Memos show how US Virginia Tech handled media

Washington: A week after the Virginia Tech killings, as a still-numb campus braced for classes to resume, university officials lined up a cast of speakers for the media: four students, three faculty members and a counsellor.

Each, in his or her own words, described the significance of that day. They spoke about not being defined by the April 16, 2007, tragedy, about the power of tradition and the desire to move toward the future. They, according to a memo tucked away in the University Relations office, "followed the coaching session instructions beyond excellent."

"If we had scripted this entire event, we could not have done a better job than these folks did, spontaneously," reads a memo created for the University Relations office.

"One of the professors, who did not participate, said that if we got our participants from central casting, we would not have had better players."

The memo is one of about 20,000 documents recently released. In a June 17 settlement, attorneys for the victims' families and attorneys for the state and university agreed before Richmond Circuit Court Judge Theodore Markow that thousands of documents pertaining to the shooting and the school's response would be made public.

Document archive

University officials said that they have time until mid-December to create a public archive of the documents and that it will eventually include the academic records of student gunman Seung Hui Cho and e-mails from senior university officials, including University President Charles W. Steger.

What has been released so far is five cardboard boxes brimming with papers that contain little information about Cho, the 32 students and faculty members he killed or how top university officials responded that morning.