Relatives Have Mixed Feelings About Meetings With Officials

Many Questions Expected at This Weekend's Gathering

When relatives of the Virginia Tech shooting victims gather as a group to meet formally with university President Charles W. Steger this weekend, Peter Read will have a question.

"I just want to know why is it so hard to say 'I'm sorry,' " he said. "That's the one thing I don't understand at this late date."

The university agreed to the meeting, one of two to be held this weekend, as part of a settlement reached with the families in June. The meetings, which are closed to the public, mark the first formal gatherings between the families and top university officials who made the decisions April 16, 2007, when Seung Hui Cho shot and killed 32 students and faculty members before turning the gun on himself.

"In cold, bureaucratic, legal terms, it's just a meeting. But that's not what it is for us," said Read, who lost his daughter, Mary Read, in the massacre. "There are questions, some of which there will never be answers to and some of which could be answered but for various reasons won't be. But this is one more opportunity we have to pose them."

In a letter to the families Sept. 15, Steger wrote that he hoped the meetings would be used as a "genuine effort to communicate candidly and respectfully."

"My most important message to you," he wrote, "is that it is my earnest desire for our group meeting to be a time when we can talk openly and honestly -- face to face, back and forth -- and provide you with the information that will help you move closer to resolving the questions and issues that are in your thoughts daily."

Under the settlement, the members of the university's Policy Group will explain what changes have been made on campus since the attack.

They will then take questions -- and there will probably be many.

Families have publicly criticized Steger's decisions on that day and his response afterward. They have asked why he didn't close the campus after two students were found shot in a dormitory two hours before Cho would kill 30 more people at Norris Hall. They have also questioned why Steger remains in his position.

"The many families I've dealt with, and there is no exception, are outraged that this was not prevented and that this man has not apologized," said Vincent Bove, a spokesman for several of the families. "They want to look Steger in the face and say, 'Stop with the denial, the deception and the distortion.' "

Andrew Goddard, whose son, Colin Goddard, survived but still carries three bullets in him, said he will come with questions, including one that his wife left him before leaving the country on business. But he said he and others are looking less for an apology than an explanation.

"When something like that happens, you've got to straighten it out in your mind," Goddard said. "There isn't an angle that I haven't looked at it from, even from the other end of the barrel."