Intermediate Memorial Construction
description: Construction of an intermediate memorial in front of Burruss Hall is currently underway. The face of Norris Hall is visible to the right. Photo taken from the middle of the drillfield on Sunday, June 17. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0.
creator: Brent Jesiek
date: 2007-06-17
contributor: Brent Jesiek
language: eng

Intermediate Memorial Construction
description: Construction of an intermediate memorial in front of Burruss Hall is currently underway. Photo taken from the middle of the drillfield on Sunday, June 17. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0.
creator: Brent Jesiek
date: 2007-06-17
contributor: Brent Jesiek
rights: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0
language: eng

Intermediate Memorial Construction
description: Construction of an intermediate memorial in front of Burruss Hall is currently underway. The semicircle of Hokie Stone victim memorials have been moved forward to make room for the renovations. Photo taken Thursday, June 14. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0.
creator: Brent Jesiek
date: 2007-06-17
contributor: Brent Jesiek
rights: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0
language: eng

Memorial Project Notice
description: Construction of an intermediate memorial in front of Burruss Hall is currently underway. The full text of the Memorial Project Notice visible in the foreground is available in this Virginia Tech News Story: "University announces plans for intermediate and permanent memorial to honor victims of April 16 tragedy". Photo taken Thursday, June 14. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0.
creator: Brent Jesiek
date: 2007-06-17
contributor: Brent Jesiek
rights: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0
language: eng

Intermediate Memorial Construction
description: Construction of an intermediate memorial in front of Burruss Hall is currently underway. The semicircle of Hokie Stone victim memorials have been moved forward to make room for the renovations. Photo taken Thursday, June 14. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0.
creator: Brent Jesiek
date: 2007-06-17
contributor: Brent Jesiek
rights: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0
language: eng

Intermediate Memorial Construction
description: Construction of an intermediate memorial in front of Burruss Hall is currently underway. The semicircle of Hokie Stone victim memorials have been moved forward to make room for the renovations. Photo taken Thursday, June 14. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0.
creator: Brent Jesiek
date: 2007-06-17
contributor: Brent Jesiek
rights: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0
language: eng

Intermediate Memorial Construction
description: Construction of an intermediate memorial in front of Burruss Hall is currently underway. Photo taken from the middle of the drillfield on Sunday, June 17. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0.
creator: Brent Jesiek
date: 2007-06-17
contributor: Brent Jesiek
rights: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0
language: eng

Cho's Stone
description: Cho Seung-Hui's Hokie Stone memorial on the drillfield. Photo taken Thursday, June 14. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0.
creator: Brent Jesiek
date: 2007-06-17
contributor: Brent Jesiek
rights: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0
language: eng

on the VT massacre
description: 17 April 2007 The talking heads keep talking about the "VT Massacre", not that it doesn't deserve attention, but this is too much attention. And VT is getting a bad wrap unfairly on one specific point: the notification of students on campus as to what was going on. The media seem obsessed with the 2-hour gap between the first shooting and the campus-wide email. They think the whole campus should have been told immediately. This is a short-sighted and impatient assumption, and is definitely not appropriate in a time like this when cooler heads should prevail. First, when the first shooting occurred, no one knew what the hell was going on! As with any incident like this, the police responded immediately, and their first priority was to figure out what happened. From what the VT police have said, they had reason to believe the shooter had left campus. So, what good would it have been to lock the campus down? And even if they had, how would that have stopped the assailant from coming back, as this may have only added police officers to the list of the dead. My point is VT authorities didn't notify anyone immediately because they didn't know what to tell them! In this age of information and 24-hour TV news, many have been spoiled into thinking they should have answers immediately, and that someone has failed them if they don't. Spoiled is definitely the best word for that outlook. Answers aren't always available right away, and rarely is the complete picture seen even days after an event like this, if ever. So, why are some in the media out to vilify the very people who were trying to protect the public and figure this whole thing out? I can see no reason other than lack of understanding and sensationalism, neither of which is an acceptable answer. --- On a different note about the incidents of yesterday: As a life member of Kappa Kappa Psi Honorary Band Fraternity, as was receiving updates on the status on members of our chapter at VT. All were accounted for by midday a…
creator: Matt Collins
date: 2007-06-17
contributor: Brent Jesiek
rights: Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License
language: eng

WCC leader backs calls for effective US firearms regulations
description: News Brief By staff writers 18 Apr 2007 World Council of Churches (WCC) general secretary the Rev Dr Samuel Kobia has expressed "deep sorrow" over "this new horror of random violence" that took place at Virginia Tech University on Monday 16 April 2007. To his prayers for the families and the wounded, he added international church concern for more effective regulation of firearms. "Churches around the world join churches and councils of churches in the US in sending sympathies to those who are suffering, and in upholding parishes in Virginia in their ministry during these difficult days", said Dr Kobia in a statement published yesterday. Dr Kobia affirmed that "In deference to those who have died and with concern for the future, we all must ask why such killings happen so easily. Why are these incidents repeated as if there are no remedies? "We are all Virginians in our sympathy, but many people around the world are also Virginians in their vulnerability to the misuse of unregulated guns", Kobia declared. "Wanton killings", "indiscriminate use of armed force" and "widespread availability of deadly weapons" are features of the Virginia tragedy but are also present daily in Darfur and in Iraq, he said. Dr Kobia called for "firm and appropriate controls" on the globalized trade in small arms. He notes, among other factors, that the "pro-gun position adopted by the US administration" has been "one of the major obstacles" to progress toward that goal. The World Council of Churches, which brings together Protestant, Orthodox, Anglican and indigenous churches across the globe, has a longstanding concern for combating violence. The Decade to Overcome Violence and build a culture of peace has brought together church and civic groups. It has included a 'peace to the city' initiative which included action on gun crime and domestic attacks. -- Original Source: Ekklesia http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/5069 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No…
creator: Ekklesia Staff Writers
date: 2007-06-17
contributor: Brent Jesiek
rights: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 England & Wales License
language: eng

The Altar of the Gun
description: Note: I found writing this piece to be a way of channeling my own anger at the massacre this morning. But I recognize that anger is only one part of the grief process. Please join me in praying for the families and friends of those killed. American worships the gun. Today, 33 more were sacrificed on the altar of our devotion to the gun. Specifically to semi automatic handguns. There are already dozens of articles from disciples arguing that the massacre today at Virginia tech could have been avoided if some of the students had been carrying guns so they could shoot the killer before he killed them. We trust the gun more than we trust God. The brutal reality of our gun fetish is that selling guns and ammo is highly profitable. But it is not simply the fact that the market values short term earnings from gun sales more than the social, cultural, political and long term economic damage that gun violence does to our society. More importantly, the gun industry long ago learned to effectively invest their short term earnings into the social, political and cultural sphere. Their investments in the NRA, especially since 1977 years have returned 10 fold and the results are a culture in which gun ownership is intimately connected with the values of self-sufficiency, responsibility and security that so many Americans identify with. We'll call these frontier values. As much as we'd like to wish that the new Democratic congress would seize on this moment to pass some common sense gun laws, the reality is that many of the new members of Congress were partly by actively courting those with frontier values. Unless their constituency shows signs of disconnecting handguns from frontier values, any vote for limiting the sales of hand guns will be doomed. It may be that changing our gun culture requires looking at movements that have successfully challenged large corporations with large amounts of cultural capital. The anti-smoking movement comes to mind. The last 30 years have seen a …
creator: Tim Nafziger
date: 2007-06-17
contributor: Brent Jesiek
rights: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5
language: eng

We Remember and Honor
description: Wooden plaque remembering and honoring nine students from Political Science and International Studies. It is currently displayed on the fifth floor of Major Williams Hall. Photo taken Monday, June 18.
creator: Brent Jesiek
date: 2007-06-18
contributor: Brent Jesiek
language: eng

Transnistria survivor Liviu Librescu killed in Virginia Tech massacre
description: During Tuesday's massacre at Virginia Tech, in the USA, a holocaust survivor with ties to Tiraspol was killed. Liviu Librescu had survived deportation from Romania to the killing fields of World War II's Transnistria. The territory was never part of Romania or of any independent Moldovan state. By Times staff, 18/Apr/2007 BLACKSBURG (Wires, Tiraspol Times) - Liviu Librescu, a Romanian-born Israeli professor, survived the killing fields of Transnistria as a teenager but fell to the bullet of a lone gunman in an American university campus Tuesday. The 76 year-old Holocaust survivor was shot and killed in the Virginia Tech massacre while holding off the gunman at his lecture hall entrance so his students could escape. Librescu was among the thirty-three people who were murdered in the Virginia Tech massacre on April 16, 2007. He was killed during a class in the Norris Hall Engineering Building by a student, Korean-born Cho Seung-hui, 23. At Virginia Tech, his recent position was Professor of Engineering Science and Mechanics. Librescu held the door of his classroom shut while Cho was attempting to enter it; although he was shot through the door, he was able to prevent the gunman from entering the classroom until his students had escaped through the windows. A hero to his students A number of Librescu's students have called him a hero because of his actions, with one student, Asael Arad, saying that all the professor's students "lived because of him". Librescu's son, Joe, said he had received e-mails from several students who said he had saved their lives and regarded him as a hero. His death came on Holocaust Remembrance Day in Israel. Liviu Librescu was born in 1930 to a Jewish family in the city of Ploieşti, Romania. During World War II, his native Romania joined forces with Nazi Germany and started an extermination campaign of Jews. His family was first interned in a labor camp in what the Romanians at the time called Transnistria and then transferred to the ghetto…
creator: The Tiraspol Times
date: 2007-06-18
contributor: Adriana Seagle
rights: Jason Cooper (jasoncooper@tiraspoltimes.com)
language: eng

A Gray Haze over Everything
description: Campus life after the tragedy at Virginia Tech. Philip Yancey | posted 6/06/2007 08:01AM "April is the cruellest month." When T. S. Eliot penned that opening line to "The Waste Land" in 1921, he had no idea how it would resound in modern America. Oklahoma City, Columbine High School, and Virginia Tech—our calendars mark all three within a span of five days, a week soaked in grief. "As a youth minister, you anticipate weddings, not funerals," said Matt Rogers of New Life Christian Fellowship (NLCF), a Christian community that meets in the Student Center at Virginia Tech. "We have no playbook for something like this." I spoke at NLCF two weeks after the tragedy, accompanied by the Ruegsegger family, whose daughter Kacey survived gunshot wounds at Columbine High School eight years ago. "Very few people know what you're going through," Kacey told the students gathered for the somber service. "We've been there." The news media portrayed yet another mass killing on a U.S. campus. What greeted the visitor, though, was an overwhelming display of national solidarity. Banners and posters hung in many school buildings, covered with tens of thousands of handwritten messages of support. And a cluster of spontaneous memorials appeared around campus. Each day, visitors filed past the mounds of mementoes—a baseball, a Starbucks cup, a teddy bear, a favorite novel—that gave individuality to the 33 who'd died. Spring arrived late in western Virginia. As April faded into May, redbud and wild dogwood trees dotted the surrounding hills. Tulips and daffodils set off the gray stone university buildings. "It's usually such a happy time," mused one student. "We pack our books and stereos and head home, some of us with diplomas. This year, a gray haze hangs over everything." Before departing, many students paid one last visit to Norris Hall, blocked off with a green fence and yellow police tape. Where they used to attend classes, state patrolmen now stood guard. Copyright © 2007 Chris…
creator: Philip Yancey
date: 2007-06-18
contributor: Brent Jesiek
rights: Becky Custer, Editorial Coordinator (bcuster@christianitytoday.com)
language: eng

'Nightmare of Nightmares'
description: Virginia Tech's Korean Christians wrestle with the aftermath of a massacre. Deann Alford | posted 6/06/2007 08:02AM The alert that two students had been shot on campus blipped into Jong Nam Lee's e-mail inbox around 9:30 that fateful Monday morning, April 16, as the Virginia Tech research scientist was writing a paper. Months earlier, a gunman had been loose on campus, and within the past two weeks, there had been two bomb threats. Still, the warning prompted the soft-spoken engineer, who serves as an adviser to Virginia Tech's Korea Campus Crusade for Christ (KCCC), to check on his son, a student at the university. Josh Lee was safe. His morning class had been canceled. But within minutes, Lee's wife, Mi Oak, shared the unimaginable news with her husband. A suicidal gunman had killed 32 and injured 28 on campus before putting a gun to his own head. Quickly, Lee and dozens of other campus ministry leaders and their student leaders pulled out all the stops to respond. Ninety miles away in Lynchburg, David Chung, pastor of Blacksburg's Korean Baptist Church and a professor in Liberty University's Korean-language seminary, heard the news while on class break. Immediately, he canceled class, packed a bag, and made a beeline for Blacksburg. Korea Campus Crusade is based at Korean Baptist Church, a Korean-language congregation. Worship is held Sunday afternoons at the 155-year-old Blacksburg Baptist Church, across the street from the sprawling Virginia Tech campus. Nearly every congregation and on-campus ministry was hit in some way. "Cru"—as Campus Crusade for Christ is known at Virginia Tech—had four student fatalities. Baptist Collegiate Ministries lost one student. New Life Christian Fellowship, a student-oriented startup church, had two fatalities and ten student attenders injured. One graduate student affiliated with Korean Baptist took bullets in his hand and arm. One of Their Own—Lost in America The day after the slaughter, Korean American leaders realized t…
creator: Deann Alford
date: 2007-06-18
contributor: Brent Jesiek
rights: Becky Custer, Editorial Coordinator (bcuster@christianitytoday.com)
language: eng

Where Is God When It Hurts?
description: A sermon given on the Virginia Tech campus two weeks after the shootings. Philip Yancey | posted 6/06/2007 05:31PM We gather here still trying to make sense of what happened in Blacksburg, still trying to process the unprocessable. We come together in this place, as a Christian community, partly because we know of no better place to bring our questions and our grief and partly because we don't know where else to turn. As the apostle Peter once said to Jesus, at a moment of confusion and doubt, "Lord, to whom else can we go?" In considering how to begin today, I found myself following two different threads. The first thread is what I would like to say, the words I wish I could say. The second thread is the truth. I wish I could say that the pain you feel will disappear, vanish, never to return. I'm sure you've heard comments like these from parents and others: "Things will get better." "You'll get past this." "This too shall pass." Those who offer such comfort mean well, and it's true that what you feel now you will not always feel. Yet it's also true that what happened on April 16, 2007, will stay with you forever. You are a different person because of that day, because of one troubled young man's actions. I remember one year when three of my friends died. In my thirties then, I had little experience with death. In the midst of my grief, I came across these lines from George Herbert that gave me solace: "Grief melts away / Like snow in May / As if there were no such cold thing." I clung to that hope even as grief smothered me like an avalanche. Indeed, the grief did melt away, but like snow it also came back, in fierce and unexpected ways, triggered by a sound, a smell, some fragment of memory of my friends. So I cannot say what I want to say, that this too shall pass. Instead, I point to the pain you feel, and will continue to feel, as a sign of life and love. I'm wearing a neck brace because I broke my neck in an auto accident. For the first few hours as I lay str…
creator: Philip Yancey
date: 2007-06-18
contributor: Brent Jesiek
rights: Becky Custer, Editorial Coordinator (bcuster@christianitytoday.com)
language: eng

Asking Why
description: Christian fellowship helps survivors of the Virginia Tech shootings deal with larger issues. Deann Alford in Blacksburg, Virginia | posted 4/23/2007 09:50AM Four former Columbine students worshiped with Virginia Tech's New Life Christian Fellowship (NLCF) yesterday. It was the church's first Sunday worship gathering since the April 16 massacre that claimed 33 lives, including gunman Seung-Hui Cho. Christians were among the victims. Two NLCF members died, and 10 other victims were connected in some way to the church. Church leaders honored the dead, prayed for their families, and addressed why-and-how questions that went beyond forensics. The four Christians who as adolescents survived the massacre at Columbine High School almost eight years ago traveled to the southwestern Virginia campus to guide church leaders and minister to students processing grief, anger, and sorrow. Wendy Chinn, a counseling graduate student who leads NLCF's women's ministry, acknowledged that everyone is weary of the question, "How are you doing?" "Some lost someone extremely close. Others lost an acquaintance," Chinn said to the almost 400 people and network television cameras in the full auditorium. "Others still had a class in Norris, lived in A-J [West Ambler Johnston dormitory]. We remember where we were when it happened. We all grieve very differently. We're all going through it together. We know this is hard, know it's going to take time." Chris Backert, one of three NLCF pastors, referred to Mark 4, where Christ's disciples were caught in a boat during a storm. "We have all been through a storm. Why was it her? Why was it him? It could have been me." Backert noted that Jesus did not cause the storm. All the world's evil, he said, is sin that results when people choose to rebel against God. "When that tragedy strikes us, it also strikes God." Congregation members submitted written questions asking whether Monday's massacre was part of God's plan, what forgiveness of Cho would look lik…
creator: Deann Alford
date: 2007-06-18
contributor: Brent Jesiek
rights: Becky Custer, Editorial Coordinator (bcuster@christianitytoday.com)
language: eng

Korean church leaders caution against backlash after US shootings
description: News Brief By staff writers 21 Apr 2007 Korean and American Korean church leaders are calling for "healing, reconciliation and peace" amid concerns that the Virginia Tech shootings by a South Korean native could lead to a backlash against Koreans. "I was really shocked to hear that this senseless crime was committed by a Korean-immigrated student," said Bishop Kyung-Ha Shin, president of the Council of Bishops of the Korean Methodist Church. In a letter from Seoul sent on 18 April 2007, Bishop Shin offered condolences to the bereaved families and the American people while hoping "there will be no undesirable negative feeling and attitude toward Koreans." Meanwhile, in the United States, more than 250 leaders of the National Association of Korean American United Methodist Churches were holding their annual meeting 16-19 April in Chicago when the shooting occurred. As word of the shooter's identity spread, the mostly clergy participants began receiving calls from their home churches asking for guidance. "The whole community was in shock and did not know how to respond, but we prayed for the victims and their family members and the school and the community," said the Rev Keihwan Ryoo, editor of United Methodists in Service, who was reporting on the gathering on behalf of the Korean-language magazine published by United Methodist Communications. Several pastors received reports that Korean American students had been bullied in their mostly white schools as the week progressed, Ryoo said. The caucus held a memorial service for the shooting victims and released a pastoral letter. "We pray that the violence that has needlessly taken innocent lives does not escalate nor happen again," said the Rev Hoon Kyoung Lee, chairman of the association. "Furthermore, we are especially concerned that the immigrant community and the children of minorities may become targeted by anti-racial backlash because of this incident. "We pray that all of our friends and neighbors will support the…
creator: Ekklesia Staff Writers
date: 2007-06-17
contributor: Brent Jesiek
rights: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 England & Wales License
language: eng

Peace in a World of Massacre
description: What Jesus calls us to when we're most frightened. Mark Galli | posted 4/17/2007 11:35AM When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you." After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you." —John 20:19-21 Hiding is an inescapable part of the human condition, and it started early: And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden (Gen. 3:8). In last Sunday's lectionary reading from the Gospels, we see a similar pattern. The disciples hide in a house behind locked doors, because they are afraid of the authorities who had just murdered their master. After Monday's horrific massacre in Virginia, most of us will want to go and do likewise. We'll want to hide from God, from others, and from ourselves. The massacre disturbs us not because it's unusual but because it reminds us of the many slaughters inflicted on innocents everyday across the globe. It is a frightening icon of our vulnerability and mortality. We are right to be afraid. The enlightened, scientific, rational ethos that pervades our culture hypnotizes us into believing that with every biomedical breakthrough and fresh psychological insight we are progressing as a species. That's a lie. Psychologists work mightily to shape relationships and convince us we really are "safe." But we're not safe. It's as simple as that. We're vulnerable. And we know it. And so we hide. * * * The man and woman hid themselves "among the trees in the garden." That pristine garden. A perfect garden. That spot "among the trees" must have been beautiful. The disciples hid themselves in a hou…
creator: Mark Galli
date: 2007-06-18
contributor: Brent Jesiek
rights: Becky Custer, Editorial Coordinator (bcuster@christianitytoday.com)
language: eng

Stack's Stone
description: Ryan "Stack" Clark's Hokie Stone memorial on the drillfield. The victim memorials continue to evolve, with new items, tributes, and flowers being added all the time. Photo taken Thursday, June 14.
creator: Brent Jesiek
date: 2007-06-17
contributor: Brent Jesiek
rights: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0
language: eng