VT

As a proud Hokie and Virginia Tech alumna, I like to keep up with news about and within my university and I have a Google Alert set for whenever it makes headlines on online news stories. Since April 16th of 2007, however, the majority of these news stories relate back to the tragic shooting of that day rather than the achievements of our engineering departments or coverage of our exciting football games.

Our school suffers from the same stigma of other schools (such as Columbine High and Northern Illinois University) that have been terribly rocked by a shooting — it is for that single negative event that we become most famous for. We used to be just another great engineering school that boasted a strong football team, but now we are better known as the site of the deadliest peacetime shooting massacre by a single gunman. The label is heartbreaking, and the new news stories that pop up every few months, whether it be due to another shooting elsewhere or due to updates about the still-ongoing investigation of April 16th, serve as a constant inescapable reminder that the public perception of the university that I’d come to love so much has become marred by this single atrocious event.

And so another series of news stories came up in my Google Alerts yesterday, reporting that a revised report released by the Virgina governor showed that Virginia Tech officials had started to lock down administrative buildings and that a number of staff had even notified their families 90 minutes before an email alert was sent out to notify the rest of the campus that a gunman was on the loose. (see CNN story) Governor Kaine called the findings “inexcusable,” and Senator Chap Petersen of the 34th wrote that “the University’s decision to wait over two hours to alert the students of a campus shooting is inexcusable.” He continues:

What struck me – in reviewing Massengill’s report — was that Blacksburg public schools were “locked down” that morning of April 16, 2007 due to the shooting, yet the Tech administration blithely continued forward with classes.

This situation is not going to resolve until someone at Tech accepts responsibility.  No one has been held accountable.

The internet is already swarming with scathing remarks about the “incompetence” of the administration and how they had enabled the events of the shootings to play out as they did. As a Virginia Tech student who witnessed her campus being ripped apart by the shooting less than a month before her graduation, I am deeply saddened by these comments. I think I speak for the majority of the Virginia Tech campus community and students when I say that I support the overall actions of our university administration. They had so little information at the time and the first incident of the two students being murdered at West Ambler Johnston dormitory seemed to them (understandably) to be an isolated domestic incident. They were hesitant to throw the campus into a climate of fear and confusion when they themselves knew so little about the circumstances. Looking back on the events, yes, I agree that there definitely could have been improvements and better ways that the administration could have handled the situation and that they should have alerted students earlier than they did. And it was irresponsible for the staff members to be calling or emailing family members rather than immersing themselves in disaster response. But hindsight is 20/20, and who would have even imagined that a violent massacre of such catastrophic proportions would ensue?

Despite what the public may think due to the events of April 16th and the other smaller, yet violent incidents that have seemed to plague our campus like a curse since, I can attest that Blacksburg was a truly safe, peaceful little college town for most of the five years that I was lucky enough to be a student at Virginia Tech. It’s one of those towns that are in a rural community that comes alive when school is in session, but grows as quiet as a ghost town during the summer months when the majority of their students are out of school. There were rarely any alarming incidents, and I personally felt that Blacksburg would be the least likely place for a violent crime to happen, that it was a place that I would never question my security — I felt safe there. If you ever lived in Blacksburg and were a part of the campus community, a school shooting on campus would have been beyond your imagination. Sure, we were unprepared, but who can ever be prepared enough for a horrific tragedy like that to unfold itself on your campus?

If you look at the larger picture with 9-11 and the anthrax scare, the nation’s own disaster planning was very limited itself. Airports had security measures, but the top concerns were about inclement weather rather than possible terrorist attacks. It was only after the attacks that security measures were considerably tightened to the strict checks we see in airports today. As terrible as these events were, they became useful for us to analyze them and figure out what are the best emergency practices to use in future emergencies, so as to hopefully prevent any similar tragedies from happening thereon.

Simply put, the Virginia Tech administration was not equipped with the experience nor training, expectations nor clear plan for responding to a disaster like this. As long as the administration has been as honest and forthright as possible (which I believe they have been), I stand by them and university president Charles Steger as I did from day one. Looking back to find a scapegoat other than Seung-Hui Cho is not going to help anything. He was the mentally unsound, deranged gunman that took every single one of those 32 innocent lives away. He is the one who singlehandedly brought so much heartbreak to their families and to our campus community; ultimately, there is no one to blame but Cho.

It’s difficult for me to look back on the days following the shooting without tears, because it was during that time that I experienced the most incredible pain and witnessed more sadness than I’d ever seen in my entire lifetime. Losing a friend in such a horrific way was unthinkable and traumatizing in itself. Watching the events unfold on television while we were unable to leave our apartment, I felt as though I was watching a horror movie — the buildings and streets of our campus suddenly looked so unfamiliar as I witnessed SWAT teams and scores of police cars gridlocking them. Our AASU board was completely broken at our meetings in the days that followed, grieving our lost friends and professors but also having to deal with the exhaustion and stress of being hounded by the media all because the killer had been Korean. My cell phone didn’t stop ringing with calls from not only domestic media reporters but Japanese and other international reporters as well, and our email boxes were inundated by requests for comment. Some even had the audacity to come to my apartment. The school that we all love had been branded the site of a historic massacre, and we couldn’t even kick the media out because we are a public university… they ended up camping out and harassing the campus community for over a week, and returned when it came time for commencement. Through it all, president Steger showed tremendous leadership, strength, and poise, while at the same time exhibiting compassion for his students. The events of April 16th must have taken as heavy a toll as it has for the victims’ families, and he must have felt as though he himself had lost 32 beloved children. I have never felt anything but respect for our university president and our administration.

Although it has been over two and a half years since April 16th, we are still healing. The process will probably take years, even a lifetime for many of us. There are still days when the tears just unexpectedly come and won’t stop for a few hours. In some ways, it was easier when I was with fellow Hokies who understood and we could act as mutual support for each other. Finding areas to place more blame is not going to change the past and is not instrumental in the healing process at all. What matters more now is to educate people and help establish more precautions to prevent more school shootings from happening. An employer of mine once made a comment on April 20th that she thought the celebration of 4/20 in reference to cannabis was much more appealing, newsworthy, and “less depressing” than remembering the anniversary of the Columbine shootings. I was personally shocked by the comment — although she may have meant it as a joke and she may not have realized that I came from a school that suffered a very similar fate to Columbine, the joke was not tasteful and was very disrespectful to families and friends of not only Columbine victims but to everyone who has had to deal with the repercussions of such a tragic event. Her flippant comment both hurt and angered me, and made me realize that there are still so many ignorant people out there who can just brush off the news of a school shooting without a second thought. I really feel that our focus should be targeted to educate people like this and make them aware of the severity of such an incident so that something like this should never happen again, rather than to expend so much time and effort trying to find someone accountable other than the perpetrators themselves.