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2007-07-24
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2007-07-24 17:56:56
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Meghan Day
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Meghan Day
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2007-07-24
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A group of friends from Blacksburg High attending the Candlelight Vigil the day after the tragedy.
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eng
blacksburg
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Brent Jesiek
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Christie M. Wills
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2007-07-17
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ERD provides a $20,000 grant for counseling
By Christie M. Wills
They're calling it a "Hokie Cry."
It's described as a wave of emotion that washes over people in the Virginia Tech community, sometimes out of the blue, sometimes when they thought they were doing just fine.
Christ Church, Blacksburg, parishioner Bob Miller remembers one Hokie Cry on a Sunday morning. "It was the day when one of the lectionary readings ended with 'and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.' The layreader had to collect herself to get through it and lots of us cried along with her," said Miller.
Although Blacksburg was clearly the epicenter, people across the diocese felt the pain of the events of April 16. Most churches in the New River convocation have parishioners who are employed at Virginia Tech. Even parishes too far away to have Tech employees often have parents or grandparents of current Tech students.
So on Saturday, April 21, Bishop Neff Powell called a diocesan meeting to provide guidance on how the Church might respond, especially on the first Sunday after the shooting. On several days' notice, over 40 clergy and lay leaders across the diocese attended a daylong gathering at St. Thomas, Christiansburg, to pray and gain strength for the journey.
New York psychologist Dr. Karen Binder-Brynes, a trauma counselor for the Episcopal Church who has worked with Katrina survivors and firefighters at the World Trade Center, led the program.
"You have my deepest respect for all you've been through," said Dr. Karen, who spoke to the group via speakerphone. She explained that the closer people are to the site of a traumatic event, the more affected they are. She said that it was normal to swing between feeling numb and feeling overwhelmed, as well as feeling sadness, loss, hopelessness and anger.
"Senseless tragedies like this render us feeling out of control which is often a shameful feeling. That's one reason why we may have found ourselves glued to the TV, looking for answers," she said.
"A Mary Tragedy"
By late afternoon on April 16, many diocesan parishes had made plans for evening vigils and prayer services [including St. John's and St. Elizabeth's, Roanoke, and St. Stephen's, Forest]. Throughout the week, more parishes held services of remembrance and many noted a moderate number of visitors in their midst.
At the same time, the staff at Christ Church, Blacksburg, had determined that while no Episcopal parishioners were among the killed or injured, the web of connectedness within the parish and the Tech community was intimate. Some parishioners eventually attended three or four or more funerals for friends, colleagues and students.
All week, the parish phone rang frequently. According to secretary Judie Marsh, the majority of calls were either reporters or folks from outside the parish who called to offer condolences or assistance.
On Tuesday, April 17, interim rector Elizabeth Morgan started her day by doing a live interview at 7 a.m. with a cable news anchor outside the parish office. She said one of the more bizarre phone calls she fielded that week was from a filmmaker in New York who wanted to arrive the next day and follow her around with a cameraman to produce a documentary. Morgan turned him down.
Canterbury chaplain Scott Russell was en route home from a trip to Germany and did not learn what had happened until he passed through customs late on Monday. He returned to Blacksburg on Tuesday evening in time to join the Canterbury Club at the candlelight prayer vigil on campus.
In his absence, the diocesan office dispatched two trauma-trained clergy, the Revs. Stephen Stanley, Christ Church, Roanoke, and Fran McCoy of St. Mark's, St. Paul/All Saints, Norton, in response to a request for additional chaplains by the campus student activities office. Stanley, McCoy, Hollins Chaplain Jan Fuller and Russell all reported spending a portion of their time on campus shielding grieving people from media cameras and from "the howling evangelists with the bullhorn calls for campus repentance echoing across the drill field," according to a sermon that Stanley later wrote.
As the days passed, it became clear that while the tragedy was intense in Southwestern Virginia, even life-changing for some, there was very little that people could do in response, except pray. In his column for "Connections," Bishop Neff Powell assured all that "prayer will come into the locked rooms of fear in our hearts and begin to restore a measure of shalom."
As Elizabeth Foster, Director of Christian Education at Christ Church, wrote in an email on April 19, "The most helpful thing at this point is to pray. That is kind of frustrating for those of us who are Marthas, but there is little we can do. We are depending on the Marys to pray for our strength and wisdom."
World Response
As the news spread, Episcopalians across the country and Anglicans around the world reached out to share their grief and support. Bishop Powell said one of the first emails he received was from Bishop David James in Bradford, England. Two particularly humbling emails of condolence were received on behalf of the diocese: one from the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Seoul expressing the shock and sorrow of Korean Catholics and one from the Rev. Bol Deng, a protégé of the late Rev. Marc Nikkel, in war-torn Sudan.
Several dioceses, including Delaware, Colorado, Western Washington and Utah, made response to the tragedy on the front page or within their diocesan newspapers. The Diocese of Delaware opened their annual convention with prayerful silence for the murder victims and for all young people. Their convention keynote speaker, George Packard, Bishop Suffragan for Chaplaincies, had also met with Bishop Powell in New York (where Powell had been on sabbatical) to plan the April 20 gathering for leaders in this diocese. Utah Bishop Carolyn Tanner Irish wrote a poem which she read at an interfaith service of remembrance at the University of Utah. Bishop Marc Andrus of the Diocese of California wrote about the event in his online blog. Andrus is a Virginia Tech alumnus and credits the Christ Church Canterbury Club as his gateway to the Episcopal Church.
Visits to the diocesan website quadrupled over normal daily traffic, peaking at about 2,000 hits per day in the first week. Within 36 hours, the diocese created an online presence to serve as a streamlined clearinghouse for up-to-date information. It prominently featured two buttons: one to request help and the other to offer help to others. Thanks to a small Episcopal Relief and Development (ERD) grant, the site will be a permanent feature of the diocesan website. In times between emergencies, it will be a place to find resources on disaster preparedness. Visit <a href="http://www.dioswva.org/respond/">dioswva.org/respond</a>
Moving Forward
In a late May interview, campus chaplain Scott Russell said that looking back, much of the first week was a blur. For the most part, he spent the days on campus, running on adrenaline. Then, over the next few weeks, he and the rest of the Christ Church staff called on those they had not yet seen at church.
"Some people process grief differently. Some get very quiet or retreat, which is okay, but we're checking on them," said Russell.
In the last remaining days of classes, the core group of the Canterbury Club spent a lot of time together.
"Many folks donated food so we had plenty to eat and often ate together. When we went out for a meal, we saw the look of recognition in other people's eyes; that they were touched in the same way," said Russell.
Russell thanked those in the parish, in the diocese and around the world who prayed for the students and wrote letters to them. Youth from across the country including San Francisco and Arizona sent prayers written on colorful fabric in the style of Tibetan Buddhist prayer flags. The campus ministry at Christ Church also received many donations, such as from the youth of Grace Memorial, Lynchburg who sent $539 from a sub sandwich fundraiser. In all, about $5000 in donations was added to the newly formed Christ Church campus ministry endowment.
On the last Sunday before graduation, Katie Stanhagen, the president of the parish's Canterbury Club thanked the congregation for their support of the students. Russell said she told parishioners that they had modeled for her what it meant to be in a loving Christian community.
The vestry of Christ Church has appointed a committee to implement an approximately $20,000 ERD grant that was given to support counseling efforts for the wider public. Since the area was well-supplied with grief counselors in the first weeks of the tragedy, the parish committee has focused on using the grant to reach out to the community in the summer and into the school year. Among the options being considered: an ongoing, ecumenical series of community events such as films and lectures to provide a place to work through grief together; construction of a community labyrinth; specialized "care-for-the-caregiver" support, particularly for Tech faculty and staff.
Russell expects to have a busy summer as he is leading the parish since interim rector Elizabeth Morgan was called to a parish in South Carolina. He'll also begin to contact incoming Episcopal students and will rotate with other campus ministers in staffing an information table during the orientation season. And he is looking forward to preaching at the increased number of weddings to be held at Christ Church this summer.
"Our parish is a very organic place; we're able to take what comes. But I'm looking forward to the sense of joy that these weddings will bring," said Russell. //
To read updates of the events as they were posted and first-hand journal entries about the tragedy, as well as find information on disaster preparedness, visit <a href="http://www.dioswva.org/respond/">dioswva.org/respond</a>
--
Archived with permission of author.
Original Source: The Episcopal Diocese of Southwestern Virginia
<a href="http://www.dioswva.org/news/2007/jun/blacksburg-diocese-seek-shalom-after-april-16-shootings">http://www.dioswva.org/news/2007/jun/blacksburg-diocese-seek-shalom-after-april-16-shootings</a>
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Christie Wills (cwills@dioswva.org)
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Blacksburg, diocese seek shalom after April 16 shootings
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local response
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Adriana Seagle
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Adrienne Woltersdorf / taz Entwicklungs GmbH & Co. Medien KG
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2007-07-01
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18.04.2007
<b>Bei dem Massaker an der Universität in Blacksburg im Bundesstaat Virginia sind noch viele Fragen offen - unter anderem das Motiv des Amokläufers</b>
WASHINGTON taz Fast wirkte es gespenstisch, wie routiniert die US-amerikanische Öffentlichkeit mit Amoklauf in Schulen und Universitäten umgeht. Erste Handy-Bilder im Fernsehen. Kurze Zeit später eine Armada von Ü-Wagen und Reportern, schließlich die ersten bestürzten Augenzeugen, die immer wieder sagen, sie könnten es nicht fassen und alles sei so schrecklich.
Auch die US-Politiker wirkten traurig, aber so, als habe Leben in Amerika eben seinen Preis. Präsident George W. Bush, Parlamentschefin Nancy Pelosi, alle sprachen sie über das Unfassbare, Tragische. Alles klang, wie schon manches Mal gesagt. Nur Stunden nach dem, was die US-Medien als "Massaker in Blacksburg" bezeichnen, schwärmten Trauerbegleiter auf den Campus der kleinen Stadt im US-Bundesstaat Virginia. Psychologen und FBI-Profiler gaben ihr Wissen in Interviews zum Besten, und erste Warnungen vor Nachahmungstaten machten die Runde.
Vielleicht ist es auch nur das, was man zu einem so kaltblütigen Amoklauf wie dem vom Montagmorgen sagen kann. Die Schüsse, berichteten Augenzeugen später, seien so regelmäßig erfolgt, dass manche zunächst glauben, sie kommen von einer nahe gelegenen Baustelle. So, als treibe ein Kolben ein Stahlrohr in den Grund. Ein Schuss folgte dem anderen, manchmal mit Pausen. Das waren die Momente, in denen der Täter sein Magazin nachlud, um dann ebenso ruhig und regelmäßig weiter seine Kommilitonen abzuknallen.
Die Bluttat sei von einem südkoreanischen Studenten namens Cho Seung Hui verübt worden, sagte der Polizeichef der Universität, Wendell Flinchum. Der 23-Jährige habe mit einem Ausländervisum an der Virginia-Tech-Universität Englisch studiert und in einem Wohnheim auf dem Campus gelebt.
Der Täter hat 33 Studierende und Professoren erschossen sowie 15 Menschen verletzt. Die Bluttat fand in einer Deutschklasse statt. Beim Eintreffen der Polizei habe sich der Schütze das Leben genommen, sagte Flinchum. Der junge Mann soll sich von hinten in den Kopf geschossen haben, von seinem Gesicht ist nichts mehr übrig geblieben. Zu seinem Motiv gab es keine Erklärungen. Nichts.
Vor dem Amoklauf waren am frühen Montagmorgen eine Studentin und ein Student in einem Wohnheim auf dem Campus getötet worden. Die Polizei untersucht nach den Worten von Flinchum, ob beide Fälle in einem Zusammenhang stehen. Eine Augenzeugin sagte, es handele sich um einen jungen Mann asiatischer Abstammung. "Er war wie ein Pfadfinder gekleidet", sagte sie im Fernsehen. Schnell richtete sich die Wut vieler Studenten gegen die Polizei, die nach der ersten Schießerei, der eine junge Frau und ein junger Mann zum Opfer fielen, eigentlich nichts unternommen hatte. Sie hatte zugelassen, dass der Lehrbetrieb fortgesetzt wurde. Weder wurde der Campus abgeriegelt, noch wurden die Studenten geschützt. Der Amokläufer hatte fast zwei Stunden Zeit, den Campus zu überqueren und sein Todeswerk in einem anderen Gebäude der Universität fortzusetzen. Vertreter der Universität rechtfertigten das Verhalten damit, dass die erste Bluttat als Einzelfall bewertet wurde. Viele der Betroffenen werfen den Verantwortlichen deswegen vor, sie hätten viel zu spät vor dem Amokläufer gewarnt. Überhaupt tauchte im Laufe des Montagabend noch die Nachricht auf, die Polizei habe zwei Bombenwarnungen auf dem Campus zu Beginn des Monats als Routinedrohung abgehakt und keine verschärften Sicherheitsmaßnahmen angeordnet.
Der Amoklauf begann einem Mitstudenten zufolge nach einem Streit des Täters mit seiner Freundin. Der Schütze habe seine Freundin im Streit erschossen, berichtete am Dienstag ein taiwanesischer Student in einem Interview des taiwanesischen Kabelfernsehkanals CTI aus den USA. Einen Mann, der den Streit schlichten wollte, habe er ebenfalls getötet. Am Schwarzen Brett der Universität hatten Studenten später eine Botschaft angepinnt. "Unsere Gedanken und Gebete sind bei der Technischen Universität von Virginia und bei allen, die von den Ereignissen am 16. April betroffen sind." Das Blutbad in Blacksburg gilt als das schwerste Massaker mit Schusswaffen in der Geschichte der Vereinigten Staaten.
ADRIENNE WOLTERSDORF
"mit freundlicher Genehmigung der taz - die
tageszeitung"
--
Ursprüngliche Quelle: taz, die tageszeitung
<a href="http://www.taz.de/index.php?id=archiv&dig=2007/04/18/a0141">http://www.taz.de/index.php?id=archiv&dig=2007/04/18/a0141</a>
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Corrina Urbach (lizenzen@taz.de)
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Der Täter hatte zwei Stunden Zeit für sein Todeswerk
blacksburg
campus
motiv
professoren
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Brent Jesiek
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Bibb Edwards
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2007-06-17
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<p>Thursday, April 19, 2007
I first saw Blacksburg, and what was then V.P.I., almost fifty years ago, the summer of 1960. A member of my high school's chapter of the Future Farmers of America, I was attending the FFA's Virginia state convention - a wide-eyed rising 9th grader. About 5 foot six, I weighed little more than a large sack of chicken feed. I was a member of our school's second-string crop judging team; we did surprisingly well.
Blacksburg was the "sleepy little college town" in the mountains then, home to a small agricultural and mechanical/military school and little else. You could count the traffic lights and have fingers left over. V.P.I. was essentially all-male and all-white; being a member of the corps of cadets was the norm. Foreign students and women on campus were not. The student body generally came from rural and small-town Virginia, where it was highly regarded. A turkey was the school mascot. It was so not UVA, William and Mary, or Hollins. It was not even V.M.I.
Things change and stuff happens. By the time I graduated from high school V.P.I. was beginning its remarkable transformation into a major university. My lackluster high school record and vague aspirations did not make me highly sought after college material. But V.P.I. took a chance and accepted me. They had probably seen worse. After purgatory at their Danville Branch I finally arrived in Blacksburg in the fall of 1966.
Evidence of the major commitment to transform Tech was everywhere: new buildings, overflowing dorms, expanding academic programs, a much larger and more diverse student body (though still not enough girls), and a major emphasis on athletics, mainly football. We even managed a traffic jam on some Saturday afternoons in the fall. Off-campus housing grew, a fine off-campus book store opened, along with a decent restaurant or two. Long hair and an underground newspaper appeared. The 60's arrived at Tech and Blacksburg sometime in the 70's, but it arrived.
I should have been happy at Tech and Blacksburg, but I was not. Blacksburg seemed like the end of the earth. I called it Bleaksburg, a reference to more than its weather three seasons of the year. Driving into town one Sunday I nearly ran off the road laughing at a road sign where someone had written "armpit of the nation" under the word Blacksburg.
The school's administrators - many holdover's from its days as a military school - seemed to be truly hostile to students. Their martial vision of what college life should be was not my vision. It was a conservative campus and I was, without much self consciousness, becoming quite liberal, at least by Virginia standards. I began to enjoy walking on their grass.
My first fall on campus saw the football team invited to what I believe was its first bowl game, the Liberty Bowl in Memphis. We were to play the University of Miami. I remember walking across campus one cold, cold night headed downtown for some food (I hated the food at Shanks) and seeing a student-made sign hanging in the wind. "Beat Miami" it said. Blacksburg, Miami. Blacksburg, Miami. Hunkered into the wind I had a hard time wrapping my mind around any idea that contained those words together. Yes, true to my school, I did drive what seemed like halfway across America in my Corvair to attend that game. But I wanted out.
That would not be easy. I had just changed majors, from engineering to political science. PoliSci allowed the most electives at Tech and this would give me the chance to pretend I was at a liberal arts college where, by that time, I discovered I wanted to be. My academic record at that point was not much better than my high school record, making a transfer problematic. And there was a war on and a military draft, not something to be taken lightly. I needed that 2-s deferment. And I doubt I could have convinced my parents that it was a good idea to transfer. After all they were paying for my little adventure in academia.
My salvation came from an unlikely series of events. That January a friend at UVA invited me to Charlottesville for a week-end. He said he would get us some dates from Mary Washington College and we would have a great time; might get lucky. I was all for a great time and good luck, so plans were made. That Friday came and with it a snow storm. I said what-the-hell and made for Charlottesville. The weather worsened and I was lucky to make it to campus. The train from Fredericksburg was canceled, as were the events of the week-end. What to do? He had a friend who had just returned from a semester aboard a ship that had sailed around the world. We went to see him. Still very much overwhelmed by the experience, he told stories for hours. When we left he gave us literature about the college program and said we should apply as soon as possible. Sounded good to me.
Fast forward and I returned from that Semester at Sea with a larger view of myself, my world, and Blacksburg. Virginia Tech would continue to annoy me from time to time as it seemed slow closing the gap between what I wanted of it and what it could deliver. But I finally had matured enough to begin to take advantage of what it did offer, and to appreciate that wonderful place in the Virginia mountains, Blacksburg.
I now have two degrees from Tech, having returned in the '80s for a Master's in Urban and Regional Planning. My wife also has two degrees from Tech. She grew up just outside Blacksburg. Her sister in-law works in Norris Hall, second floor. I have wonderful friends in Blacksburg who worked for Tech for many years. Even though I also have a degree from UVA and have great respect for the University, I am a Hokie. I have marveled at Tech's growth, been amazed at the transformation of Blacksburg into a world-class small city. So watching the news over the past few days has been hard.
The violent death and injury of so many students and faculty at the hands of a psychopath renders words inadequate to convey the horror. One cannot look into the faces of horrified students and anxious or grieving parents without becoming one of them. Trying to make sense of it all seems overwhelming. And yet that is what each of us will try to do, needs to do. The young man with two handguns shot at us all.
As tragic as the events of last Monday morning were we have the ability to make them worse. And we will. I could feel it as I was watching the first reports on CNN. Even as the news was happening I could feel the ramp up to what was coming: the second guessing, criticizing, the self-righteous placing of blame, the spin in service to political agenda. Even before we had time to learn the fate of friends and family, grieve, or learn the name or fate of the gunman, the process was well underway.
Our TV hosts struggled to learn just where Blacksburg was and fumbled about trying to describe a university they knew little about. Tech was both a major university with 26,000 students and "insular" according to Brian Williams, who also placed it in the Smoky Mountains. While we were all trying to reconcile the image of a peaceful, semi-rural college environment with violence we usually associate with our urban areas or foreign theaters of war, the talking heads moved from conveying what little they knew about the horror unfolding on campus to asking leading questions and poking around trying to find an angle. They think they are reporters.
It bled and it led for hours on end. After asking students what they saw or heard Wolf Blitzer and the other CNN reporters (I use the term loosely) made a point of asking if they still felt safe, if they blamed the University and if the were planning to transfer. It took a while before they stopped seeming surprised when the students usually said they loved their school, the community, and had not considered leaving. I thought generally the students interviewed sounded much more thoughtful than their hosts. And without the "like, you know what I'm saying." I was proud of them.
Once it appeared that the gunman was dead and there was a two hour gap in the shootings the focus shifted to finding a way to question the University's handling of the situation. Well before any of the details were to fill out the timeline our TV hosts were pouncing, safely behind the camera miles away from danger or responsibility past filling commercial-safe airtime. Without possibly having the facts with which to assess situation they began to invite questions of competency of local law enforcement and the judgment of school administrators. When will we come to understand that when someone prefaces a statement, "I don't understand why ___", they really don't. You are being set up.
Soon "experts" with little or no knowledge of the specifics began to appear and try to shape our view of the tragedy. Dr. Phil appeared early. We eventually heard from Ted Nugent (FOX?) who said this would not have happened if students were allowed to legally carry guns on campus. He did not mention bows and arrows. Can they work in Springer next? If we were not dealing with a real human tragedy, real suffering and loss, this would almost be funny. It is not funny.
Once we learned the gunman was a student and was born in South Korea the press was perplexed. Even though he had lived in the US most of his life - since he was 8 years old - he was Korean. Since South Korea is an ally of the United States it has been difficult for the press to figure out how significant that was or how to play it. Now if he had been from the Middle East...
Few bothered to remark that the killer was a young man and that young men are have almost exclusive ownership of this type of serial murder. You assumed the killer was male, didn't you? I did. I didn't expect the media to go there and they didn't.
We now know he was recognized as a loner and "troubled," and had come to the attention of the school as such. He had received at least some attention from mental health and law enforcement professionals. The NYTimes gave us this morning, "Officials Knew Troubled State of Killer in '05." Well he was not a killer in '05. He was just a student with problems, probably not that unlike any number of other students on campuses from coast to coast. The headline whispers that the "officials" are now partially responsible for the crime. I am sure that these professionals wish now they could have seen into the future and done something. But I doubt even Cho Seung-hui could have done that in '05.
Being "troubled" and dead brings us to the possibility that the tragedy includes Mr. Cho. While I am sure many would recoil at this so soon, the compassion and forgiveness that my Christian countrymen so often trot out as a model for others, might not be misplaced for this very mentally ill young man and provoke wonder how he became so bitter and twisted. No, it is much easier and entertaining to now find fault with the living, those doing their very best to ensure safety of others when that still, unfortunately, was not sufficient.
Yes, I am sure campus police and other university officials wish they had done some things differently Monday morning. Given the contents of the package Mr. Cho sent to NBC that morning between shooting it is certainly possible only the location, names and number of future victims would have changed. What is likely however is that the number Mr. Cho's victims will continue to grow as some try to use the tragedy for their own ends.
Regarding making sense of it all, once again our dim-bulb President got it wrong. He said on campus trying to mean well,</p>
<blockquote>It's impossible to make sense of such violence and suffering. Those whose lives were taken did nothing to deserve their fate. They were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Now they're gone - and they leave behind grieving families, and grieving classmates, and a grieving nation.</blockquote>
<p>Well, George, making sense of things is what what people at Universities try to do, and with some success. The question is what sense we will make of it. Don't try to suggest impossibilities at a place based on possibilities. And they were not in the "wrong place at the wrong time." A convenient cliche, but again off the mark. They were in the right place, Blacksburg, Virginia Tech.
Go Hokies.
posted by Bibb at <a href="http://bibbedwards.blogspot.com/2007/04/virginia-tech.html">5:13 AM</a>
--
Original Source: <a href="http://bibbedwards.blogspot.com/2007/04/virginia-tech.html">http://bibbedwards.blogspot.com/2007/04/virginia-tech.html</a>
Licensed under <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0</a>.</p>
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blacksburg
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https://www.april16archive.org/files/original/P1000787_ec85e2a323.JPG
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2007-06-13
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Display of support painted on front window of Imaginations Toy and Furniture Company, South Main Street, Blacksburg. The poem reads:
If we had hinges in our heads
There wouldn't be no sin.
'Cause we could take the bad stuff out,
And leave the good stuff in.
- Shel Silverstein
Photo taken by Brent Jesiek on June 9, 2007.
--
Licensed under <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0</a>.
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eng
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Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0
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If we had hinges
blacksburg
sign
support
window
-
https://www.april16archive.org/files/original/000_0189_2577a44508.JPG
null
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Date
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2007-05-29
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2007-05-29 21:18:56
Still Image
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Chelsea Clark
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Chelsea Clark
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2007-05-29
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This woman was on College Ave. and Main Street after the convocation. This is a prime expample of how close our community is. I told her "I love you" and she replied "I love you more..."
I love this town, I have lived here all my life (19 years) and there is no other town I would rather been raised in...
Language
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eng
Title
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Lovely Towny
april 17
blacksburg
downtown
town
-
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Brent Jesiek
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Benjamin Cohen
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2007-05-11
Description
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The Morning News - Personal Essays
It stunned the nation that the Virginia Tech murders took place; it shocked Virginians that they occurred in Blacksburg. A former longtime resident, BENJAMIN COHEN traces his connections to the tragedy.
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I drove home from Charlottesville in confused panic after cancelling my afternoon class. Noah Adams was on NPR talking about the stark clash of nature and humans, setting and event. It was the visual, sensory contrast between Blacksburg, the bucolic valley town in southwestern Virginia, and mass murder news story. That this human tragedy could happen there, in that natural majesty. From all the 11 scattered years I lived there, before moving to the University of Virginia last year, the bucolic descriptor is one that sticks. It’s exaggerated, I know, but it works. And it’s the one the media evoked all week: Blacksburg, a quaint, off-the-beaten-track bucolic college town nestled in the mountains of southwest Virginia. Being “nestled” also seems key, the town cradled by the mountains, the students by the valley. I walked that nestled town too many times to count, and ever after have the image of my son cruising down Draper Road sidewalks wearing his red Keds and pushing his toy lawnmower.
Adams apparently had written about the New River a few years ago—a river paradoxically named, since it’s in fact one of the oldest in North America, if not the world—and thus knew the area. He was speaking in the first phase of tragedy, when people confront the fact that senseless things don’t make sense. This was before the pre-spin spin phase, when people talk about what people will soon be talking about: too many guns, not enough guns, no Bibles in schools, too much God in schools, moral decay, media glorification, video games, actual worldwide wars, daily death in Iraq, numbness, surveillance cameras will save us, mental illness is awful, failure of health-care system, campus judicial systems, parents, society, it’s “society’s” fault, and however else Nancy and Greta might try to understand it. After 9/11, they gave us, what, a three- to four-day opening phase? The duration is apparently proportional to death count; this time it lasted three to four hours.
<I>I</I> didn’t know any of the victims, but <i>everyone</i> I know knew one or more. From this, I found there is only one direction with things like violent tragedy: It isn’t that I was fortunate not to know any of them directly, but that it was unfortunate so many did; you can’t feel better, you only feel worse or more worse.
I went to Virginia Tech because its application didn’t require an essay. When I graduated, I had no idea why I’d chosen my major (chemical engineering), and I wasn’t even particularly fond of the school itself. But Blacksburg was significant to me. In this way, I have always been critical of an institution that has also come to define me; I placed the natural setting of Blacksburg as one thing, the human institution of Tech as another, as if they were separate, which they are not. So yes, I finally admit it, my adult identity was born there. There’s that. My biography’s tightly intertwined with the town, the valley, the school.
I met my wife there. She had been a freshman in West Ambler Johnston Hall. Three months after graduation, we got married in the chapel on the Drill Field at the center of campus. I played wiffle ball out there all afternoon on my wedding day, getting a slight sunburn in the calm afternoon sun. The sunburn shows in the wedding pictures. The Drill Field is that seemingly fabricated collegiate setting, the only one admissions folks want you to see—frisbees, wiffle ball, rugby, picnics, sunbathers, dogs and tennis balls, kites. It’s also a good place to hold candle-light vigils.
If anything, Blacksburg was known in the mid-’90s because of <a href="http://www.cni.org/tfms/1995b.fall/BEV.html">the Blacksburg Electronic Village</a>. (It was the first “wired” town. Soon, obviously, everyplace was a wired town, so I guess it didn’t really matter anymore.) Yes, Axl Rose supposedly once stopped by The Cellar after a concert in nearby Roanoke, but I never found out if that was really true.
When we, my wife and I, came back for graduate school later in the decade—for something called “science studies,” something explicitly<i> not </i>engineering—Blacksburg had become a football school. Plus, <a href="http://outside.away.com/outside/destinations/200109/200109towns_10.adp">one year <i>Outside </i>magazine said it was a great place to live</a>. So much hiking; the Appalachian Trail close by; lots of mountain biking; did you know they filmed <i>Dirty Dancing</i> in a mountain retreat just miles away? Yes, everyone does; rolling hills; serene sunsets; a great vegetarian restaurant downtown; cows, horses, sheep, farms; tubing on the same New River that enchanted Noah Adams. One summer I lost a T-shirt in that river, and my keys and a shoe. It wasn’t until reading the <i>New York Times</i> last weekend—<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/22/us/22norris.html">”Students Recount Desperate Minutes Inside Norris Hall”</a>—that I remembered my classes had been in Norris Hall that summer.
Once when my wife was an undergraduate, there was a peeping Tom incident at the dorms. It was unsettling. That such a thing could happen in that little town. By the time we returned for our graduate stint—living the next county over, a few mountains to the west, in fact, not even in town—Blacksburg was a football school, and there had been a shooting at a local bar, several stabbings, and other violent incidents downtown. This added to my ambivalence about the school and the town and my place there. I didn’t see how I was tied to the area in the way I do now.
My graduate department was likely the most liberal-leaning one on the generally conservative campus. Our offices were in the middle of the ROTC quad. We’d be talking about ethics and technology and social structure and the military-industrial complex inside; they’d be doing roll call and formations and hut-hut-huts outside. In further contrast to this, a fellow graduate student friend was an activist organizer in town. Her friend, another grad student and probably the most visible and active of the activists, was murdered by yet another peace activist, an unstable married man who was having an affair with her. His subsequent suicide kept the motive unclear. Unsettling, in that case, is a disrespectful understatement. It was horrific.
Our children were born in Blacksburg. We lived there for 11 of our first 15 post-high school years: adulthood, education, dating, marriage, education, jobs, family. So it’s not only my biography that is interlaced with the town and the school, but my children’s as well. During the third week of my first semester teaching, after a lecture about the U.S.’s history of involvement in the domestic affairs of other nations, I walked back to my office and was stopped along the way by a friend who said only that “they hit the towers, they hit the buildings.” I had no idea what that meant. Sitting on the front porch of our building, the one facing the ROTC quad, on an amazingly crisp, clear, solid blue-sky day, someone else was the first to quote <i>Fargo</i>—“And it’s such a beautiful day,” she said, in disbelief. In such a placid town, nestled in the mountains of Virginia, we watched New York and the Pentagon burn. All of this, three months before our son was born. We had a lot of those “what kind of world…” conversations, all set against the backdrop of bucolic Blacksburg.
<a href="http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2004/8/12cohenphish.html">When we moved into Blacksburg for our last year of studies</a>, as a way to be closer to campus and friends and to live by foot more than car, we walked the mile from our house to downtown many times a week. Then we were true Blacksburg residents, with all the trappings, including first-name greetings at the coffee shop and that vegetarian restaurant and the credit union and the bookstore and the Greek restaurant and the farmer’s market. Our son pushed his toy John Deere lawnmower in front of him every time we walked downtown. He became “that adorable kid,” the one with the lawnmower in the red Keds. At the coffee shop, I recognized, though didn’t personally know, all the regulars. The one we called Stay-at-Home Dad always seemed odd, and my wife didn’t think he was really a father for the first year. (He was; we eventually saw his children.) Weird-Kid-Who-Should-Probably-Have-a-Job was always there too, usually playing backgammon with Stay-at-Home Dad. Unfriendly-Hippie Couple saw us every day for years, never once saying hello. Scowling peaceniks always confused me.
A year after we moved to Charlottesville in 2005 after all that time in Blacksburg, <a href="http://www.roanoke.com/news/roanoke/wb/79080">that weird kid at the coffee shop was arrested, then escaped from jail, killed two people, and caused a lockdown on the Virginia Tech campus on the very first day of the semester</a>. We watched the news from afar, absolutely stunned, completely silent that this was actually in, as the now-well-worn moniker has it, bucolic Blacksburg. College kids were being interviewed on CNN, terrified that this was their greeting to their new world.
I still work with colleagues from Blacksburg. I spoke to my doctoral adviser, himself in the history department at Tech, days before the massacre last week, and had heard there’d been bomb threats over the past month. That’s eerie. Because of my own biography there, I knew what others there were <i>already</i> going through before this happened—another adviser was dealing with her husband’s death last year; a classmate had a devastating miscarriage a little while back; another friend’s younger brother had unexpectedly died in February. And then, as I was leaving my second of three classes Monday afternoon, here at the University of Virginia, someone asked if I’d heard about Virginia Tech. Yes, I’m from there, I said, misunderstanding what she was asking me. I fast-walked to my office and saw all the news.
After I called my wife, hurriedly cancelled class, found my car to drive home, heard Noah Adams on the radio, scolded myself for being irritated by trivialities like CBS’s calling it Virginia Tech “University”—after that, I got home to find my family in the yard, the kids wanting to take a walk around the block. Though he hadn’t given it a second look for several years, my son grabbed his old toy lawnmower from the shed. Then my daughter got her baby stroller, and we walked around our peaceful violent American society.
-Published April 24, 2007
Benjamin Cohen is an assistant professor of science, technology, and society at the University of Virginia. He also helps out at the McSweeney's web site. <a href="mailto:benjaminrcohen@yahoo.com">You can email him here.</a>
--
Archived with permission of the author. Original source: <a href="http://www.themorningnews.org/archives/personal_essays/blacksburg_and_biography.php">http://www.themorningnews.org/archives/personal_essays/blacksburg_and_biography.php</a>
Language
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eng
Title
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Blacksburg and Biography
blacksburg
charlottesville
commentary
professor
the morning news
-
https://www.april16archive.org/files/original/P1000441b_d4421c7c01.JPG
null
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Date
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2007-05-05
Omeka Legacy File
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Capture Date
2007-05-05 14:16:27
Still Image
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Contributor
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Brent Jesiek
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Brent Jesiek
Date
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2007-05-05
Description
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Sign and ribbons of support on building in Blacksburg, at the intersection of N. Main Street and Prices Fork Road. Photo taken Monday, April 30.
Language
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eng
Title
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We Are Strong - We Are Virginia Tech
blacksburg
main
ribbons
sign
-
https://www.april16archive.org/files/original/P1000424_197404145b.JPG
null
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Date
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2007-05-02
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Capture Date
2007-05-02 13:11:00
Still Image
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Brent Jesiek
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Brent Jesiek
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2007-05-02
Description
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32 orange and maroon crosses on display at N. Main St. entrance to Blacksburg Christian Fellowship. Photo taken Monday, April 30.
Language
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eng
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32 Crosses
blacksburg
crosses
main street
-
https://www.april16archive.org/files/original/P1000433_b8bd834768.JPG
null
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2007-05-02
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2007-05-02 13:16:18
Still Image
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Brent Jesiek
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Brent Jesiek
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2007-05-02
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We "Heart" VT sign with orange and maroon handprints, on display at N. Main St. entrance to Blacksburg New School. Photo taken Monday, April 30.
Language
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eng
Title
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We Heart VT
blacksburg
main street
new school
sign
-
https://www.april16archive.org/files/original/rordam_d7ea43cdca.JPG
null
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2007-04-27
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2007-04-27 10:07:05
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David Arnold
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David Arnold
Date
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2007-04-27
Description
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Blacksburg Mayor Ron Rordam being interviewed on April 18,2007, two days after the Virginia Tech Tragedy.
Language
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eng
Title
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Blacksburg Mayor Ron Rordam
blacksburg
mayor
ron
rordam
-
https://www.april16archive.org/files/original/P1000367_ea267b8451.JPG
null
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Date
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2007-04-26
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2007-04-26 10:59:42
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Brent Jesiek
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Brent Jesiek
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2007-04-26
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Message of support on a wall at the Blacksburg Rescue Squad complex. Photo taken Friday, April 20.
Language
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eng
Title
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Hokie Nation
blacksburg
hokie
nation
rescue squad
sign
support
-
https://www.april16archive.org/files/original/P1000365_9881eb1f82.JPG
null
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Date
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2007-04-24
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2007-04-24 15:27:53
Still Image
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Brent Jesiek
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Brent Jesiek
Date
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2007-04-24
Description
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(April 20, 2007) Message of support on Cook's Clean Center sign. On Main Street, directly across from Alumni Mall campus entrance.
Language
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eng
Title
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We Are Hokies Sign
blacksburg
hokies
main street
prevail
sign