RICHMOND, Va. — Virginia Tech will appeal $55,000 in federal fines levied against the school for failing to quickly alert the campus during the 2007 mass shooting that killed 32 students and faculty members, the state announced yesterday.
State Attorney General Kenneth Cuccinelli made the announcement two days before the deadline to file an administrative appeal of the finding that the school violated federal law. He called the findings by the US Department of Education “absolutely appalling.’’
The federal agency imposed the fine in March after finding that the school had violated campus safety law by waiting too long to notify the campus after two students were shot to death in a dorm on April 16, 2007. An e-mail alert went out more than two hours later, about the time student Seung-Hui Cho was chaining shut the doors to a classroom building where he killed 30 more students and faculty and himself.
