The School Shooter PR Agency
description: Archived with permission of the creator. Original Source: Slowpoke Comics by Jen Sorensen http://www.slowpokecomics.com/strips/shooterPR.gif
creator: Jen Sorensen
date: 2007-07-01
contributor: Brent Jesiek
rights: Jen Sorensen (jen@slowpokecomics.com)
language: eng

THE STATESMAN: Our View
description: Our View is prepared by the Editorial Board which operates independently from the newsroom. By The Editorial Board On April 20, 1999, the United States watched in horror as the shootings at Columbine High School unfolded and sparked a series of high school violence that has ensued in the years after. As the shock of the initial shooting subsided, educators and students across the country scrambled to both understand and prepare themselves for this new and horrifying threat in American education. In the wake of last week's tragedy at Virginia Tech we can relate the emotion and logic of our response to Columbine as we struggle with the processes of grieving, understanding and preparing ourselves to trudge forward. While we will never entirely understand Seung-Hui Cho's motivation, feelings of anguish flood our mind as we try to comprehend the progression of his deadly thought-process. Although it is extremely difficult to find comfort following the deaths of so many, we can see as we did eight years ago that perhaps our best tools in the grieving process are overcoming and preparing as best we can for such events. Key to our understanding of these tragedies, is our attention to their most obvious similarities. The gunmen of Columbine, Virginia Tech and other schools across the country all felt they were waging a personal war with the world. While we are angry at them for their actions, if we can set aside those emotions and view them as victims of psychological disorders and an increasingly impersonal society, we can better grasp what led to these horrors. In doing such, we form a deep respect for our individual ability to prevent these atrocities by consciously guiding ourselves in being more aware, respectful and interactive with people we see on a daily basis. Our generation and the generations that will follow, live in a world where technological advancements allow us to move so rapidly that we can leave individuals behind and not even notice. While preventing the…
creator: Editorial Board
publisher: The Statesman
date: 2007-08-24
contributor: Sara AA Hood
rights: Statesman Editor-in-Chief Desk - Suraj Rambhia <eic@sbstatesman.org>
language: eng

The Stones
description: These are part of the 32 stones for the victims near Burruss Hall.
creator: Melissa Helms
date: 2007-05-01
contributor: Melissa Helms
language: eng

The story behind the Hokies Thank The World project
description: (PDF, 6.9 MB) by Hart Fowler Photos by Christina O'Connor From concept to design to action, Peter Sforza was the man behind the scenes orchestrating Virginia Tech's message of gratitude, making this Thanksgiving one of positive reflection. Provided courtesy of Hart Fowler and 16 Blocks http://www.myspace.com/16blocksmagazine
creator: Hart Fowler
date: 2007-11-19
contributor: Brent Jesiek
rights: Hart Fowler and 16 Blocks Magazine 16blocksmagazine@gmail.com
language: eng

The Tangled Thicket of Cho seung-hui, Don Imus, YouTube and American Idol
description: April 21st, 2007 Cho seung-hui, the Rutgers University women's basketball team, the students and Virginia Tech all form a tangled thicket nourished by the American media, overgrown with too many words, too many pictures and too many answers to too many bad questions. We, the American people struggle to navigate this thicket, for during the last few weeks we have only become more confused as if we have lost our sense of direction. You can enter any of these words in a search engine and lose all hope of finding any rationality, any thread that will lead you out. Technorati lists 152,000 blog selections for Virginia Tech, 23,000 for Cho and 4,788 for the Rutgers' team. With new posts on all of these each day, there are enough words that it would take a person probably a year to read them all. And yet we all seek a way out of this thicket of information, a clear path, a why that puts the last few weeks all in perspective. That the media have become such a tangled thicket rather than a clear voice represents perhaps the only generalization we can draw from these events and an indication of what has happened to America's sources and ideas about information. During past tragedies-the Kennedy assassination, Jonestown, the space shuttle explosion-somehow the media brought us together and enabled us to not only have a common source of information but also a shared sense of perspective. Just the opposite has occurred over the last few weeks. Instead of coming together we have thousands of information sources; instead of a shared sense of perspective we have something resembling a cubist painting crafted by a random group each with their own paints, brushes and sense of reality. Trying to come together has become an exercise in frustration, disappointment and even anger. The equilibrium many have found may even be misleading, for it comes from linking with a group of like-minded people who share their own prejudices and views of the world. So instead of finding a way out of the…
creator: Ralph Brauer
date: 2007-06-08
contributor: Brent Jesiek
rights: Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported
language: eng

The tragedy of Virginia Tech is partly a tragedy of bureaucracy
description: From the Editor May/June 2007 by Kathrin Day Lassila '81 The tragedy of Virginia Tech is partly a tragedy of bureaucracy. I don't mean the sort of complaint people usually make about bureaucracy -- too much paperwork and red tape. I mean the opposite. Too few records. Too little discussion and sharing of information. Too few staff, perhaps. I'm not blaming the state of Virginia or Virginia Tech for failing to stop a determined murderer. But enough bureaucracy, of the right kind, would have given them a chance. The gun salesman would have known Seung-Hui Cho had a history of mental illness and wasn't entitled to buy guns. The associate dean who told a worried professor last fall that she hadn't heard of any previous problems would have known about the two complaints to the police and the judge's ruling that Cho was a danger to himself. The competing needs for privacy and protection can't be perfectly balanced. Colleges and universities serve a vulnerable demographic. Usually, "major mental illness first shows itself somewhere between the ages of 17 to around 25," says Lorraine Siggins, chief psychiatrist at Yale Health Services. Against those rare but terrible events, universities need discreet and careful systems. If a student has trouble and the trouble is resolved, the university has to leave the student alone to live the ordinary turbulent life of a young adult, in privacy, without stigma. But if trouble recurs, the right administrator has to be able to find out fast that this isn't the first time. The competing needs for privacy and protection can't be perfectly balanced. After VT, says Betty Trachtenberg, dean of student affairs at Yale College, university officials everywhere thought, There, but for the grace of God . . . But it's easier to have good systems and enough staff at a wealthy, relatively small private institution than a large public institution. Siggins speaks of a "web" of people at Yale who act as a safety net. Medical privacy rules prevent her s…
creator: Kathrin Day Lassila
date: 2007-06-11
contributor: Sara Hood
rights: Permission granted by author Kathrin Lassila, kathrin.lassila@yale.edu
language: eng

The vanity of reason: making sense of the Virginia Tech tragedy
description: Gene Koo - Thursday, April 19th, 2007 @ 5:52 pm Soon after an initial outpouring of shock and grief at the senseless murder of 32 members of the Virginia Tech community, we began seeking explanations for the tragedy. By all accounts Seung-Hui Cho, perpetrator and 33rd victim of this rampage, was a severely disturbed young man; the snippets of video released so far by NBC reveal profound paranoia. Inevitably our questions turn to what would lead him to commit such a heinous crime. We yearn for insight into his motives. Why did he do it? What was he thinking? These questions are familiar to me. I have asked them myself about my own mother, who probably developed paranoid schizophrenia some 15 years ago. I write "probably" because, like water filling a tub, the disease crept over her, imperceptibly, until suddenly it spilled forth in a flood. And somewhere in that tub, the loving woman who had been my mother drowned. I cannot know, but looking at the face in the video aired by NBC, I would guess that the real Seung-Hui Cho, someone capable of the kind of laughter and anger you and I would understand, perished long before he pulled the trigger on himself. People of sound mind often assume that individuals with mental illness think like we do: therefore, they must be misinformed, wrong-headed, or just pretending. We are, essentially, in denial. We delude ourselves into believing that we can figure these people out, and in so doing, learn how to "fix" them. In the first few years of my mother's illness, I challenged her claims that the "Chinese mafia" were spying on and stealing from her. Using lawyer's logic, I repeatedly demonstrated why it made no sense for criminals to go to such great lengths to inflict such petty wounds upon her. She would always win these fights, because madness is not susceptible to reason. What I lacked in communicating with her was not logic, but rather imagination. -- "Did you want to inject as much misery in our lives as you can," asks Mr. Cho…
creator: Gene Koo
date: 2007-06-07
contributor: Sara Hood
rights: CreativeCommons-Attribution-Sharealike 2.5
language: eng

The Virginia Tech massacre: Ed Board doesn't agree with the crisis policy or the media coverage
description: By: The Daily Campus Ed Board Posted: 4/17/07 The worst recorded shooting spree in American history occurred on the Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg, Va., yesterday. Thirty-three people were murdered, dozens suffered injuries and the entire campus now must deal with grief. How does someone begin to digest the incomprehensible evil exhibited by this shooter and the needless loss of innocent lives? Our thoughts are with the families of the victims and the entire Virginia Tech community. This is the natural reaction people should have. We were shocked when we saw how politicians, such as John McCain, a Bush administration spokesperson and the media turned this event into a discussion about the right to bear arms. Political policy should not be a part of the discourse and coverage of the massacre at this early stage. It is entirely inappropriate to even mention political policy right now, when families are still being notified of their relatives' deaths. This is a time for mourning, not campaigning. If people need something to talk about, rather than just trying to cope, the discussion should be about why officials took two hours to close down the campus after the first shooting in the dorm. When a murder-suicide occurred at the University of Washington April 2, the entire campus was locked down. Rather than close down the entire campus immediately, Virginia Tech officials did not give students elsewhere on campus any information or warning for two hours. By this time, the gunman had closed off the exits to the engineering building and had begun his killing spree. Furthermore, students were first notified via e-mail about the incident. Ed Board does not think e-mail communication is sufficient for such a drastically dangerous event. Police should have been in every building within minutes of the dorm shooting, going into classrooms and locking down the campus. We wonder how officials here at SMU would react to such an event and hope that they would take better precaut…
creator: The Daily Campus Ed Board
publisher: SMU Daily Campus
date: 2007-08-24
contributor: Sara AA Hood
rights: "Norris, Mark William" <mnorris@mail.smu.edu>
language: eng

The Virginia Tech Tragedy
description: Thursday, April 19, 2007 College is supposed to be an overall positive experience. You're finally getting to sort everything out in terms of what you want to do in life, where you're headed and learning and growing as a young adult while having some fun in the process. For many peeps it's the first time you get to step out, live away from home and get your first taste of adulthood. It's the last time in your life when the only responsibilities you have are to get up, go to class and study your butt off unless you also have a job you're juggling to help pay your tuition. I guess it's why I enjoy walking around on various college campuses when I do follow Dawn to various fencing tournaments. It takes me back to my own college days in that respect. It's hard for me to imagine what it would have been like to have that peace of mind shattered by a gunman suddenly popping up in one of my classes, firing shots at me and my classmates, then to discover a day or so later that he was a classsmate that peeps had been seeing disturbing behavior patterns about for two years leading up to that horrific incident. Even the folks who weren't in those Norris Hall classrooms that morning are haunted by 'That could have been me' thoughts. I can only imagine what was going through people's minds as their buildings were on lockdown wondering if the incident was over of if their building was next on the shooter's target list. What about the peeps who for some reason decided not to go to class that morning? I know they feel just as hurt as the gun shop owner who sold Cho the weapons he used. How would I feel about that? How do you put that behind you and move on with llfe, if you ever do? It's also tough at that age to lose a classmate because up until you get past your college years and your ten-year high school reunion you have this false feeling of immortality. You walk around in your late teens and 20's with this attitude that you have plenty of time to accomplish the things you want t…
creator: Monica Roberts
date: 2007-05-10
contributor: Brent Jesiek
language: eng

Thinking about Virginia Tech
description: I'd been thinking about starting this blog up again for a few weeks now. I didn't think I'd have something so tragic to write about. Probably it goes without saying that my thoughts and best wishes go out to the students, faculty, and staff at my alma mater, Virginia Tech, and especially to the families and friends of the victims. I was working from home today, heads down with all my external inputs (radio, TV, email, IRC, RSS feeds, etc.) turned off, so it wasn't until mid-afternoon that I became aware of what had happened. It has shaken me up, more than I would have expected it would. It's disconcerting to see a community that you've been part of suffer an event like this, especially when you see so many images on the news of places you're quite familiar with. When I was a student at Virginia Tech, I had friends who lived on the 4th floor Ambler-Johnston Hall, where the first shooting took place. I had classes in Norris Hall, where the second shooting occurred. I know these places. They were my places. It was my community. Even though I've been gone from Tech for a long time, it still hits close to home. Back in '88-'89 I was one of the editors of the Collegiate Times, Virginia Tech's student newspaper. I've thought a lot about the students working at the Collegiate Times today. What was the biggest story we dealt with back in '88-'89? I think a steroids scandal on one of the sports teams. Nothing to compare to what happened today. What a time it must be for those young, aspiring journalists. How difficult it must be to cover what will probably be the biggest story of your life when you are just twenty or twenty-one. Doubly difficult since it is the slaughter of your classmates that you have to cover. As young journalists they must feel a great deal of excitement at The Big Story . . . and, at the same time, a great deal of guilt and dread for being excited while their friends lay dead. I hope they sense the importance of their role of as the student voice of the …
creator: Greg Ritter
date: 2007-06-09
contributor: Brent Jesiek
rights: Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs-NonCommercial 1.0
language: eng

Thoughts About Media Coverage of the Virginia Tech Tragedy
description: posted 5.01.07 Otto Wahl, Ph.D., University of Hartford The tragic death of 33 students at Virginia Tech has shocked and saddened us all. Given the mental health aspects of the situation, it is not surprising that there has been much in the coverage about mental illnesses and their treatment. Unfortunately, the articles and editorials that followed the shootings have often been troubling in what they convey to the public about mental illnesses and mental health interventions. One troubling aspect of the media coverage has been the frequent vilification and dehumanization of the troubled young man who perpetrated the killings. Appropriately sympathetic descriptions of the background and lives of the "32" victims were widespread, and such descriptions helped us to better appreciate the tragedy on a more personal level. However, descriptions of the 33rd person who died in the tragedy, Cho Seung-Hui, focused almost exclusively on his pathology, his anger, and his menacing manner. Some media sources characterized Cho as motivated by "meanness;" others labeled him as a "fiend," a "psychopath," or "just plain "evil." Such coverage ignored the fact that Cho's death—and much of his life—was also a tragedy. His alienation, isolation, anger, and ultimate suicide are probably not the life goals he set out for himself. Much of the media coverage did discuss Cho's mental health, but mostly without notable empathy for his difficulties. Related is the mistaken implication in coverage of Cho's actions that mental illness and violence are synonymous. The widespread images of Cho brandishing weapons epitomized the already prevalent public image of the "menacing madman," and that image was underscored further by the fear-inducing labels Cho was given in many media accounts, such as "maniac" and "psycho" and worse. Likewise, the repeated discussions of the need to protect the college community—and the larger community—from such individuals served to reinforce unwarranted public …
creator: Otto Wahl
date: 2007-07-17
contributor: Brent Jesiek
rights: Otto Wahl (owahl@hartford.edu)
language: eng

Threat scrawled on desk chair found in Hyer Hall
description: By: Mark Norris, Editor In Chief, mnorris@smu.edu Posted: 4/25/07 A message scrawled on the back of a desk chair by an unknown person has prompted an investigation by SMU Police. The note says "I'm going to shoot up SMU on 8-06-07." The message was discovered Monday but was not reported to SMU Police until Tuesday morning. Authorities promptly responded, said Interim Police Chief Richard Shafer. "We have no leads and don't know who did it or why," Shafer said. The threat was discovered in Room 111 of Hyer Hall some time Monday. The professor of the class that meets there at that time reported the message to SMU Police. The message was written in pencil and still "looks fairly fresh," according to police. Shafer said the date of the threat is odd since classes are not in session at the time. The Summer II session is completed by then and the 2007-2008 school year has not begun yet. Police are looking at what classes meet in the room to determine if any names of interest appear on the class rosters. Shafer said the person who wrote the message probably has a warped sense of humor. "We don't think it's a viable or credible threat, but you never know," he said. The police investigation into the matter is still ongoing. This is the first threat made at the SMU community after the shootings at Virginia Tech. "Three weeks ago they probably wouldn't have thought about it," Shafer said. He said the police department is glad that the professor and students took the time to report the threat. He encouraged members of the SMU community to report anything they believe is suspicious. "Give us a call and someone will look into it," Shafer said. This story is exclusive to 'The Daily Campus.' Mention of this story by other media organizations must credit the paper. -- Original Source:SMU Daily Campus - April 25, 2007
creator: Mark Norris
publisher: SMU Daily Campus
date: 2007-08-24
contributor: Sara Hood
rights: "Norris, Mark William" <mnorris@mail.smu.edu>
language: eng

Threats to Civil Liberties arising from the fallout of the Virginia Tech Forcible-disarmament Frenzy
description: May 1, 2007 4:51 pm An article from a new contributor: Loren Bliss THERE ARE TWO EXCEPTIONALLY grave dangers to American liberty arising from the present, post-Virginia-Tech forcible-disarmament frenzy. These are: (1)-The criminalization of even the mildest forms of mental illness, as proposed by Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY), in HR 297. (2)-The criminalization of political protest and dissent, as proposed by Sen. Frank Lautenberg, (D-NJ), in S 1237. Each of these measures is enthusiastically supported by the Bush Regime. The Lautenberg bill was written at White House/Justice Department request — a leading Democratic senator serving as the mouthpiece for a despised Republican administration — an unprecedented act of collaboration with the most corrupt regime in U.S. history. Once again, opposition to the Second Amendment is being used as a diversion behind which to conceal an all-out, bipartisan attack on the entire Bill of Rights- including, via S 1237, repeal of the presumption of innocence that is the cornerstone of all English-language jurisprudence. Meanwhile, welcome to the New American Reich, where (if McCarthy, Lautenberg and Bush have their way), anybody deemed a mental case, an effective labor activist or a disruptive political nonconformist will soon be forcibly disarmed, denied all rational means of self defense and thereby condemned to perpetual victimhood. ********* Modern efforts to criminalize mental dysfunction have a long history dating back to Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany and are typically part of a broader right-wing agenda of oppression and euthanasia. But in the United States, the primary advocates of criminalization are the forcible disarmament cult and the Communitarian movement, members of which universally (and often vehemently) claim to be leftists and/or "progressives." The Communitarians have argued for at least two decades that diagnosis of mental illness should instantly terminate not only all one's civil rights but also strip one …
creator: Loren Bliss
date: 2007-08-09
contributor: Brent Jesiek
rights: Creative Commons Attribution 2.5
language: eng

Ticket
description: Ticket for the Yankees vs. Hokies exhibition game at Virginia Tech on March 18, 2008. Photo by Tarish Smith. -- Original Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tarish/2342818995/
creator: tarish.rm
date: 2008-03-27
contributor: Kacey Beddoes
rights: "Tarish Smith" <tarish@rocketmail.com>
language: eng

Tim Kaine
description: 2007.04.17. Virginia's Governor Tim Kaine addresses Convocation.
creator: Ivan V. Morozov
date: 2007-08-31
contributor: Haeyong Chung
language: eng

Time for the second guessing
description: The media are once again turning into the public's whipping boys By: The Daily Campus Ed Board Posted: 4/20/07 The nation is still focused on Blacksburg, Va. as all Americans honor the victims of the Virginia Tech shootings. But as the initial shock wears off, news organizations need to be weary of hyping a story that doesn't need the standard cable news sensationalism. This story has been sent across the globe since it occurred at the beginning of the week. People in Australia, London, India, South Korea and more are all discussing the matter. South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun offered condolences to victims for a third time and, among the South Korean public, a sense of despair prevailed. "I and our people cannot contain our feelings of huge shock and grief," said President Roh Moo-hyun. "I pray for the souls of those killed and offer words of comfort from my heart for those injured, the bereaved families and the U.S. people." Hundreds left messages on the country's top Web site, Naver. "I'm too shameful that I'm a South Korean," wrote an Internet user identified only by the ID iknijmik. "As a South Korean, I feel apologetic to the Virginia Tech victims." Ed Board understands that the Koreans are apologizing for Seung-Hiu because they do not want any race-related retaliation to occur. Asian-American groups have released similar statements for the same reason. But this is an angle of the story not worth the time devoted to it. There have been no retributions and there is no need for the Korean peninsula to apologize for a killer. Seung-Hiu wasn't acting on behalf of his country, he was only carrying out his personal desires. Not to mention the flap about NBC's airing of the controversial video made by the killer. As (amateur) members of the media, we appreciate that the network has to walk a careful line between letting people know the whole truth and not offending its viewership. We know that many don't want to pay the killer attention. But we also know that the …
creator: The Daily Campus Ed Board
publisher: SMU Daily Campus
date: 2007-08-24
contributor: Sara Hood
rights: "Norris, Mark William" <mnorris@mail.smu.edu>
language: eng

Tiroteos, otra herencia de los sesenta
description: Por Thomas Sowell 28 de abril de 2007 ¿Cuándo ha abierto fuego un asesino múltiple contra una reunión de la Asociación Nacional del Rifle o contra un grupo de cazadores? Alguien decía recientemente que masacres como las de Virginia Tech o la del instituto Columbine son, en gran medida, un fenómeno propio de la década de los sesenta y posteriores. De ser así, estas tragedias pueden añadirse a la larga lista de desastrosas consecuencias de las excitantes ideas y extravagante retórica propias de aquellos años. ¿Qué había en la visión del mundo de la década de los sesenta que pudiera hacer concluir a alguien que es correcto disparar a personas que no le habían hecho nada? La culpa colectiva es uno de los legados de los años sesenta que aún permanece con nosotros. Aún estamos viendo cómo se intenta hacer sentir culpable por la esclavitud a personas que nunca fueron propietarias de un esclavo en su vida, y a las que la mera idea de poseer uno les repele. Allá por la década de los sesenta, se consideraba el colmo de la sofisticación entre la intelligentsia izquierdista decir que la sociedad norteamericana -todos nosotros, colectivamente- éramos en cierto modo responsables de los asesinatos de los hermanos Kennedy o de Martin Luther King. Durante los años sesenta se extendió como la pólvora la idea de que la culpa de que le faltara a alguien cualquier cosa la tenía otro, en concreto, la sociedad. Los pobres, ya fueran en Estados Unidos o en algún país del Tercer Mundo, eran "los desposeídos", aunque nunca hubieran tenido nada que se les pudiera haber quitado. Los disturbios en los suburbios que proliferaron por el país durante los sesenta fueron todos achacados a la sociedad. Esta visión se formalizó en un informe ampliamente elogiado sobre la violencia urbana por una comisión nacional "oficiosa" encabezada por el gobernador de Illinois, Otto Kerner. El presidente Lyndon Johnson también culpó a las condiciones sociales de la violencia …
creator: Thomas Sowell
date: 2007-08-01
contributor: Elva Orozco
rights: Gabriel Gasave Reasearch Analyst Center On Global Prosperity The Independent Institute ggasave@independent.org august 01, 2007
language: spa

Toal: Sensible gun laws only way to secure a safe future for US
description: This is a piece written by Gerard Toal, the NOVA-based Virginia Tech Professor. It was published in the Irish Times 28/04/07. The Irish Times 28/04/2007 Author: Gerard Toal Title: Sensible gun laws only way to secure a safe future for US The majority of students of Virginia Tech are doing something ordinary yet also remarkable this week: they are studying hard for their final exams. Working through the horrific murders of 27 of their fellow students and 5 of their faculty at the hands of a disturbed class mate, Cho Seung-Hui, the Virginia Tech community is refusing to be defined by a violent rampage that has shocked the United States and caused sorrow across the world. Virginia Tech is an institution of higher learning, a place where young people can realize their potential and, as the university slogan puts it, 'invent the future.' The return of students in large numbers after such a terrible crime is re-affirming this to the world. The loss of so many young lives on April 16th has shaken us all. A flotilla of media decamped to our main university campus in Blacksburg and recorded our shock and our tears. It has also encountered, in conversations with our students and faculty, our capacity to rally and persevere. As a Virginia Tech faculty member for eighteen years, I was gratified by two aspects of our response. First, Virginia Tech faculty and students correctly challenged the widespread use of the multi-media images produced by Cho Seung-Hui himself which were integral to enacting his fantasy of heroic 're-masculinization' through brutal violence. The complicity of the media in producing murder as fascinating spectacle is widespread across the globe. Second, amidst our pain, there was also human empathy for Cho's family and for those beyond our campus who suffer from structural and direct violence every day. The death toll in Baghdad last week was horrific. The Iraq war continues to claim the lives of young American soldiers, some tragically former Virginia Tech…
creator: Gerard Toal
date: 2007-05-07
contributor: Nicholas Kiersey
language: eng

Today we are all Hokies
description: "Schools across Virginia and around the nation are supporting Virginia Tech during this difficult time. I only wish I could include them all in this illustration. My hope is that this illustration will indicate that, no matter what school we attend, today we are all Hokies." - Ben Lansing http://lansingcartoons.com/
creator: Ben Lansing
date: 2007-05-09
contributor: Sean Brooks
rights: While the images on this website cannot be reproduced without permission, permission is granted to send the above image for non-profit purposes to anyone that might be comforted by it under the condition that the image is not altered and credit is given to the artist. For other uses including media communications, please contact me at benjaminlansing@yahoo.com http://lansingcartoons.com/
language: eng

Today We Are All Hokies
description: Wednesday, April 18. 2007 The blog has not been on my mind these past few days. My son is a senior at Virginia Tech. He's OK. We have spent most of the past two days staying in touch with him and answering phone calls and emails from friends and family. I watched the coverage knowing he was safe, and saw his freshman dormitory as the site of the first shooting, and his main classroom building as the site of the others. I've walked that campus, gone to football games, chanted Hokie chants, been in those buildings, and still I can't grasp what it must be to be that community. He called his mom as soon as he knew about the first shootings. He had a class in Norris Hall at 10:30 and planned to be there at 9:30 to work on his senior project. Professor Kevin Granata was their project adviser in the Engineering Science and Mechanics department. Their research is in muscle and reflex response and robotics. Dr. Granata is one of the top biomechanics researchers in the country and is known for his work on movement dynamics in cerebral palsy. If he had gone in as planned, he would have been exactly at the wrong place at the wrong time. Dr. Granata was one of the thirty in Norris Hall that was killed. I've been on the Tech campus a number of times, gone to a Hokie football game and have a sense of this spirit you hear students and staff talk about on the news. But I don't think we can understand it in the way that they do. The students and staff I saw on the news all served Tech well. The professors who were killed all died trying to protect their students in some way. They serve our profession well. I listened to poet Nikki Giovanni at the Convocation read "We Are Virginia Tech" and thought that some listeners must have thought it odd for a poet to talk about "We are Hokies." I would have thought the same before my son started Tech. I associated Hokies with sports, especially football, and the overwhelming volume of fans at the stadium. But it is more than that. When the stude…
creator: Ken Ronkowitz
date: 2007-06-03
contributor: Brent Jesiek
rights: Creative Commons Attribution 1.0
language: eng