A college president is accused of criticizing the reaction of Va. Tech students when he tries to suggest to his own students how to deal effectively with a similar situation at his school. Of course, the fact that it’s Paige Patterson, president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and a noted member of the conservative wing of the Baptist Church, has nothing to do with the criticism. Sure. Here’s what he said:

“All you had to do was have six or eight [students] rush him right at that time and 32 people wouldn’t have died,” Dr. Patterson said of Seung-Hui Cho, who went on a lethal shooting spree, then shot himself.

The seminary president added: “You don’t let things like that happen, guys. We just don’t do it.”

Predictably, a police officer counseled people not to do anything:

Sgt. Allan Baron of the department of security and university police at Texas A&M University would not recommend that someone without training charge an armed assailant.

“The best advice you could probably give to somebody in those type of situations is to look for a way to escape and get help immediately,” he said.

As I wondered a day or two ago, why do policemen say such things? How could it possibly have been worse at Va. Tech if a few computer programmers with no military training rushed Cho? I would hope that administrators at Duke, NCCU, UNC and NCSU are giving their students advice similar to Patterson’s, not the above police officer. I think that’s called training.