Texas and Virginia: A Bloodied Window into Changes in American Public Life

The comparison of two university massacres, at the University of Texas and Virginia Tech, at a roughly forty-year interval, allows a focused historical inquiry. Changes in media but also public emotional standards created quite different reactions to mass killings, particularly in terms of public grief, memorialization, and efforts to compensate. Assessment also suggests strengths, weaknesses, and question marks of the contemporary approach compared to its 1960s antecedent.