first, i would like to sincerely thank everyone for their thoughts, prayers, emails, messages, phone calls, texts, etc. it means very much to me (and im sure the many others) that many of you and many of those in our community thoughts of us during this time...i would also like to apologize if i have not responded to an email, phone call, message etc. during this time...i have obviously been very busy with trying to track down friends, family, teammates, classmates and professors, as well as being pounded with many many calls and texts and emails from friends and family members outside of Virginia Tech
on top of all of that, the extreme wind caused power outages from sunday night all the way through tuesday morning, making it difficult to be on the internet for any substantial amount of time
first i would like to address the shooting itself...when i heard i was in my apartment in foxridge waiting to go to my 12:20 class, my roommate told me to turn on the news and i watched as it all unfolded with amazement and disbelief, just as many of you did as well...my first emotion was denial...this doesn't happen here, this is the stuff you see happening in LA or DC, those kind of places...not here, not in blacksburg
then those emotions turned to anger, how could someone be so stupid, so small minded, so weak to take their inability to control their emotions and their own situation and make it the problem of those 32 people who lost their lives...how can this happen? how could it have been prevented? many angry questions filled my mind
from anger, my emotions turned to sorrow, hoping and praying i did not know any of those involved...i called, messaged and tried to track down all my friends that i could making sure everyone was ok...i talked to a teammate who was on his laptop in the basement of Holden Hall right beside Norris, he said he was ok but that he and other students were locked in the classroom and told not to leave, he made it out ok
for 24 excruciating hours i sat by my computer, cell phone and television trying to track down people close to me...sunday night i had a stomach virus, i had been up all night trying to finish a global ethics paper due the next morning, when i was finished i did not think i would be able to go to class so i emailed my professor with an attachment of my paper explaining my situation, i finally fell asleep at 6am, only to wake up at 10:30am to this news...monday night i slept from 5:20am til 10am and then had brunch with some family members in christiansburg before waiting in line to get into the convocation...so i have not been able to get much sleep knowing i still had friends who were not accounted for, until last night when i found out that all teammates and close friends had been reached and were ok, one teammate had been at the hospital with his roommate who was shot in the arm, and had been unable to get to his cell phone to tell people he was ok
today, i learn that i was acquainted with three of the victims...one i played basketball with probably about once every other week, another was a girl who was a good friend of a girl i dated earlier this year, the final one was a girl who i talked to and stood with during the intramural slam dunk and 3 pt competition...thankfully for me none of us were close, but sad nonetheless
now, i am in between sorrow and acceptance, i still feel sad for those who are dealing with deaths at this point, but i am finally accepting what has happened this week
as for placing blame, i do not understand why there has to be blame placed in this situation, rather than simply mourning for those whose lives were lost many are looking for a scapegoat, that one person to throw the blame on..."well you should've done this" "well you should've done that" "it should have been done earlier"...absolute bull crap...it is not like President Steger or the local police had a precedent to go by...we ARE the precedent, we are the learning tool for every other university who may have to deal with a similar situation in the future
could things have been handled differently? of course! but everyone involved acted on the information given to them at the time...if the information given to them had been right and they decided to shut the school down for the day, there would be outrage among those who take their academics very seriously at VT, which is a lot of people...a day missed in class in college is like a week missed in high school
i'm proud of my fellow classmates...despite the pointed questions and trying to get the students to denounce the actions taken on monday, we have stood strong by our president and university...we refuse to let the media dictate how we feel about our university, and we have sent the message to all people around the world that Virginia Tech is a family, and we will pull together
about the many arguments for or against gun control...the gun did not get up in the morning and decide to kill people, that's insane...HOWEVER, without a gun it would be much harder to pull off such a tragedy..but my main point about this issue is that it does not even need to be an issue...stop concerning yourselves with whether or not there should or should not be gun control, we do not need political agendas to take over this time of mourning
Virginia Tech is MY university, Virginia Tech is MY home...i refuse to allow ANYONE to take away my pride for my university, my alma mater, my home, and now my FAMILY
sunday night i went to bed with a couple family members and many friends...by monday night my family grew to 33,000 and friends from all over the world...Virginia Tech is MINE, do NOT try to mess with my family with your political ideologies, we are not interested...
we are a proud group of people, proud of our university, proud of our classmates, proud of our community, proud of our president and leadership, proud of the response and help we have received from all over the world, proud of the outpouring of heart-felt concerns from those around the nation...you will not break us, we will not back down, we will fight
we will fight for the opportunity to keep calling Blacksburg home, we will fight for our President, we will fight for our professors, we will fight for our fellow classmates, and we will fight for peace of mind
we are a very diverse campus, many people from many different states, from many different countries...but now we are one, and we will continue to move on as one...we will welcome new members to our family next fall with open arms, but the meaning of being a part of the Hokie Nation has forever changed...what it means to proudly state you are a member of the Virgina Polytechnic Institute and State University will now carry a whole new meaning
i love my school, i love my campus, i love my classmates, i love my friends...but most of all, i love my family...all 33,000 of them
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