hour later the rescue workers will get to hear some ring-tone music to make their gruesome job more pleasant?)
The second biggest change is that they're (quite noisily to those of us who are teaching summer classes) replacing the locks on the doors of every classroom on campus. (So that next time, instead of going from classroom to classroom, the shooter will just pick students off as they cross the drillfield?)
So far, there's been very little serious attention directed at improving the way potentially dangerous students are connected to the help they need.