this seems to be something that's prevalent in our society, that suicide is cowardly. as someone who has considered suicide a lot*, i have to admit that i don't understand this. what could be more dangerous than killing yourself? think about it -- if someone makes major life changes, such as quitting mathematics to open up a quilting store (hypothetical example, certainly not applicable to unquilting me), this is considered risky, not cowardly. the risk varies with how easy it is to get your previous life back. if you change professions, this is risky because you may not be able to go back to your first one. if you move cities, this is risky because you may not be able to go home again. if you decide to become a forest ranger, this is damn risky because you are turning your back on the world. well, suicide is the limiting case here; it's a huge risk, because barring being jesus or buddhism or quantum tunneling, you are not going to get your life back (and even in the first two, you won't get the same life back, and even atheist me has to concede that the likelihood of the last is even smaller than either of the first two.)
i mean, look at adolf hitler, who killed himself in a bunker. was he a coward? of course not. cowards don't stand up for their ideals enough to become leaders. cowards don't take a nation into a huge global conflict. cowards don't start an ethnic cleansing program which is extremely likely to result in clamor from an international community. i'm obviously not glorifying either hitler or the VT killer, but i just think that describing them as cowards is horribly inaccurate.
i guess this is an instance of the fact that if someone is viewed as evil enough, it becomes truth to apply any negative adjective to them.
on a related note, i read the guy's plays which were supposed to be twisted, and i didn't find them even remotely disturbing. i hope that doesn't make me a serial killer. and finally, while it's a tragedy etc. etc., on some level i'm glad he was asian, for stereotype-breaking purposes, just like i'm glad that the asian guy in the cingular commercials is the jerk.
* - even after reading this footnote, people will probably overreact to this throwaway comment. but i don't mean that i have been close to killing myself. i consider a lot of drastic life changes on a fairly regular basis; i can't really help myself from considering everything that comes to mind. some such changes include suicide, quitting math, moving to the middle of nowhere, getting my ear pierced, changing personalities, going by my middle name, and waking up in the morning on a regular basis. it's extremely rare for any of these cost-benefit analyses to be even remotely close, but certainly one of the things always on the con side of suicide is that i'm scared of death, of the finality. if i were less of a coward, it would have far less importance, although it would be unlikely to have made a difference so far in my life.