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Virginia
Tech Begins Healing Process |
Posted:
04.18.07
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Two days after a 23-year-old student went on a shooting rampage,
killing 32 people before taking his own life, Virginia Tech University
and the community of Blacksburg, Va., begins the process of healing.
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Area churches and the college's counseling center immediately
opened their doors to students, faculty and members of the community
Monday afternoon, the day of the shootings.
 Matt
Rogers, pastor at New Life Christian Fellowship, urged those attending
the church to respond to the tragedy with love, not hate, National
Public Radio reported.
"It won't help if we respond from bitterness, or hate, or
anger, as understandable as those feelings may be," he said.
"We really need to try to respond from a heart of love, and
just serve the people who are hurting the most right now."
Many in the Blacksburg community of over 39,000 people, of which
nearly 24,000 are students, felt a deep connection to the tragedy.
"In one sense because we are all a part of Virginia Tech,
we all have lost. All of us have lost," MikeMartin, a parishioner
at Saint Mary's Catholic Church told NPR.
Classes were canceled for the remainder of the week to "allow
students to mourn and begin healing," according to the university's
Web site. The university was making counselors available for students,
faculty and staff.
Norris Hall, site of the second round of shootings where 30,
including the gunman, died, will remain closed for the remainder
of the semester.
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University
gathering |
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The university community, still shaken, gathered Tuesday afternoon
in the Cassell Coliseum, the university's basketball arena. President
Bush, first lady Laura Bush and Virginia Governor Tim Kaine were
also in attendance.
The president addressed the crowd.
"Laura and I have come to Blacksburg today with hearts full
of sorrow," Mr. Bush said in his six-minute remarks. "This
is a day of mourning for the Virginia Tech community and it is
a day of sadness for our entire nation."
 Author
Nikki Giovanni, an English professor at Virginia Tech University,
ended the convocation by calling on the students and community
of the school to embrace their mourning, stand tall and prevail.
"We will continue to invent the future, through our blood
and tears, through all this sadness. We are the Hokies. We will
prevail. We will prevail. We will prevail. We are Virginia Tech,"
she said as the crowd applauded and began a spontaneous school
chant.
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Student reactions |
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Tuesday night thousands of students, faculty and community members
gathered for a candlelight vigil, many wearing school colors and
holding candles in paper cups as speakers urged them to find solace
in one another.
 But
some students said healing was going to take time.
"I think this is something that will take a while. It still
hasn't hit a lot of people yet," freshman Amber McGee told
the Associated Press.
With the university closed for the remainder of the week, some
students took the opportunity to go home to be with their families.
"I'm still kind of shaky," Jessie Ferguson, a freshman
who is heading home to her family in Arlington, Va., told the
AP. "I had to pump myself up just to kind of come out of
the building.
"I just don't want to be on campus," as much as she
wanted to be with friends, she added.
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Online expressions |
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In addition to the many placards and memorials on the campus,
many students are using the Internet and social networking sites
like MySpace and Facebook to process their feelings and opinions
about the shootings.
 Survivors
are adding comments to the social networking sites of students
killed.
One student was Jesse Connolly, a 21-year-old from Lynn, Mass.,
who posted a message on the MySpace page of Ross Alameddine, one
of the students who died. The two had worked together last summer.
"If only you were here to read this Ross. ... You'd know
what an imaginative, intelligent, compassionate and most of all
hysterically funny human being you are, and how appreciative I
am to have spent last summer working with such a great kid,"
Connolly wrote, the International Herald Tribune reported. "My
every thought is with you and your family."
Virginia Tech, which has been using its official Web site to
communicate, is also planning an additional site where families
of the victims can post photos.
--Compiled
by Annie Schleicher for NewsHour Extra
Do you have a comment on the Virginia Tech shootings? Or do
you have a experience that you'd like to share with our readers?
Click
here to leave a comment on our student forum.
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This [teen] is an immigrant from Mexico, and he works long hours at a local farm milking dairy cows, five hours per milking, twice a day.
