From Blacksburg to New Paltz

by Eric Francis Coppolino and illustrations by Emil Alzamora, April 30, 2007

How much money would we spend to prevent a catastrophe like the one that happened at Virginia Tech last month? Let’s say we knew in advance, for sure and for certain, that something like this was going to happen, let’s say some time in the next 10 years. Then let’s say that with an act of the legislature, or an expenditure by a government agency, we could—for sure—prevent it from manifesting; prevent all that loss of life, all the grief, all the tearing apart of families and communities. How much would it be worth?
And would we do it? It’s a great question for a university ethics class, but it’s also a real question in our world.
The day that Cho Seung-Hui opened fire on his fellow campus community members, killing 32 of them and injuring many more, I was preparing a special edition to be sent out just past the Aries New Moon addressing an environmental massacre that has been developing on the state college campus in New Paltz since 1991. At the time, it seemed little more than an odd synchronicity that a heartbreaking campus story would become the focus of world attention at the same time I was doing what I could, that same day, to call attention back to dioxins and PCBs in four dormitories at SUNY New Paltz.
As the long hours of this week stretched out, however, I began to get the connection.
Let’s look at the two situations individually, so we know what we’re comparing. In Virginia this week, a student lost control of his mind and shot several dozen people. This is shocking because mass death is always shocking; and also because people expect to be safe when they go away to college. My mom, Camille, put it succinctly in an e-mail to me this week: “It’s not just that this happened here at home. It’s the whole issue of where danger lies. That is not to say it’s okay for our kids to die and lose their feet in a ridiculous war, but it’s no surprise either. No one thinks they are going to French class and will get shot. Who is prepared to hit the floor? Or barricade the door? Or jump out of a window?”
Contrast this with SUNY New Paltz. Imagine this scenario: Your kid dreams of being a schoolteacher, and was accepted there, planning an education major. The big day comes, a sunny afternoon in August, the first day of college. You and your family drive from Long Island up to the Hudson Valley turn right off of the Thruway and you’re in another world. The town is utterly charming, and the mountain setting is stunning enough to make Northern California a little envious. You follow the campus map to Bliss Residence Hall, go to the desk, check in. The roommate’s family is there, and they’re of course very nice.
You unload the car, then go out for lunch at the Bistro and basically feel great. This is a major turning point: Your child is now a young adult, taking a tangible step toward independence.
What you don’t know is this: You just moved your son or daughter into a building where an electrical explosion one cold morning in December 1991 sent levels of toxins spiking a million times the “safe limit.” You don’t know that the radiators and air vents in the building were contaminated when thick, greasy PCB- and dioxin-tainted smoke literally soaked the place, rising rapidly because the smoke was so hot and the air was so cold. You don’t know that in just the first three years, more than $36 million was spent, supposedly to clean the campus, and that the cleanup effort was wracked with scandal, controversy and crisis from the first days. All you see is the surface layer: a nice, if somewhat old, dormitory on a fairly typical campus. You never planned for your child to die of leukemia six years later. And you are appalled that a basic Google search of “New Paltz + PCBs” warns of just this potential—but a little too late.