From: ma@cc.usu.edu
Newsgroups: soc.culture.china
Subject: Re: Anniversary for the Halloween Tragedy in University of Iowa
Date: 9 Nov 92 11:55:19 MDT
Organization: Utah State University

There have been many  articles in Chinese language media (e.g. The World
Journal, and the one in CND-CM), as well as postings on SCC about
the  Lu Gang and his killing incident in Iowa City. So far, they didn't
provide a satisfactory picture for the persons involved and the incident
itself from my point of view. There are very few direct reports from persons
who knew Lu Gang and the other deads from Iowa City, especially from the
Department of Physics and Astronomy. Other articles are simply collections
of the news reports and/or pure speculations.
The recent article on The World Journal, "Gun, Said everything", is such a
collections with some derivations. There are many errors in the articles so
that I can tell that if he interviewed some people, many of those got the
"facts" from rumors. For example, in that department,
there were four Chinese students from the
Mainland before Lu Gang. I mean graduate students, not including those visiting
scholars. One even got his Ph. D before Lu Gang arrived. However, the article
said, Lu Gang was the FIRST student in the physics Dept. from mainland China.
Then the article made some derivation from this important "fact". Another
example is that some Chinese students once beated Lu Gang up. There was NO
beating. 
The article on CMD-CM is totally a biased THEORY. It ASSUMED that everything
on Lu Gang 's letters was true, then made the conclusion. The author used
interviews (if he interviewed a few people) just to support his conclusion.
All major "facts" in the article were the "facts" viewed from Lu Gang's eyes.
Just read those letters and this article, one can easily see that.
The article even didn't make a simple fact straight. For example, The article
said, Lu Gang had a medium height. That is OK to me. Lu Gang was a bit short than
175 cm. Then it said, Goertz (Lu's advisor) was NOT tall. If I didn't know
those people, I would get an impression that Goertz was about as tall as Lu Gang
,or a little bit shorter. But the fact is, Goertz was more than 180 cm. He was
tall even in the european standard.
How do I know these things? Because I personally knew both Lu Gang and Shan
Linhua, I personally knew Goertz and Nicholson (the Dept. Chairman) for many 
years. Although I was no longer in Iowa City during the killing, it is not
hard to tell if an article is far from or close to the truth.
My comment is: Lu Gang's action can NOT be justified although others might
misconducted in some cases. There are ugly things everywhere. Goertz was kind
of harsh to his students, not to only Lu Gang. I saw an american female 
student weeping in their group meeting. Dealing with people (especially the
advisors) is a skill. Shan Linhua had the skill. Nothing wrong with that.
Shan Linhua could adjust himself in order to survive in this society. He did
well. He graduated early and got the post doc position. There was nothing wrong
with that. That was not really a competition between Shan and Lu, because if
there had been no Shan, it wouldn't mean Lu could get the job. Even though 
it was a competition between them, killing your opponent is not the normal way.
Lu had a bad relation with his advisor. But that was not so bad. I knew there
was a student in another department who secretly disappeared, and kept his
trace secret being afraid of his advisor following him and doing further
sabotage to him. 
A lot of things contributed to cause the incident. Not be able to find a job,
didn't get the award, didn't easily pass the thesis defense, didn't have a
steady female partner, his parents were not rich enough and didn't have
an oversea relative so that he could come as a self-supported student, in
stead of a government supported (both Lu and Shan were in CUSPEA), his 
parents didn't know about high education so that he ran into a wrong field,
and so on (some of these factors also from Lu's letters). But those are common
problems. Most people have those problems sooner or later. But not many kill.
  
We can learn things from the incident. But we learn wrong things from the 
misleading information. I prefer to hear real facts from people who have
first hand information. Let us listen to the people from IOWA.

Ma 
A former UI student