UC Davis to hold candlelight vigils to honor victims By: Talia Kennedy Posted: 4/20/07 The gunman who shot and killed 32 students at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University on Monday was identified this week as Cho Seung-Hui, 23, a senior English student at the university. On Wednesday, NBC News reported receiving videos and a letter from Cho, sent between the time Cho shot and killed two students in an on-campus residence hall Monday morning and when he gunned down 30 more people before turning his weapon on himself. "You have vandalized my heart, raped my soul and torched my conscience," said Cho in one video, in which he is shown brandishing firearms, a hammer and other weapons. "Thanks to you, I die like Jesus Christ to inspire generations of the weak and the defenseless people. "You forced me into a corner and gave me only one option. The decision was yours. Now you have blood on your hands that will never wash off," he said. Published reports have said Cho was receiving mental-health services, but that they were not provided by Virginia Tech. He was also accused of making unwanted phone calls and sending unwanted instant messages to two fellow students in 2005, but both declined to press charges. A professor said he made students in her class uncomfortable with his violently themed writing and by taking photographs of female students from under the desks in the classroom. A counselor once recommended Cho be committed to a mental-health facility on an involuntary basis, but a judge denied the request, saying Cho was not a danger to himself or others. In the aftermath of the shootings, universities across the country have scheduled prayer vigils to honor the fallen Virginia Tech students and faculty members. The Cal Aggie Christian Association held a prayer vigil on campus Wednesday to honor the Virginia Tech victims, and two more services are scheduled for today. The UC Davis student assistants to the chancellor, Hayley Steffen and Alfredo Arredondo, along with ASUCD officials, will host a candlelight vigil today at 7 p.m. at the Memorial Union Patio. Attendees will observe a moment of silence, and time will be designated to reflect on Monday's events. A second candlelight service and prayer vigil will begin today at 7:30 p.m. at the Chabad House, at 321 Russell Blvd. across the street from the northern edge of the UC Davis campus. The event is hosted by Chabad of Davis, an organization that promotes the Jewish faith. Students who would like to discuss their reactions to the Virginia Tech shootings should contact UC Davis' Counseling and Psychological Services at 752-0871 or visit its office in 219 North Hall. Any suspicious activity on campus should be reported to the UC Davis Police Department by calling 9-1-1 from campus phones or 752-1230 from any phone. -- Original Source:The California Aggie - April 20, 2007
Virginia Tech shooting a sign for contemplation and change
By: Posted: 4/23/07 Last week was one of tragedy as schools and universities across the United States faced the terror of threats of bombs and shootings on their campuses. The events of April 16 have brought the issues of gun control, freedom, mental health and emergency preparedness to the forefront of the news and our minds. But no one suffered more than the students, teachers, family and friends affected directly by the Virginia Tech shooting on April 16. For all of those with connections to Virginia Tech who are grieving from the tragedy, we'd like to express our sincere condolences. We'd also like to commend everyone who has given University of Nebraska-Lincoln students, faculty and staff members opportunities to contemplate. We've been impressed by the outpouring of compassion that occurred on the UNL campus in many forms: signs, cards and candlelight vigils. But Friday's events on the UNL campus put a damper upon the solemn nature of the week. Like dozens of other college campuses around the country, UNL endured its own copycat scenario on Friday, the anniversary of the Columbine shootings in Colorado. We can't fathom what would motivate a person to say a bomb was planted in the College of Engineering - or anywhere else for that matter. Early Friday afternoon, a man called the dean's office claiming he planted a bomb in the engineering college. Othmer and Nebraska halls and the Walter Scott Engineering Center were subsequently evacuated and closed while police searched the building. The terrorist threat led to the cancellation of the engineering college's recruitment day, for which some prospective UNL students traveled hundreds of miles to attend. It also fostered a sense of fear that had already emerged for some on campus who realized the Virginia Tech shootings could have happened anywhere, even here. Luckily, the threat was an empty one, as were the dozens of other threats that shut down college and high school campuses across the country last week. Not that the threats shouldn't be taken seriously. Virginia Tech encountered two bomb threats during the two weeks before the shooting. Police are still investigating to see if the threats and the shooting were related. Of course, no one wants to live in fear of a similar shooting. And no one should advocate restrictions on our freedoms and civil liberties like those invoked as the United States embarked on the war on terror. At the same time, we're all left asking what can be done to prevent this from happening again. Some are saying we need to strengthen our gun-control laws - or even more extreme, allow people to carry concealed weapons on campus for their own protection. According to an article published in The New York Times, Virginia Tech shooter Cho Seung-Hui should never have been allowed to purchase guns. In 2005 he was declared a danger to himself and referred to psychiatric treatment, which according to federal law should have prohibited him from buying a firearm. But Virginia's background checks failed, and Cho fell through the cracks. To prevent gun-related tragedies of any magnitude in the future, our state government leaders need to ensure Nebraska's background checks are accurate and thorough, let alone invoking stricter gun-control laws. Gun-control laws would not be enough, however, in a culture that is so immersed in violence. It's on our prime time television and in our movies. Early investigations suggest Cho studied violence. And as his video released to NBC indicated, he glorified the Columbine High School shooters and considered himself a martyr. Politicians and lobbyists on both sides of the gun-control debate will use the Virginia Tech shooting to further their own interests. But our only true solution will be to cultivate an environment in which violence is no longer seen as the first answer to every problem, a sign of masculinity or an expression of power. Without that attitude change, what happened at Virginia Tech could happen anywhere. And we shouldn't have to live in fear. -- Original Source: Daily Nebraskan - April 23, 2007
Josh Swartzlander <jdwriter19@yahoo.com>
Virginia Tech shootings Bring Out Stereotypes
April 24, 2007 It was pointed out to me the other night that I'm a living, breathing embodiment of the stereotypical quiet Asian. I was among a few friends and some friends of friends in the bar at AT&T Park prior to a San Francisco Giants game. I was the only Asian American male in the group, but there was a loud, gregarious Asian American woman. The two Asians in the group seemed to be polar opposites, something that was apparent to everyone at the bar. I've been thinking about expectations and stereotypes since news broke that the gunman in the Virginia Tech killings was Korean American. My evening at the bar made me ponder it some more. Everyone else was more than a few drinks ahead of me, and I had driven to the ballpark, so I was nursing a beer. I was also concentrating on the game, which had started and was being shown on the bar's TVs, though this is no excuse for being withdrawn when among friends, and even friends of friends. It didn't go unnoticed by the others, who gave me a few jabs about being so quiet and that I should "keep it down." It was also very apparent that Unusually Loud Asian Woman, who I didn't know, was no quiet Asian. So much so that I was told to stand next to her so "osmosis" would quiet her down. After taking a place next to Unusually Loud Asian Woman and seemingly calming her down, a Friend and Friend of Friend asked me, "have you ever met a Chinese woman who's like this?" So on the one hand, I'm quiet so I'm Walking Stereotype, but on the other hand, Unusually Loud Asian Woman is just having a good time at a bar, but there seems to be something out of place with that as well. The comments and events I describe were all in good fun. We're all aware of our differences and perceived differences. It's what you do with that knowledge that can cause problems. There was no malice that night. I did start thinking more about stereotypes afterward. Reading Jeff Yang's analysis of Virginia Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho's race in Salon.com gave me more food for thought. The article really hit home on the effect stereotypes can have. Yang's story and many others since the shooting also talk about the collective gasp that many Asian Americans let out when news broke that the killer was Korean American. As a journalist, I worried that the media would focus on Cho's race without any context, as Thomas Huang writes about at Poynter.org. Many Korean Americans felt a collective sense of guilt, as did many people in South Korea, even though Cho hadn't lived there since he was a boy. Emerson College journalism Professor Paul Niwa, quoted in Yang's article, has a viable explanation: Most of the perpetrators of mass school killings have been white. After those shootings, do you think white people felt guilty that the shooter was white? Do you think white people felt that since the shooter was white, that the shooter would give society a bad impression of whites? A shooter can be white and nobody thinks that race played a part in the crime. But when someone nonwhite commits a crime, this society makes the person's race partially at fault. I don't mean to belittle the killings at Virginia Tech by drawing an analogy to my night at the bar, but I think some of what Niwa says is at play. Sometimes I can have the personality of a cardboard box, so I'm Walking Stereotype, but for non-Asians who are socially awkward, they're just quiet. And Unusually Loud Asian Woman can't be herself, either, without being, well, Unusually Loud Asian Woman. There is nothing innate to being "quiet" and being Asian American. I know plenty of Asian Americans who are more like Unusually Loud Asian Woman, and at times envy them for their ease around people. But I am who I am. The cardboard box that once held the really quiet, painfully shy kid is open. I've been making my way out. Unfortunately, it appears that whatever was holding back Seung-Hui Cho burst to tragic results. Posted by harry at April 24, 2007 10:07 AM -- Original Source: Hyphen Magazine Blog http://www.hyphenmagazine.com/blog/archives/2007/04/virginia_tech_s.html Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 1.0.
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Virginia Tech shootings create media ethics debate
Jeff Vrabel / GateHouse Media Thu Apr 19, 2007, 05:01 PM CDT BLACKSBURG, VA - Regular readers of this column - and hello to all three of you - know that, when appropriate, partially appropriate, tangentially connected or carries the very slight possibility of being funny to someone somewhere, I have no problem resorting to remarks of questionable taste. Sometimes, if I can and my editors agree, I can slip a colorful adjective in there or two. When it comes to matters of obscenity and the maintenance of high culture, a conservative prude I am not. But something about being unable to avoid pictures of Cho Seung-Hui pointing a gun at me Thursday was more nauseatingly loathsome than I might have even expected. People with lengthier titles and livelier paychecks than mine will by now have spent hours and days debating the judiciousness of using the pictures of a killer doing what he did when he executed more than 30 people on Monday, pointing the gun at me, at you, at himself, at whatever purported demons he'd invented. He did so on purpose, doing it with the intent to enrage after his death. With astonishing clarity, Cho's package to NBC News proved, over all else, that this was not a random bout of insanity, a snap. This was as premeditated a rampage as one could enact; one wouldn't be surprised if investigators soon discover a map and a set of blueprints. I'm not here to debate the news value, and were I sitting in the newsroom at NBC News when that package came in, I - nor any of you - have any idea how I would have reacted. But it feels an awful, awful lot like serving a black-hearted killer a drink at the bar and asking if he'd like to keep the bottle for free. This is what he wanted. This is what he's getting. There wasn't much chance that anything else would happen, really. Hopefully, at least some percentage of the country's 6 million pundits-posing-as-journalists will at least begin addressing the question of how much of the decision to run these photos was fueled by news judgment and how much was fueled by the media's increasingly desperate desire to keep up. By Tuesday, CNN had a bumper - not a segment, not a commercial, but one of those four-second clips that leads viewers into and out of ads - that flashed the phrase "CAMPUS SHOOTING" no fewer than eight times. Eight times! The font changed, got bigger, jumped around the screen, and finally settled front and center in bold type, where even if you were just flipping by or passing it at the airport, you could stop and wonder what's next. (Hilariously, the CNN outlet I was watching at the time punctuated its Cho coverage with a 90-second ad for a gun range.) At this point, calls for judiciousness will fall on deaf ears; as the moment for pure sympathy and horror seems to have already passed - well, it is Friday - now we can get on with the ransacking of grief, the creation of logos and theme music and the mortifying - and, for the most part, unavoidable - capitulation to the wishes of a killer. Jeff Vrabel can be reached at www.jeffvrabel.com -- Original Source: http://www.chicagosuburbannews.com/stcharles/opinions/x1721527709 Licensed under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 .
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Virginia Tech shootings shake the country
By Nicole Haley/Daily News staff GHS Tue Apr 17, 2007, 01:04 AM EDT NO DATA - The news seemed surreal for anyone who turned on the television yesterday. Even anchors on the major news networks reported asking law enforcement officials to repeat themselves, unable to believe what they were being told. But for Waltham native Marcus Ly, the shootings on Virginia Tech's campus were particularly difficult to comprehend. "I called a lot of my friends in Blacksburg. They're all OK," said Ly, a Virginia Tech grad student. "But it's just a lot of confusion, they don't really know anything more than we do reading the headlines." Speaking by phone yesterday from Minneapolis, Ly said he was in shock. A gunman killed 32 people on the campus and then took his own life, the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history. A 1995 Waltham High School graduate, Ly finished a graduate school program in industrial and systems engineering at Virginia Tech last winter. He was a representative on the university's Board of Visitors and worked closely with the president and higher levels of administration. "It's really the equivalent of something like this happening in Weston," said Ly, trying to describe the town of Blacksburg, home to the 2,600-acre Virginia Tech campus. Ly said Blacksburg was on of the safest communities he has ever lived in. Around 7:15 a.m. yesterday, the first shot rang out in West Ambler Johnston Hall, a co-ed dormitory. The gunfire resumed two hours later at Norris Hall, the engineering science and mechanics building, where most of the fatalities occurred, according to Associated Press reports. "It's more shocking than Columbine," Ly said, referring to the 1999 Columbine High School shootings in Littleton, Colo. Two teenagers killed 12 students and one teacher and wounded 24 more before the shooters committed suicide. Like many others watching the events unfold from home, Ly saw the video streamed on cnn.com and shown repeatedly on television, recorded by a Virginia Tech student on his cell phone. The shaky camera work shows police approaching one building as gunshot after gunshot rings out in the background. "I watched it and I knew exactly where it was," said Ly, who had walked that area on any given morning less than a year ago. Newton resident Theodore Fritz also recognized the buildings photographers captured throughout the day. "I'm certainly transfixed here," said Fritz, a 1961 Virginia Tech graduate who watched television reports throughout the day. A Boston University professor, the killings affected Fritz both as a college educator and as a Virginia Tech alumnus. "I think this probably could have happened anywhere," he said. Former Boston College baseball coach Pete Hughes, who now coaches at Virginia Tech, returned home with his team from a game at Florida State University about 3 a.m. yesterday. Hughes was rousted from bed by the news and immediately began scrambling to track down his players. One was "bunkered down" in the basement of Norris Hall and managed to escape, while three others fled the dorm, he said. Senior Beth Goldberg of Newton said students in lockdown on campus were able to communicate with the outside world by computer. "They seemed pretty calm," Goldberg said. "We didn't realize how bad it was at the time." Ly, who today runs an IT consulting company in Minnesota, said Virginia Tech was really the last place he would expect to see such a slaughter. Ly, who has lived in Chicago and Washington, D.C., repeatedly referred to Blacksburg as a "middle of nowhere" location - a quiet, small town where nothing much happens. "To all the Hokies out there, we're all very touched," Ly said, invoking the school's nickname. Yesterday was not the first time some of Virginia Tech's 25,000 students evacuated classrooms amidst chaos. On Friday, the school canceled classes in three buildings because of a bomb threat, and students fled Torgersen Hall on April 2 after police received a written bomb threat, according to reports from WDBJ in Roanoke, Va., and The Roanoke Times. Last August, the first day of classes was cut short as police searched out William Morva, a 24-year-old escaped convict who killed a security guard and sheriff's deputy at a hospital just two miles from the campus. Ly said he recognized Morva in news reports after the incident. "He was sitting next to me every day in the local coffee shop," Ly recalled. "He would always mumble to himself." "This is really bad news for the university," Ly said. "People are going to start transferring." -- Original Source: The Daily News Tribune - Waltham, Ma. http://www.dailynewstribune.com/local_news/x1650172714 Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported.
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In wake of tragedy, students reflect on shootings that rocked community, describe "fearful environment" Jordan Dods and Courtney Kessler, Cavalier Daily Associate Editors Only in her worst nightmares could Nicole Shyti have anticipated the carnage transpiring as she slept on the fifth floor of West Ambler Johnston dormitory yesterday morning. One floor beneath her, two Virginia Tech students had been murdered by a gunman who was still at large. It wasn't until 9:30 a.m., when a friend called her to make sure she was safe, that she learned about the killings. Shyti said she heard the sounds of siren after siren outside her dorm room. It was at that point, she said, that she knew something serious had happened. "I saw people running across the lawn outside, and it was just a lot of commotion," Shyti said. The shootings, which eventually left 33 dead, instantly transformed the Virginia Tech campus into a worldwide epicenter of tragedy and confusion. The campus was left nearly deserted as the university went on lockdown. An impromptu vigil on the Drill Field yesterday evening captured the intensity of emotion. Students locked arms -- some crying -- still waiting to find out whether friends had made it out alive. Virginia Tech student George Lane-Roberts said the rapid escalation of casualties left him "dumbfounded and shocked." As students spent the day within the familiar walls of their dorms, press outlets from around the world descended on Blacksburg to report the greatest tragedy to hit an American college campus. That blanket of media coverage provided many Tech students, hunkered around televisions, with their primary window into the events of the day. Tech student Joseph Chapman said he first found out about the shootings on TV before reading official e-mails from the university. Some have criticized Tech's response to the initial shooting as too little too late, saying that an earlier lockdown of campus could have prevented 30 deaths. The initial e-mail from the university came almost two hours after the first shooting occurred. Lane-Roberts recalled a shooting in Blacksburg on the first day of classes last August. He said he remembered that the entire campus had been locked down, even though no students were casualties of that shooting. Members of the media may be coming to their own conclusions, but students at Tech are still more confused than angered by the administration's response. Nathan Carter, who is still waiting to find out whether three of his friends are all right, said he doesn't blame the administration for its handling of the shootings. "Hindsight is 20/20," he said, adding that what Virginia Tech officials thought they had on their hands with the Ambler Johnston incident was a domestic dispute gone wrong. Freshman student Holly Faust said she was leaving campus, on her way to Radford University with a friend. By late afternoon, she said half of the students in her dorm had already left. Faust, who lives on the top floor of Slusher dormitory, one of the tallest buildings near Norris Hall, said a number of students went up to the top floor to observe clumps of police. Despite being within eye shot of the center of events, Faust said she also relied on television news reports for information about the unfolding events. Faust said she received the first official e-mail informing students of the shooting at about 9:30 a.m. and decided not to go to class. Many students first heard about the massacre not from the Virginia Tech e-mails, but through calls, e-mails and instant messages from friends and concerned family members. A resident advisor in Payne dormitory, who has chosen to remain anonymous, said he found out about the incident through an instant message from a friend. To notify his residents, the RA said he posted notices in stairwells and alerted students leaving the building to be cautious. He said RAs are trained extensively to handle serious situations such as this. Most of his duties yesterday included dispelling rumors and providing his residents with as much information as was available, he said. Carter described how the lack of solid information added to the confusion surrounding the events, saying the rumors ranged from gang-member involvement to "ridiculous" reports that the shooter was eight feet tall. Some may have falsely assumed that the shooter was lurking nearby, even after he had killed himself -- fears that were heightened by the saturation of gun-toting police who were sweeping the campus for any suspicious activity. Lane-Roberts said he and other students watched from a window as two police officers with assault rifles "tackled" a black student. The officers were "shouting" at students to close the blinds and "get in our rooms," he said. Chapman said RAs played a major role in communicating the lockdown to students. Virginia Tech freshman Margaret Hatcher said she never left her room because she had been advised to stay there and distance herself from the windows; however, her roommate had to find shelter in an academic building. "My roommate was actually in class this morning, and actually she was in the building next door to Norris," Hatcher said. "They took them all into the basement for a few hours" and around 12:30 p.m. told them to leave campus immediately. Sophomore Erik Stange said he lives off campus and learned of the situation when his parents called him around 11 a.m. Stange said he later learned from friends that a friend of his who was an RA in West Ambler Johnston had been shot. "He got shot in the leg, [so] hopefully he'll be okay," Stange said. Hours later, Virginia Tech Police Chief Wendell Finchum confirmed that an RA in West Ambler Johnston had died. Stange is just one of many students forced to cope with uncertainties about yesterday's events. "At this point, there are still a lot of questions and not answers," Shyti said. "We're in a fearful environment right now, [and] I think what contributes to the fear is that people don't know what's safe." As the community looks to beging the healing process, Virginia Tech has organized a memorial service in Cassell Coliseum, the basketball stadium, to be held today at 2 p.m. Freshman Elizabeth Rogers said she plans to attend the service. "Even though I don't know anyone directly who [has] been harmed, I just feel that as a university we need to band together ... and try to find the best way to be there for everyone in this time of need," Rogers said. Virginia Tech President Charles Steger said the university is starting a "long, difficult road" to recovery from the massacre. As the initial shock turns into a quest for answers, students at Virginia Tech are finding that the first step on that road is coming to terms with the magnitude of what has occurred. As one RA said, "Most of us are just kind of sitting here wondering when we're going to wake up, because it feels like a dream." -- Original Source: The Cavalier Daily - April 17, 2007
Virginia Tech to dedicate April 16 Memorial on Sunday, August 19
By Mark Owczarski BLACKSBURG, Va., August 15, 2007 -- To coincide with the start of the new academic year, Virginia Tech will dedicate the memorial to the victims of April 16 on Sunday, August 19 at noon. At the conclusion of the approximately 30-minute ceremony, President Charles W. Steger will dedicate the new memorial site. All members of the Virginia Tech community and general public are welcome to attend. Those visiting campus for the memorial service are encouraged to park their vehicles in the parking lots located on Perry Street. While limited visitor and handicap parking spaces are available around the Drillfield, no parking will be available on the Drillfield Several water stations will be set up on the Drillfield to accommodate guests in anticipation of the warm weather. Grief counselors will also be present in the event guests seek that assistance. The dedication ceremony will be broadcast live on WDBJ-TV Channel 7 (campus cable channel 7) and can be seen in real time on the university homepage. The ceremony will begin with the presentation of colors by the Virginia Tech Corps of Cadets followed by the playing of the National Anthem by the Highty-Tighties, the corps' marching band. Vice President of Student Affairs Zenobia Hikes will follow with opening remarks. Speaking after her will be Adeel Khan, a junior majoring in accounting in the Pamplin College of Business and president of the (undergraduate) Student Government Association; and Joe McFadden, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Dairy Science in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and president of the Graduate Student Assembly. Valerie Hardcastle, professor of science and technology in society in the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences and president of the Faculty Senate, will follow the student leaders with remarks. Scott Cheatham, a May graduate of Virginia Tech and now a graduate student in mathematics education in the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences, will follow with comments on behalf of Hokies United, a student-run service organization that organized the temporary 32 Hokie Stone memorial near the Drillfield viewing stand in the hours following the April 16 tragedy. After the playing of the Virginia Tech Alma Mater by the Marching Virginians, the university's marching band, Vice President for Alumni Relations Tom Tillar will speak further on the significance of the memorial. Steger will provide concluding remarks and will dedicate the memorial. The ceremony will close with the ringing of 32 bells in memory of those who lost their lives on April 16. The public may view the memorial at the conclusion of the ceremony. It will be closed to viewing Sunday morning in preparation for the dedication ceremony. The 32 Hokie Stones used in the temporary memorial will be offered to the families of the victims. The 32 permanent stones in the new memorial are etched with the names of those who lost their lives and will be placed in the same order as they were in the temporary memorial. Those unable to attend the ceremony in person may view it on the Virginia Tech homepage. In June, Virginia Tech announced that it would construct a memorial to replace the temporary version. The new memorial is located in the same location as the temporary site. Information for the media is available in the Media Advisory for this event and for the subsequent start of the school year. Contact Mark Owczarski at maowczar@vt.edu or (540) 231-5223. ##07424## -- Original Source: Virginia Tech News http://www.vtnews.vt.edu/story.php?relyear=2007&itemno=450
Virginia Tech tragedy continues to hit home
By Messenger Post and wire reports Posted: Apr 18, 01:00 PM EDT On a campus proud of its unity, the gunman's anger and detachment alarmed those around him. While parents of a 2004 Irondequoit High School graduate learned their son escaped harm in the Virginia Tech massacre Monday, another relative of a Virginia Tech student is mourning the death of her niece. Virginia Tech students and supporters lifted thousands of candles to a sapphire sky Tuesday to remember the 32 people killed by a campus gunman. The vigil testified to the unity on which the mountain campus prides itself. But in the hours after Cho Seung-Hui's rampage, it was obvious the close-knit school was a community of which he never felt a part. The gunman, who turned his gun on himself after carrying out the worst shooting massacre in modern U.S. history, was a sullen loner who left a rambling note raging against women and rich kids. News reports said that Cho, a 23-year-old senior majoring in English, may have been taking medication for depression and that he was becoming increasingly violent and erratic. Professors and classmates were alarmed by his class writings — pages filled with twisted, violence-drenched writing. In screenplays he wrote for a class last fall, characters throw hammers and attack with chainsaws, said a student who attended Virginia Tech last fall. In another, Cho concocted a tale of students who fantasize about stalking and killing a teacher who sexually molested them. Despite the many warning signs that came to light in the bloody aftermath, police and university officials offered no clues as to exactly what set Cho off on the deadliest shooting rampage in modern U.S. history. Among those killed in the massacre at Virginia Tech was 19-year-old freshman Mary Read, who had multiple ties to the greater Rochester area. Read spent summers in the Finger Lakes region, visiting relatives who included her aunt, Mary Courtney. Courtney was interviewed Monday from her Palmyra home by NBC (channel 10), and a portion of that interview appeared this morning on NBC's "Today Show." Courtney expressed grief for the loss of her niece and the others killed in the shooting. In a "Today Show" profile of Mary Read and other victims, Ms. Read was noted as a student who liked to make cupcakes for her friends. Ms. Read was especially close to Courtney, whom she was named after. Ms. Read called her aunt "Queen Mary," while Courtney called her niece "Princess Mary." Meanwhile, an Irondequoit mother was on an unplanned road trip Tuesday to see her son, who is a junior at the university. "I really can't function unless I have a live sighting," Deborah Nicholas said of her son, Josh. "Nightmare, yes," she said of the events of this past Monday when a university student shot 33 at Virginia Tech, a large engineering university in Blacksburg, Va. When the incident happened, Deb Nicholas and her husband, Stephen Nicholas, were on a business trip and couldn't get a news channel on their car radio. They were getting regular reports, via cellular phone, from a nephew who lives in Detroit, but the connections kept breaking up. "It just got worse and worse," Deb Nicholas said. It was a while before they heard from Josh, a 2004 graduate of Irondequoit High School who is an engineering student at Virginia Tech. He told them he had been to one class and was on his way to hand in a paper for another of his classes when kids all around him started running, his mother said. "He said he picked up the pace and scooted into a nearby building," Deb Nicholas said. He has had classes in Norris Hall, the building where most of Monday's shootings took place. Deb Nicholas said her son was finally able to get on a bus that took him back to his apartment in a complex about a mile from the campus. Nicholas has a girlfriend, Genna, who is from elsewhere in Virginia. His mom said Genna has two sorority sisters who were wounded. She said she didn't know if Josh knew any of the victims. "If he (Josh) wants to come home, I will bring him home," she said by cell phone from the road. At least one other Irondequoit resident, Alice Hellyar, a 2006 graduate of Irondequoit High School, is also a current student at Virginia Tech. She was also reported safe but shaken after the shootings. With classes canceled for the rest of the week, many students left town in a hurry, lugging pillows, sleeping bags and backpacks down the sidewalks. On Tuesday night, thousands of Virginia Tech students, faculty and area residents poured into the center of campus to grieve together. Volunteers passed out thousands of candles in paper cups, donated from around the country. Then, as the flames flickered, speakers urged them to find solace in one another. "We will move on from this. But it will take the strength of each other to do that," said Zenobia Hikes, vice president for student affairs. "We want the world to know we are Virginia Tech, we will recover, we will survive with your prayers." -- Original Source: Rochester, NY - MPNnow http://www.mpnnow.com/news/view_story.php?articleId=8010 Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5.
Virginia Tech tragedy unites VU community
by Joan Brasher News of the events of April 16, 2007 - a violent shooting on the Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg, Va., that resulted in the deaths of 33 students and faculty members - sent chills down the spines of all within earshot of a television, radio or the Internet. University students, faculty and staff across the nation and the world watched the media coverage in stunned silence, as the death toll escalated and the convoluted details slowly became clear. For many students, the first reaction to the shocking event was fear, said Vanderbilt Student Government Association President Cara Bilotta, a junior. "As you watch the tragedy unfold on TV, you cannot help but think, 'Could this happen here?'" Bilotta said. "Your initial reaction is fear of the unknown. The question is, could any university really prevent an incident like Virginia Tech? The good news is that Vanderbilt has always taken a proactive approach to security." University communities nationwide, even those with no direct relationship to the victims, were hard hit, and campus administrators quickly convened not only to reach out to Virginia Tech's faculty, staff and students, but to re-evaluate crisis preparedness on their respective campuses. Chancellor Gordon Gee communicated with the Vanderbilt community via e-mail shortly after the shooting, stating, "Words fail to encompass a calamity of such magnitude. At this raw stage, we can offer our attention, our consideration and our sympathy. We respond with the best part of ourselves." He encouraged students to take advantage of the university's psychological counseling services, seek out religious life groups or turn to resident advisers for support. All Faiths Chapel on the first floor of Vanderbilt Divinity School was made available for reflection, meditation and prayer. Two days after the shooting, a candlelight vigil was held at Benton Chapel. Vanderbilt chaplains, as well as representatives from Tennessee State University, Belmont University, Lipscomb University and Fisk University, conducted the service sponsored by the Middle Tennessee Chapter of the Virginia Tech Alumni Association. Mourners gathered to seek comfort and memorialize loved ones lost. Vanderbilt students who knew victims of the shooting also shared their stories and remembrances. For Joshua Parlaman, a Virginia Tech alumnus who works as a research assistant at the Vanderbilt Kennedy Center for Research on Human Development, it was too soon to attend a memorial service. Instead, to assuage his grief he reached out to former classmates and family members. Having the support of his Vanderbilt colleagues was invaluable, he said. "Being at Vanderbilt at this time has been both comforting and humbling," Parlaman said. "The solidarity expressed by Vanderbilt students, faculty and staff has really moved me. I realize how deeply this has affected us all, uniting everyone with those at Virginia Tech." As Vanderbilt students, their parents, faculty and staff raised questions of security, Vanderbilt's administration quickly responded with explanations of the existing measures in place. Campus safety officials compiled and distributed a fact sheet that addressed concerns, such as identifying students with potential behavior problems, and included information on safety, law enforcement and emergency communications. On April 20, a free emergency alert text-messaging service was set up for students, faculty and staff, made available through Vanderbilt's existing text-messaging service, MobileVU. "The recent tragedy at Virginia Tech has highlighted the importance of rapid and accurate communications during emergency situations, and particularly the value of cell phone text messaging to relay important information," said Michael Schoenfeld, vice chancellor for public affairs. "With 330 acres, 233 buildings and as many as 40,000 people on campus during a busy work day, reaching every individual presents a challenge. Emergency text messaging ... is an important addition to the existing communications channels." At noon on April 23, a week after the incident, a moment of silence was observed on Vanderbilt's campus as the bells at Kirkland Hall tolled 32 times, once for each person slain by gunman Seung-hui Cho. Students, dressed in Virginia Tech's school colors of maroon and orange, congregated at the Sarratt Promenade, where representatives of Vanderbilt's student government distributed commemorative ribbons, while students, faculty and staff wrote words of encouragement in a leather-bound book emblazoned with the Vanderbilt seal, a gift for the Virginia Tech student government. A banner hanging behind the signing table read, "Today we are all Hokies." "There were those who had friends (at Virginia Tech), or friends of friends there, and because of how connected we are through the university community, people wanted to reach out," Bilotta said. "Some students simply signed their name, others wrote detailed messages, saying 'I knew someone there, I feel for you.' I think that was a great way to help students heal and begin the recovery process." "Fortunately, I did not know anyone killed or injured on April 16," Parlaman said. "This tragedy does, however, take a personal toll. Virginia Tech and Blacksburg were my home for four years. ... I feel a sense of sorrow knowing that what was my safe haven is now forever scarred with the memory of these horrific events." Though the recovery process will take time, Bilotta said she feels hopeful about what is to come. "I think Virginia Tech is starting to move forward," she said. "We are grieving, but we are moving forward to get beyond this awful tragedy and hope for a more peaceful future." -- Original Source: Vanderbilt University Daily Register - April 17, 2007
Joan Brasher <joan.brasher@vanderbilt.edu>
Virginia Tech Tragedy: A Revealing Sociological Tome
about 1 month ago by Nate Brugnone The recent shootings at Virginia Tech are not only a tragedy at face-value, they are also a revealing tragedy on many social levels. As this story broke almost every headline across the US, and no doubt throughout much of the world, it's become apparent to me how much journalism today resembles a botch theatrical moral auction. It's a "who can draw the most hits using the most visceral, emotive attractor" competition. First come the alligators of the shallow, murky riverbanks. These are the fat lizard spawn of necessary 24-hour news corporations -- the ones with catlike reflexes and the largest paychecks. They're bug-eyes keep a most sentinel vigil over "normalcy" amongst the crowd. Even the slightest ripple caused by a ubiquitous herbivore hoof could spell a ratings spike and a big payoff. And I'm not just going to roll over here and give them the credit of, "[in a whiny, airy Bob Saget voice] well, they just want to get us the news we need to know about. They're looking out for us." If that's the case, then I'm severely deluded as to the nature of mass media in the US and Rupert Murdock (or whomever) has a proportional messiah-complex. We know, at least considering the second statement, that this is untrue. Covering the rest of Noah's Ark here, we come to the wolves in peacocks' feathers -- the journalists who find it necessary to employ visual aids, as if the headline, "33 College Students Slaughtered in Largest Killing Spree in US History," doesn't tweak tightly enough the heart muscles and gray matter of the soon-to-be-touched-upon emotional-parasites. "Here's a picture a bloodied boy barely clinging to life as he is carried out by fellow scholars." Blah blah blah... on & on. Then in come the dumpster-diving raccoon collage artists, riding the coattails of those before, pasting, quoting other papers, quoting bloggers (dah!), in hopes of making a few more bucks. These things smell and are super lazy. Just look at the abundance of this type of roadkill for one week. Its prominence it staggering. And the saddest of all, just our collective attention is turned furthest from the topic, we have monkeys parachuting into football stadiums with a sanctified howl of political co-opting. It used to annoy me to no end when someone called George Bush a monkey and blamed him for something he probably had no direct hand in, but after this ringmaster bit at VT I can say the man has no moral fiber of his own and is nothing more than the flaccid remnants of a fraternity kegger ... thus making him a monkey... er, something to that extent. Now it feels like I'm done here with this topic, but I can feel something; some animal has been overlooked. Ah, yes. The very foundation on which all the rest of these rely: Heliactin bilopha, the Horned Sungem. No bird flaps its wings faster and therefore no bird is more fickle. There are over 6 billion inhabiting the globe. Each determines which flowers shall bloom next year and the year after and so on. No single bird sees itself as the essential part of this zoo as it can freely and discriminately drink nectar from wherever it may choose... I find it odd and also telling that year after year the same flowers come into bloom. We're interesting creatures... -- Original Source: http://dormitem.com/blog/95 Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States.
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Virginia Tech Tragedy: Human Nature & Networks
By Aaron Mannes While the Virginia Tech tragedy has spawned the predictable media frenzy, there has - so far - been an admirable lack of speculation about the killer, his motives, or what this event says about American society. Leftist philosopher Herbert Marcuse once observed, "Not every problem someone has with his girlfriend is necessarily due to the capitalist mode of production." Humans are complicated and there are dark places in the human soul that will emerge. Sometimes ideologies and causes will spark these evil inclinations. But they exist and have emerged in every time and place. Knowing that tragedies are part of the human experience - whether from natural or man-made causes - it is essential to take proper steps to ameliorate their impact. Dwight Eisenhower once observed, "Plans are nothing; planning is everything." Predicting the exact shape of the next tragedy is rarely possible. But the processes of preparing for some kinds of disasters and attacks will help develop the systems and habits necessary to respond to whatever fate throws. Lives were saved on 9/11 because some WTC tenants had consistently practiced evacuation techniques in the wake of the 1993 bombing. University Presidents are akin to mayors. Universities are attractive targets and favorable locations for a variety of adverse events (violent attacks, disease outbreaks, criminal activity, and mass disturbances.) Undoubtedly yesterday's tragedy will increase interest in disaster planning at universities. One factor that should become central to planning is the ubiquity of mobile communications technology. Students texted each other to stay abreast of events and of course, there is the now famous celphone video. Properly harnessed this technology could have been an invaluable resource - not only for informing the students and public about evolving events - but for helping authorities locate the injured and track the killer's movements. This is the age of the network, and the ability of people to quickly form networks and exchange information is an integral part of disaster response and mitigation. In the wake of Katrina, evacuees formed online communities to support each other emotionally and also through practical measures. We have seen the bad guys (terrorists and criminals) and commercial interests make creative use of communications technology to organize internally and get their message out externally. There is no reason the good guys can't do the same. April 17, 2007 11:08 AM Original Source: Counterterrorism Blog http://counterterrorismblog.org/2007/04/virginia_tech_tragedy_human_na.php Creative Commons License: Attribution-NoDerivs 2.5
Virginia Tech Video Tribute - Tragedy 4/16/07 - "Fix You"
NOTE: 65 MB AVI (Divx) Alternate streaming media: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mW8XT_H_gOs I feel my video is unique in that I incorporate not only all the names of the 32 victims tied to their respective picture, but also many of the moving moments and quotations of the hours following the tragedy. The song, "Fix You", inspired me to produce this video. I first heard the song in the trailer to the movie "World Trade Center". As you listen to it, you can't help but note the lyrics "the tears stream...down your face" and not be moved by that while watching all of the victims. Pay special attention to the end, when the lyrics are "lights will guide...you home" ... the picture I chose remarkably represents this phrase. Enjoy!
Students, faculty, staff, parents, and friends of the university gather to attend the vigil at Virginia Tech. Original source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nrbelex/471661031/in/photostream/ Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0
Permission Brett Weinstein http://www.flickr.com/photos/nrbelex/471661031/in/photostream/ Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0
Virginia Tech vigil held on campus today
Issue Date:Wednesday April 18, 2007 Section: State & Local Section The Student Government Association is hosting a candlelight vigil tonight to mourn the April 16 tragedy at Virginia Tech. Monday's massacre at Virginia Tech began at a residence hall and moved across campus to Norris Hall, the university's engineering building, leaving 33 people dead and many injured. The shooting is considered the worst mass killing in U.S. history. Throughout the day, students can send messages of hope on a banner in the Mountainlair. SGA will also be handing out orange and maroon ribbons, in support for Virginia Tech, according to a press release. The vigil will then take place tonight at 9 p.m. in Woodburn Circle, weather permitting. "We want to do our part on our campus to extend our condolences to those and their families at Virginia Tech," said SGA Vice President Jason Parsons. "We encourage all students and those in the community to come out." SGA President David Kirkpatrick and President David C. Hardesty are scheduled to speak. — tmf -- Original Source: The Daily Athenaeum http://www.da.wvu.edu/show_article.php?&story_id=27582
The flag at Castle Point flows in the wind as students stand in memory of the dead at Virginia Tech. Original source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bytenik/470838112/ Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0
Permission Contact: David Pfeffer (http://www.flickr.com/photos/bytenik/) Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0
Briana Gilmartin helps a fellow student light a candle in remembrance of the dead at Virginia Tech. Original source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bytenik/470855687/ Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0
[Philosophical Musing on Media Culture] By Carl Davidson 20 Apr 2007 The universe throws curve balls at us, now and then. It seems to want to wake us up, and teach us lessons in impermanence and interconnectedness. Take the killings at Virginia Tech. A strange, quiet young Korean man, Cho Seung-Hui, writer of tortured and violent plays and screeds, makes his own solipsistic martial arts-gangsta video of himself, and sends it to the media, in the course of slaughtering 32 people, then killing himself. The media sensationalizes it. MSNBC ratings go through the roof as its images are repeated, to millions and millions, then all the networks join in the frenzy. As expected, other troubled youth respond, in copy-cat fashion, often only with words, and scares shut down numerous classes across the country. At the same time, discussions of 'healing' get underway. Talk show commentators are having a time of it. I hear both liberal and conservatives alike carry on about 'looking in the face of evil' and trashing the notions of illness and therapy. Rush Limbaugh and one caller on his show go on about how the Korean youth is an 'America hater,' 'suicide bomber,' and simply evil. Retired FBI guys talk about 'training' students to be able to respond better, and hiring tougher 'security.' People debate police tactics, censorship and guns. Then a British paper goes to a tiny hut in Korea, and a reporter talks to the boy's grandparents, who say he was a bad kid and 'deserved to die' for his sins. But the grandparents also reveal the poverty of his parents as they immigrated to the U.S. Most important, they reveal their grandson was diagnosed early with autism, but the poverty all around prevented them from doing much about it, either in Korea or here. Autism is recently growing with unusual speed in the US. Parents, rich and poor, are desperate for help, since dealing with an autistic child is often beyond any couple, however well off. One radio personality, Don Imus, takes up their cause. He helps grow their organization for families of Autistic children, and raises millions. His wife, an environmentalist, believes toxins, perhaps in vaccines, are partly to blame, and demands independent research. Wealthy pharmaceutical companies and the Wall Street Journal counter-attack, smearing the couple. But Imus is relentless, and blasts away at their money-grubbing and lies. Largely through his efforts, a compromise measure, offering some relief, gets through Congress, but he pushes on for more substantive solutions, and raises millions more. Now the effort has stopped, or is at least severely reduced. Imus, as we well know, also indulged in racist, sexist and chauvinist commentary and locker-room 'jokes,' repeatedly, and finally went too far. He realized it, blamed himself and tried to make amends. He promised changes in his show, but accepted whatever he got, saying he had dished it out long enough, now it was his turn to take it. But a groundswell wanted more. They wanted his show shut down, period, and it was. Many people declared victory over racism and sexism, and to a degree, it was. The media moguls preened about their new-found responsibility and the need for change. At least until 32 people died at Virginia Tech. Now we have a new wave of violence featured in the media, and Imus is old news, history. And we have a new wave of blame, and a new staking out of moral ground against evil. But you can make a good case that untreated autism, rooted in poverty, was the root cause of what happened at Virginia Tech, however terrible the consequences and the suffering visited on those who didn't deserve it in the least, just as the Rutgers women didn't deserve it in the least. The whole thing reminds me of Thich Nhat Hanh's long poem, 'Call Me by My True Name.' It's about looking deeply, in the poem, about a Thai sailor, and his raping and killing Vietnamese boat people. It's too long a story to retell here, but do yourself a favor and read it, or better yet, listen to it sometime. But given this latest curve ball, I think I'll wait a bit before declaring either Don Imus or Cho Seung-Hui, connected in this curious way, to be evil, or at least, in the case of Imus, who's still with us, beyond public redemption. Related http://carldavidson.blogspot.com -- Original Source: http://chicago.indymedia.org/newswire/display/77298/index.php Licensed under Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication.
Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication
Submitted by boldfaith3 on Wed, 04/25/2007 - 11:29pm. Let me start by saying I am a student at Virginia Tech on my way to a degree in mechanical engineering. I have not been on this site in a while due mainly to the events last week which I am sure most of you have heard about. In light of the tragedy we have been forced to undergo, I have a lot to say. Let me first start with my story. On April 16, 2007 I slept through my 8am engineering lecture. This is something I try not to make a habit of, but with this class it has happened quite a few times. I woke up somewhere around 9:30 when my fiance called me and told me she was coming over. This was unusual since she normally has class at this time. That was when she told me that they had closed down all of the campus buildings. My first thought on this was that there was another bomb threat (We had two bomb threats in one of our buildings the week before). That was when she told me that there had been a shooting in West Ambler Johnston, a residential building where I lead a small group Bible study for Intervarsity Christian Fellowship. I was fairly shocked at this. I have heard about school shootings at colleges before but there is rarely ever a crime of that magnitude at Virginia Tech. We have had a small number of sexual assaults and one student was killed last year I believe, but it is rare enough that it still comes as a shock. Moving on, my fiance came over and we proceeded to check e-mails and the news to try to figure out what was going on. This is also when we called our parents to let them know we were safe (mine actually called me first). As we were talking to our parents, they asked about something that came on the news saying that there were some 22 students killed. This was entirely unbelievable and confusing. I could only think that my parents were looking at something wrong because there was no way that 22 students had been killed when I had originally heard that one student was shot in a residential building. All this time we had been recieving e-mails about lockdowns and telling us to stay where we were. During this confusion the number of sirens that screamed past my apartment brought a painstaking realization that this was real and all I could think of was something went really wrong. That's when other people started spreading news around and all the facts began to unravel. By the time we had our information all sorted out, we were horrified to realize that 33 students had been killed, 31 of them (including the shooter) during classes in Norris hall, an engineering building. The first thing I want to say about this event is that it was deeply disturbing and I am still horrified that something like this has happened so close to home. My deepest sympathies go out to any of the families and friends of our hokie family who were involved in this tragic event. I have been praying for you all that God will show you his comfort and healing power through your grief. I did not know anyone involved personally though I have many friends who did and I know a few people who should have been involved. One of my roomates also slept through a class that morning after being up all night to do work. His class was in one of the rooms in Norris Hall that was attacked. One of my small group members who lives in WAJ lost her roomate. I have realized through this tragedy, the importance of those people around me and the relationships I have which so often suffer for the sake of homework assignments. I believe that many of us have felt the impact of this as we realize how many of our friends and teachers we forget to express our gratitude and appreciation for as we struggle to meet deadlines. If there is one thing I have learned from this it is that people will ALWAYS come first. In the week following this tragedy I have broken down in tears more times than I can remember. I think about the people around me that I could have lost and then I think about the pain that those people are going through who did lose their dear friends and family. The pain that I went through was difficult but I cannot begin to imagine the pain of friends and family. I can only offer again my deepest sympathies. If anyone should need someone to listen, please don't hesitate to do what you can to express your grief which I would not expect to be anything less than inexpressible. All that being said, I will say this: Virginia Tech will not be remembered for this tragedy. We are a community like no other I have ever experienced, and that is what we will be remembered for. We are hokies. We will not allow this school to become synonomous with tragedy and sorrow, but with coming together and rebuilding. I have never been more proud to be a hokie. The support that has come together from this school has been incredible. Students coming together to embrace others that they don't even know in a simple gesture of understanding and common grief. We are grieving as a body and we are moving forward as a body. This is a community where teachers are encouraging students to grow and continue to move forward and to prove that we can get through this together. A community where students are encouraging teachers and giving them strength to keep going when many of them are simply unable to continue teaching. This is a community that defines the very term community and says that we are here to help each other. I have never been more proud to be a hokie. Along these lines, we also fall behind President Steger. This is our President, a hokie. I have grown tired and disgusted at the attacks on how this situation was handled. Campus was locked down after the first shooting. Yes, campus was reopened. Under the shield of safety we have all learned to live at ease, with no fear of any kind of danger, let alone a danger of this magnitude. There are certainly more precautions taken at night with regards to walking alone or letting our friends walk home alone, but for the most part we have all felt entirely safe. It is a perfectly natural response then after being told that the shooting was a domestic issue to believe that there was no harm to any other students. The first shooting was initially believed to be caused by someone who was angry with their girlfriend. The decision to send students back to classes may not have been the most cautious decision, but it was certainly reasonable under the conditions and I find it highly unlikely that anyone else would have done differently. The terrible tragedy following could not have been forseen by anyone. That being said, there are arguments that Cho (the shooter) should have been taken out of school. He was a loner type of student who had been believed to have issues before with anger and also looked into for stalking a number of women. Let's start with this, He was taken out of his classes and taught one on one by his english professor who believed he had psychological issues. He was also sent to counselling which he did not continue to go to for very long. You can't force a 22 year old student to go to counselling. His writings were disturbing and somewhat violent but there was no apparant threat of danger to anyone other than himself. He had not told anyone, as far as we know, of any thoughts that could have indicated his later actions. This was certainly a troubled kid and the university did try to get help for him. It bothers me that people think now that their first thought was that it was him. Yes this may have been true, but looking back we can always make guesses as to who we think may have done something based on their personality. That doesn't mean that it is always true and doesn't mean that it could have been anticipated. Couselling and Corrective measures were taken and though they were obviously not enough, this could not have been forseen. We want to lay off on the blame and have people realize that we are here for each other. This is our community and we will not allow it to be torn apart with blame and guilt. I will say once more that through this tragedy I have realized the importance of life and those people that share it with us. This was a tragic and horrifying event that hit entirely too close to home but unfortunately there are similar events that happen all over the world constantly. Just after this hit the news there were tickers showing hundreds killed by bombings in Iraq. We don't want this to be a juice story. We don't want our suffering to become exciting headlines. This is a terrible thing that we are grieving over and we offer each other all the help we can. We remember the things that have happened and come together to move forward. But we also want to remember the suffering and pain that is occuring accross the globe. As Americans, especially on the Virginia Tech campus, we don't expect tragedy of this magnitude, but many other places do and for that reason it is ignored. We no longer want to ignore that suffering that is constantly occuring around the world but to bring all of this tragedy into the light all at once so we can all move forward and bring this world to a better place where the media is no longer captivated by bloody headlines. We want to see the change in this world and see the inspiration of so many people who work to make that change. We are hokies. This is our community. We will not be defined as a headline but as a hopeline If you would like to give money to support the families and the healing process of those here at Tech please visit this site to do so: http://www.vt.edu/tragedy/memorial_fund.php God bless you all and may His grace embrace us all giving us comfort and protection. For these three remain: Faith, Hope and Love. But the greatest of these is Love. 1 Corinthians 13:13 Original Source: http://www.progressiveu.org/022902-virginia-tech-in-light-of-tragedy Creative Commons License: Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0
Virginia Tech, our thoughts are with you
Editorial Posted: 4/17/07 Horrified silence saturated campuses across the country yesterday, as the death toll at Virginia Tech climbed to at least 32 fellow students. The deadliest mass shooting in United States history can be described only as a true tragedy. To begin, as members of the Duke community we express our sincerest condolences to families and friends of the deceased and wounded and to the entire Virginia Tech campus. Our hearts go out to all of those in the Virginia Tech community and all of the students here at Duke who have been touched by this shocking disaster in one way or another. A tragedy like this makes us pause to reflect upon our own mortality. Days like yesterday-filled with images of bloodied young bodies, terrified faces and drawn guns-bring violence and death close to home. As young men and women now in college, we can only hope (although likely and sadly in vain) to never see a day like this past Monday again. And during such times, there is a very human urge to point fingers-to place blame on administrators for not responding effectively or efficiently. But scenarios like those that played out yesterday are extremely hard to prepare for. Hindsight is 20/20, and we cannot judge the Virginia Tech administrators with the knowledge we now have. We trust they had students' best interests in mind and do so still as they seek to recover from the shock and horror of a day nobody can ever really anticipate. Monday's tragedy does, however, provide an opportunity for Duke's administrators to examine their own emergency response procedures. We depend on Duke administrators to keep us informed when urgent situations arise. Although mass e-mail lists serve great informative purposes, a faster mass communication system must be devised to alert students in times of emergency. Because many students come from differing parts of the country, Duke must also devise a plan to inform families quickly or to make themselves available for inquiries in situations of mass chaos. As members of a media publication, in the face of this tragedy we were dismayed to find that some media outlets displayed an almost-salacious interest in this story. The Washington Post ran an article titled "Virginia Tech's Reputation Had Recently Been Soaring," which inappropriately dehumanized the catastrophe as something that could have an effect on image and ranking rather than something that did have a profound effect on human lives. Similarly, a reporter at a press conference asked what sort of effect this event will have on the school's admissions. Such questions were both inappropriate and unanswerable. Subjects like Virginia Tech's reputation can be addressed during another, more appropriate period. Although yesterday's tragedy is in no way comparable to the Duke lacrosse case, the response of some reporters to the Virginia Tech shooting is yet another example of a fact we as Duke students know all too well-how shallow the media can be. The media must remember there is a human element to every event, particularly this tragic event, and they should not rush superficial sensationalism nor dehumanize questions of status. Even though the media has immense power in portraying events and situations, we must remember that a period of coverage does not characterize or define a school in its entirety. No matter how the media portrays a singular event, our schools are not defined by one moment. They are defined by their people, their resolve and their ability to overcome. Virginia Tech, Duke's thoughts are with you. -- Original Source: Duke Chronicle - April 17, 2007
Virginia Tech: El profesor que se convirtió en héroe
Publicado por Jose Kaulen C April 18, 2007, 10:03 PM La de a continuación, es una historia emocionante, llena de sentido y digna de admiración por parte de todos nosotros. In Memoriam Liviu Librescu. Liviu Librescu, un profesor de 76 años y muy respetado ingeniero aeronáutico que enseñó en Virginia Tech por 20 años, salvó la vida de varios estudiantes bloqueando la puerta de su sala de clases antes de que fuera muerto a balazos en la masacre, de acuerdo a los e-mails enviados por los alumnos a su señora. "Mi padre bloqueó la puerta con su cuerpo y les dijo a sus alumnos que escaparan" ha dicho su hijo, Joe Librescu, en una entrevista telefónica desde su casa en las afueras de Tel Aviv. Agregó además que los "estudiantes comenzaron a abrir las ventanas y a saltar hacia afuera". En el campus, los estudiantes hablan sobre el arrojo de Librescu: "Él debiera ser reconocido como un héroe" dice el estudiante de Virginia Tech Philip Huffstetler además de sentir "que están en una gran deuda con su familia por el resto de nuestras vidas". "Él es la razón de que el estudiante (Seung-Hui) no entrara y matara a más gente; obviamente es un héroe", dice Asal Arad, otro estudiante. Librescu supo de una vida difícil desde que era niño. Cuando Rumania se unió a las fuerzas nazis en la Segunda Guerra Mundial, primero fue internado en un campo de trabajos forzados en Transnistria y luego deportado junto a su familia y miles de otros judíos al ghetto central de Focsani. De acuerdo a un informe recopilado por el gobierno de Rumania en el 2004, entre 280 y 380 mil judíos fueron asesinados por el régimen rumano-nazi durante la guerra. Como un exitoso ingeniero durante el gobierno de postguerra comunista, Librescu encontró trabajo en la agencia aeroespacial de Rumania, pero su carrera fue interrumpida en los 70's porque rechazó prestar juramento de obediencia al régimen y finalmente fue despedido cuando pidió autorización para irse a Israel. De acuerdo con su hijo, después de años de rechazo gubernamental, el primer ministro israelí, Menachem Begin, intervino personalmente para que obtuviera el permiso de emigración para toda su familia. Se mudaron a Israel en 1978. Librescu deja Israel en 1985 para irse a Virginia en un año sabático, pero terminaría quedándose. Joe Librescu estudió en Virginia Tech entre 1989 y 1994. En Rumania, la comunidad académica lamenta profundamente la muerte de Librescu. "Es una gran pérdida" dijo Ecaterina Andronescu, rector de la Universidad Politécnica de Bucarest, desde donde Librescu se graduó en 1953. "Tenemos una tremenda admiración por la forma en que reaccionó y defendió a sus alumnos con su vida", agregó. En la Universidad Politécnica, donde Librescu recibió un título honorario en el 2000, su foto ha sido puesta sobre una mesa, junto a ella una vela encendida y las personas dejan flores alrededor. "Lo recordamos como un gran especialista en temas de aeronáutica. Deja cientos de importantes documentos", dice uno de los profesores, Nicolae Serban Tomescu. Librescu hizo muchas publicaciones y recibió varios premios por sus trabajos. "Su trabajo fue en algún sentido su vida", dijo Joe Librescu. Texto traducido desde Foxnews.com -- Fuente Original -- Realidades Varias a.k.a El Blog de Jose Kaulen http://josekaulen.wordpress.com/2007/04/18/virginia-tech-el-profesor-que-se-convirtio-en-heroe/ Derechos Reservados: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported.