They were from Massachusetts, New Jersey, Georgia, Iowa, Ohio, Rhode Island, and Pennsylvania.
They were from Egypt, India, Indonesia, Romania, and Puerto Rico.
They taught German, French, Biodynamics, Solid Mechanics, and Advanced hydrology.
They were students of English, Biology, French, Business Information Technology, International Studies, Engineering, Animal Science, Political Science, Building Science, and History.
They were the students and faculty who were killed so needlessly on Monday, April 16, 2007, on the campus of Virginia Tech. We may never know the reason another student went on a killing rampage. We will never know what was going on in his head that morning and we will not know the difficulties he faced as he made the decision to destroy the lives of 32 other people. At this time, we need not look for easy answers or to assign blame. We may look to the easy access to guns, the violence in our culture; the signs of Cho Seung Hui’s troubles could have been taken more seriously, concerns about campus security, or any number of other things. However, in the final analysis there is no simple answer and more than likely not single cause for this tragedy.
On April 17, 2007, convocation was held on the campus in Blacksburg, Va. It was time for sharing grief and mourning the loss of teachers and students. Professor Nikki Giovanni spoke to the assembled crowd.
We are Virginia Tech.
We are sad today, and we will be sad for quite a while. We are not moving on, we are embracing our mourning.
We are Virginia Tech.
We are strong enough to stand tall tearlessly, we are brave enough to bend to cry, and we are sad enough to know that we must laugh again.
We are Virginia Tech.
We do not understand this tragedy. We know we did nothing to deserve it, but neither does a child in Africa dying of AIDS, neither do the invisible children walking the night away to avoid being captured by the rogue army, neither does the baby elephant watching his community being devastated for ivory, neither does the Mexican child looking for fresh water, neither does the Appalachian infant killed in the middle of the night in his crib in the home his father built with his own hands being run over by a boulder because the land was destabilized. No one deserves a tragedy.
We are Virginia Tech.
The Hokie Nation embraces our own and reaches out with open heart and hands to those who offer their hearts and minds. We are strong, and brave, and innocent, and unafraid. We are better than we think and not quite what we want to be. We are alive to the imaginations and the possibilities. We will continue to invent the future
through our blood and tears and through all our sadness.
We are the Hokies.
("Hokie was a word that people used to express feeling, approval, excitement, surprise. Hokie, then, is a word like 'hooray,' or 'yeah,' or 'rah.')
We will prevail.
We will prevail.
We will prevail.
We are Virginia Tech.
John Swofford, Commissioner of the Atlantic Coast Conference, has announced that Virginia Tech will be recognized at conference tournaments with a time of reflection before each game or match. Signs will be placed though our tournament sights that simply ways “Today, we are all Hokies!”Mazeltov (Hebrew for congratulations) to Tech’s fellow teams.
A nation is in mourning with the campus of Virginia Tech and churches across the great land are holding prayer vigils and special services for these fallen members of academia. On many other campuses, we are aware of an out-pouring of love good wishes. Mazeltov to all of these campuses.
Following the yet another violent tragedy, we will begin to see a wide spectrum of reactions and responses. From revenge and awe, fragility, fear and insecurity; there will be a collage of the revenge and awe, fragility and the same time the preciousness of daily life. We will see all kinds of remedies some practical and some absurd. These bring together our longings for love and our opposition to hate and violence. Longings for love and hate of violence matter more than we can know, because they have the last word. They will the space where hate and love have tried to come.
NO ONE DESERVES A TRAGEDY. These are important words in this time of grief. It is also important that we not overreact and expect to put an end to this with increased security. I think it was Ben Franklin who warned: No people are free, if they are completely safe. Ponder this, my friend. Who is the safest population in the country?
PRISONERS!
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