Thoughts on Virginia Tech

Monday now seems like a blurry mess - reading breaking news email alerts, listening to streaming news reports, and checking news blogs for updates as the horrific events that occurred on the campus of Virginia Tech unfolded.

At times, it seemed like access to the information was too easy. One could obtain it through the usual mainstream sources (CNN, ABC, news radio) as well as through the less conventional, first-person sources (LiveJournal, Facebook, Flickr).

The first-person sources brought such immediacy to the story that they didn't take long to overwhelm me. It gave me an almost unhealthy feeling of being right there in Blacksburg, Virginia. At some point, I had to just stop and walk away.

There was too much to take in - too much sorrow for the victims and their loved ones; too much anger at the shooter; and too much frustration with people quick to place blame or quick to pick a fight over gun laws or immigration or race relations.

There were also too many unanswered questions. Who was the shooter? Why had he done what he did? Why had the college reacted the way it did? The questions would eventually be answered, I knew, but not then and there.

Yesterday, when new revelations began to trickle in and mainstream media began to provide new information (instead of constantly rehashing the same five facts), I felt I could pay attention again.

Today, I became aware of how numb I had been the past two days. It struck me when I was watching an interview on The Today Show. Meredith Vieira was talking to three friends of a slain student. They expressed how much she meant to them, how much she had done for them, and how much they would miss her. As they spoke, she went from being 1 of 32, to being a real person, and as she became real, so did their pain and loss.

Today, I also allowed myself to ask the question, “What if this had happened closer to home? What if it had happened at San Jose State?" The possibility seems so remote, as remote as it seemed to the residents of Blacksburg, Virginia, but the remoteness is a false perception.

What is scary is that San Jose State is very similar to Virginia Tech. It's a large commuter school with a student population well above 25,000. If a shooting happened here, would university police and local police be any better prepared than those in Blacksburg?

I can only hope that this awful event has caused colleges all across the country to reevaluate their emergency plans. I hope they have a system in place to notify students, both on and off campus. I hope it goes beyond email or text messages. In the coming weeks, I hope every school meets with local law enforcement agencies to review emergency management procedures. I also hope they meet with their students and faculty members to review what they should do if something happens.

My heart breaks for the victims of the Virginia Tech shootings and my prayers go out to their families and friends. My prayers also go out to the survivors who must now cope with the aftermath. I still can't understand this tragedy and I don't think I ever will.

I want to end this on a positive note, so I will leave you with the inspirational poem Nikki Giovanni read during yesterday's convocation at Virginia Tech. (via The Blathering). If you want to read a transcript of the entire convocation, CNN has one.

We are Virginia Tech.
We are sad today and we will be sad for quite a while.
We are not moving on,
we are embracing our mourning.

We are Virginia Tech.
We are strong enough to stand tall tearlessly,
we are brave enough to bend to cry
and sad enough to know we must laugh again.

We are Virginia Tech.
We do not understand this tragedy,
we know we did nothing to deserve it,
but neither does the child dying in Africa of AIDS,
neither do the invisible children,
walking the night awake to avoid being captured by a rogue army,
neither does the baby elephant, watching his community be devastated for ivory,
neither does the Mexican child looking for fresh water,
neither does the Appalachian infant killed in the middle of the night in his crib,
in the home his father built with his own hands,
being run over by a boulder, because the land was destabilized.
No one deserves a tragedy.

We are Virginia Tech.
The Hokie Nation embraces our own
and reaches out open heart and hands to those who offer their hearts and minds.
We are strong and brave and innocent and unafraid.
We are better than we think
and not quite what we want to be.
We are alive to the imagination and the possibility.
We will continue to invent the future
through our blood and tears,
through all this sadness.

We are the Hokies.
We will prevail.
We will prevail.
We will prevail.
We are Virginia Tech.