Wednesday, April 18, 2007, 10:23
Section: Virginia Tech
Just got this by e-mail from a fellow alumni (well, alumna):
Virginia Tech family members across the country have united to declare this Friday, April 20th, an “Orange and Maroon Effect” day to honor those killed in the tragic events on campus Monday, and to show support for Virginia Tech students, faculty, administrators, staff, alumni, and friends. “Orange and Maroon Effect” was born several years ago as an invitation to Tech fans to wear orange and maroon to Virginia Tech athletic events. We invite everyone from all over the country to be a part of the Virginia Tech family this Friday, to wear orange and maroon to support the families of those who were lost, and to support the school and community we all love so much.
Time to figure out what I still own in the old school colors. Virginia Tech has a tricky pair of them.
It’s a piece I wrote for the Daily Press, but which they ended up deciding not to run. I added the name of the now-identified shooter to the piece as edited by Daily Press Managing Editor Keith Jones. (No point in wasting a good edit.)
It’s ironic, but the fact that it’s now the #10 most-read story across Freedom Communications today makes me irrationally angry and frustrated. I’m tired of hearing familiar names like McBride or WUVT or Ambler-Johnston or Norris Hall or the Duck Pond or Smith Mountain Lake in the national media associated with this sort of thing. I don’t want to see Blacksburg in the AP video crawl on the bottom of the Hesperia Star site or hear NPR calling for reports from WUVT (which they never refer to as “woovit,” as those of us who worked there did).
The longest I’ve lived anywhere in a continuous stretch was my six years in Blacksburg, and it feels like a violation to have this be what my school will be known for forever. It must be how Kent State students must feel.
To me, Norris Hall is where my college girlfriend (an industrial engineering student) studied and it was the building across the Drill Field from my original dorm, West Eggleston. It was at Norris Hall that I heard that my friend Aislinn had died, when I was waiting for my girlfriend to get out of class.
Ambler-Johnston is where I went to study and get away from the chaos of the fraternity house, but ended up making good friends. It was the place that I first heard Nirvana, Mother Love Bone and Pearl Jam and where I first logged onto a BBS in those primitive days before the World Wide Web.
This is probably an awful admission, but I’ve never cried for 9/11, although thinking about the passengers on Flight 93 calling their loved ones always brings me to the brink. But I keep crying about what’s happened in Blacksburg and getting angry at everyone and everything, rebuffing my family when they call me on the phone.
I know the real victims are those who have been shot and their families, but this is going to stick with me for a long time to come, I think.
Tuesday, April 17, 2007, 13:51
Section: Virginia Tech
Of all the stories to come out of Blacksburg this week, perhaps the most remarkable has been the life and death of mechanical engineering professor Liviu Librescu.
“My father blocked the doorway with his body and asked the students to flee,” Joe Librescu said in a telephone interview from his home outside of Tel Aviv. “Students started opening windows and jumping out.”
Inside Norris, the attack began with a thunderous sound from Room 206 – “what sounded like an enormous hammer,” said Alec Calhoun, a 20-year-old junior who was in a solid mechanics lecture in a classroom next door.
Screams followed an instant later, and the banging continued. When students realized the sounds were gunshots, Calhoun said, he started flipping over desks to make hiding places. Others dashed to the windows of the second-floor classroom, kicking out the screens and jumping from the ledge of Room 204, he said.
“I must’ve been the eighth or ninth person who jumped, and I think I was the last,” said Calhoun. He landed in a bush and ran.
Calhoun said that the two students behind him were shot, but that he believed they survived. Just before he climbed out the window, Calhoun said, he turned to look at his professor, who had stayed behind, apparently to prevent the gunman from opening the door.
The instructor was killed, Calhoun said.
Erin Sheehan, who was in the German class next door to Calhoun’s class, told the student newspaper, the Collegiate Times, that she was one of only four of about two dozen people in the class to walk out of the room. The rest were dead or wounded, she said.
What an amazing final lesson to teach his students, whether they had the Monday 9 a.m. class with him or not.
I think the picture of Ryan Clark may be the hardest on me: I’m used to seeing the band in such high spirits at football games — even when we were on NCAA suspension much of my time at Tech, and had suffered a major drain of good players and were consistently losing — that it’s hard to reconcile those memories with him being gunned down for the crime of being a good resident advisor.
Not among the dead are anyone from my fraternity, which sent out an e-mail reassuring everyone:
To All Friends, Family, and Members of Pi Kappa Alpha,
As you may or not be aware, there were tragic events that took place today on the Virginia Tech Campus. We have confirmed that no members of our chapter have been injured or deceased. However, this tragedy will undoubtedly have a great effect on us and the entire Virginia Tech Community. Our thoughts and prayers are with everyone affected by this tragedy.
We have received numerous phone calls and e-mails expressing sympathies for all of us here at Virginia Tech. It means so much to have your support during this tragedy. We are currently working with the campus and community to support them in any way we can.
Monday, April 16, 2007, 12:22
Section: Virginia Tech
It’s official. Virginia Tech is now home to the worst mass shooting in American history. Worse than the University of Texas, worse than Columbine, worse than the Luby’s massacre. At least 33 people are dead, and two dozen more are wounded after shootings at the West Ambler Johnston dorm and Norris Hall on Monday.
From a statement by Tech’s president, Charles W. Steger:
At about 7:15 a.m. this morning a 911 call came to the University Police Department concerning an event in West Ambler Johnston Hall. There were multiple shooting victims. While in the process of investigating, about two hours later the university received reports of a shooting in Norris Hall. The police immediately responded. Victims have been transported to various hospitals in the immediate area in the region to receive emergency treatment.
I lived on the top floor of West AJ my final year of college, when I swapped room assignments with a pledge, so I could buckle down and graduate. (I wasn’t getting anything done in the Pi Kappa Alpha house that year.)
The shootings, which included both students and staff members, took place at West Ambler Johnston, a dormitory, and Norris Hall, which houses the College of Engineering, at opposite ends of the sprawling campus. Authorities said the first shooting was reported shortly after 7 a.m. at the dorm and the second about two hours later at Norris Hall.
Trey Perkins, who was sitting in room 207 in Norris Hall, said the gunman barged into the room at about 9:50 a.m. and opened fire for about a minute and a half. “Some 30 shots in all,” said Perkins, who was seated in the back of the room.
It was a German class, Perkins said, and there were about 15 students in the room. The gunman, who was holding two pistols, Perkins said, first shot the professor in the head and kept on shooting at the students. Perkins said the student was of Asian descent, “around 19,” and had “very serious but very calm look on his face.”
“Everyone hit the floor at that moment,” said Perkins, 20, of Yorktown, Va., a sophomore studying mechanical engineering, who sounded shaken on the phone. “And the shots seemed like it lasted forever.”
It’s hard to imagine someone could kill two people in West AJ and then make it across the Drill Field to the other side of campus and Norris Hall. More details I’m sure will be forthcoming in the days and weeks to come.
The Roanoke Times has a map showing the shooting locations, although they call Pritchard Hall “Pritchett Hall” for some reason, which is bizarre, considering how many Hokies work there.
More news available at the following news sites, which will have more localized information than the AP wire:
There’s lots of videos now up on YouTube, although the ones the students have shot from inside dorms and out windows seem to all have been taken down recently
