April 16: 10 Year Anniversary

COLLEGIATETIMES

THE 32: HONORING A DECADE As all eyes fall on Virginia Tech like they once did 10 years ago, the student journalists of EMCVT hope to tell the story of a state university that has rebuilt from a tragedy and redefined the meaning of community. We hope to portray how the loss of 32 Hokies has changed our present experience as students; creating an environment of encouragement, support, safety and pride in our university. As media outlets from all over the nation return to our university to report on the 10-year anniversary of April 16, the student journalists of Virginia Tech aspire to share what the tragedy has meant to us.

—Collegiate Times staff

Sports: An integral part of a healing nation

Kaine reflects on the aftermath 10 years later

Is Virginia Tech America’s ‘cursed college’?

en years ago, when 32 Hokies were killed on Virginia Tech’s campus, the community saw its legacy changing before its eyes. A school that prides itself on the core values of brotherhood, honor, leadership, sacrifice, service, loyalty, duty and Ut Prosim, which are symbolized on the Pylons that thousands of Tech students walk past every day, was shaken.

As the camera crews flooded into Blacksburg, Frank Beamer, then-head coach of the Virginia Tech football team, knew the university would not be remembered for this tragedy, but instead for how the community responded.

Within an hour of the shooting, Beamer was with his entire team.

“As soon as it happened, we wanted to get everyone together, make sure everyone was accounted for and OK so we could call parents and encourage them to call their parents if they hadn’t already talked to them,” Beamer said.

“So everything was happening pretty quickly.”

By almost all accounts, Beamer played an integral part in the community’s healing process, most notably by visiting with survivors in the hospital, as well as the parents of the victims. For decades, he had been known as a winning football coach. Suddenly he was called upon to be much more.

en. Tim Kaine sounded particularly serious as he welcomed reporters from the Collegiate Times into his office on Thursday, March 30, in the Russell Senate Building. The mood in the junior senator’s office matched that of the rest of Capitol Hill — businesslike and reserved.

This was not an ordinary press interview for Kaine.

During his term that stretched from 2006–10, Kaine was governor of Virginia when the worst mass shooting at that point in U.S. history took place on Virginia Tech’s campus on April 16, 2007 — which he vividly remembers.

Ten years later, Kaine remains changed by his time spent in Blacksburg during the aftermath of the massacre.

“As you can expect, this is a very emotional thing for the Senator to talk about, so everyone should be prepared for that,” wrote Press Secretary Miryam Lipper in an email to the Collegiate Times prior to the interview.

“I think he played a big part in bringing the campus together. I thought he was a great university spokesman — he and Dr. Steger both — on how that shooting wouldn’t define the university,” said Bill Roth, longtime Virginia Tech broadcaster and current professor of practice at the university.

Appearing in scores of radio shows, news segments and

Kaine and his wife Anne Holton heard a sharp knock on their hotel room door late at night on Sunday, April 15. They had traveled to Japan that day for an economic development trip with 150 Virginia businesses and had eaten dinner and turned in after a long day of traveling.

Ron Watkins, the head of the then-governor’s security detail, informed Kaine that there was a mass shooting underway in Virginia (where it was Monday morning), and that he should call his chief of staff for more details.

After calling his chief of staff and watching coverage of the shooting on CNN, Kaine’s staff booked the earliest flight back to Dulles Airport in Washington, D.C., the next morning. After landing at Dulles Airport, Kaine and

2012, freelance writer and self-proclaimed investigative journalist Chuck Marsh published a book titled “The Many Deaths of Virginia Tech.” The book names Virginia Tech “America’s Cursed College” and works through a list of tragedies that have occurred on or near the Blacksburg campus: the murder of Officer Deriek Crouse at a traffic stop, the beheading of student Xin Yang in the Graduate Life Center, the police-led hunt for an escaped inmate near campus and, of course, the infamous April 16 shootings.

The book expectedly received abysmal views and ubiquitous contempt in the comments. However, it raises a question not unfamiliar to Tech students: is Virginia Tech unnaturally predisposed to tragic incidents?

For Virginia Tech Police Chief Kevin Foust, the answer is simple.

“No. I don’t believe there is a stigma, I don’t believe Tech is cursed,” Foust said. “I don’t believe that our student community is any different from any other. I think what there is is there’s a misperception by society at large that universities and college campuses are immune to the evils out there.”

With more than 31,000 students and nearly 8,000 faculty and staff, Virginia Tech constitutes a small town in and of itself. A town built on the principle of inclusivity, welcoming people from around the world.

“We stand here with open arms and say, ‘Everybody is welcome,’” Foust said. “Part of the risk by doing that is obviously then you also have people come in who have maybe bad intentions.”

So are tragedies at Virginia Tech a result of the drawbacks of having an inclusive community and a large student

see BEAMER / page 5

see KAINE / page 6

see STATISTICS / page 5

T

S

THE IMMEDIATE AFTERMATH

In

WeRemember32.com

PAGE 2 April 13, 2017

editor@collegiatetimes.com

Three untold stories of April 16’s first responders

Three emergency personnel reflect on responding to the Virginia Tech shootings, all sharing the same goal — to save.

It

was just another day for Thomas Burnett as he mosied up to the cash register and paid for his cup of coffee like everyone else before him. As an emergency physician of 11 years at Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital, a pager was all that sat between him and the sur rounding coffee-drinking regulars.

Responding to the call still feels every bit as fresh as it did on April 16, 2007. Ten years ago, the call for the Virginia State Police Division Six SWAT team’s physician to gear up and face an afternoon of unfathomable tragedy.

“I remember one of our officers carrying out the student who had a tourniquet in place,” Burnett said. “We were helping direct where the students were going to go … Our primary concern at that point in time was to provide additional security because … we were getting a lot of reports from the students that there (was) more than one shooter.”

Vi rgi n ia Tech’s ca mpus security officials clotted around their first target building, West Ambler Johnston Hall. Jumping out of the car, Burnett recalls being the third SWAT team to arrive on scene just before the second shooting occurred and the chaos beating around him.

“I remember it being tremendously windy. I remember the flowers, the cherry blossoms had already started falling and were blowing around, so it seemed like there was snow,” Burnett said. “I was asked if we needed to have a helicopter on the scene to transport the victims to the trauma center, but the winds were so great that day that we couldn’t f ly the helicopter ... That’s why we ended up using a lot of ambulances and transporting to Montgomery Regional and New River Valley and moving patients from there.”

Following emergency evacuation, Burnett and his team scoped the hallways and were accompanied with K9 dogs for optimal detection. His team didn’t rest until very late in the evening, walking the same hallways as the gunman moments after he committed suicide.

“I remember going into the building,” Burnett said, pausing to compose himself and wipe away his tears. “I remember coming out of the building and seeing a bike rack in front of the building with bikes, and we realized that most of those bikes weren’t going to be picked up and probably (were) never going to be picked up by the students.

“I can still see the bike rack and it represented just some horrible things that happened that day.

Things are still hard to think about 10 years later.”

As a man of active military service, Burnett explains why nothing could have ever prepared him for the sights he witnessed on April 16.

“I have been in the military for 16 years; I have numerous overseas deployments, combat deployments, I worked with special operations in the past, and despite seeing all the things that I have seen in those environments, seeing that in a war zone is something you almost expect.

But seeing that in an area where you have friends and family, in what is supposed to be a safe and protected environment, it feels very personal and it feels like something has been threatened that shouldn’t be threatened,” Burnett said. “I think that’s why it stings so much — because these were innocent people that started their day, a day we all relate to, thinking it’s just going to be another day at school.”

KYLE SWANSON / COLLEGIATE TIMES First responders line up on Perry Street to treat victims after the shootings in Norris Hall, April 16, 2007.

Along with weather complications, communication was shot between first responders and the hospitals who would be receiving patients later that day. With overwhelmed cell phone lines, direct communication became a luxury; EMS became Burnett’s middle man to the hospital.

Over at Montgomery Regional Hospital, its first patient was getting ready to be dropped off by a transportation system that most students frequently ride — Blacksburg Transit (BT).

ANSWERING THE CALL

As a Level I trauma center with a trauma disaster preparedness plan in place, Dee Hawthorne and Mike Hill had never in their wildest dreams anticipated using their training skills for a real-time massacre in the small town of Blacksburg, Virginia.

In 2007, Hill was the director of the Emergency Department at Montgomery Regional Hospital, and he remembers coming to work after the first two students were shot, one pronounced dead at the scene.

After one student had jumped out of the window, escaping and breaking free, the man walked toward a BT bus to be shuttled to the closest hospital. At the time, the bus read “Hospital” on the side and he was a lone passenger.

“

only having five or six trauma packets on hand that were prepackaged for identifying patients in a quick and efficient manner.

This meant that the staff would need to get creative for the remaining 11 or 12 patients, considering that many had been injured or swollen to the point of no recognition.

“We just didn’t have enough,” Hill said. “When the whole thing was said and done, we were making up arm bands and just putting names on them. We were writing on pillow cases and sheets what medicine we had given them, how much IV fluid we gave, because it was so chaotic.”

With a two-to-one patient to nurse system, Hill mentioned his concerns of a staff shortage, but everything seemed to pan out eventually. Adrenaline was flowing for both Hill and Hawthorne, who say they each made it well into the middle of the night before even taking a nap.

Transitioning from 8-hour days, 18-hour shifts became habitual.

“I was putting monster needles in these kids to get blood work or X-rays, and pain medication and all of this stuff and I would look ‘em right in the eye and hold their hand and say, ‘You are going to be OK,’” Hill said. “We are going to call your folks, we are going to let them know that you are here. It’s going to be OK.”

A TIME TO GRIEVE

I can still see the bike rack and it represented just some horrible things that happened that day.”

Thomas Burnett SWAT team physician

“The bus driver came through the door and said, ‘I got a kid out here who’s got a broken leg.’

OK,” Hill said. “And then it was on. Yeah, from that point it was one after another ... When we started hearing shutter on the scanner, that’s when we knew there was more to it than a jealous ex-boyfriend kind of thing.”

Both Hill and Hawthorne were largely unaware of the number of patients that would be brought to their hospital and fortunately had the exact amount of room for the patients that were shuttled through those double doors — 17 trauma bays for 17 emergency patients.

As a nurse for the surgical team, Hawthorne remembers going through supplies at an impossible rate. Blankets were wiped out, IV fluids were depleting, and her boss, the director of the OR, was in San Francisco, California, following along with TV broadcasts at her nearest airport.

As a trauma nurse, Hill recalls

The healing process was grueling; it was a community stitched together by loose threads.

Nearly everyone in the nation was, and still is, wrestling for answers. For starters, how do you put an event of such magnitude behind you?

“Up until recently we were in a unique club of school shootings and it was a club who we’d said, ‘Well, who wants to be in that club?,’” Hill said. “And then tragically it happens again and someone killed more people at another place. Somebody said, ‘I bet you’re glad you’re not No. 1 in that category anymore,’ and I said, ‘I could have been OK with being No. 1 in that category for a long time,’ because this means somebody else is doing the same thing that we did all over.

“So, you know it was a life changing thing for me, because in my directorial role then you were worried about numbers and money and where you are going to make productivity and where you are going to get this and this and this and after that I thought, ‘The little things are stop and smell the roses.’”

In a field where medical personnel are expected to be stoic, Hawthorne would put the emotions of her patients ahead of her own daily.

“You just kick in and do your

job,” Hawthorne said. “As nurses, we all just do what needs to be done and take care of the patient and then afterwards, you know you can collapse and cry.”

And then there are others like Burnett who would prefer to keep themselves preoccupied. Raising a young family at the time, Burnett hasn’t ever felt there has been the right moment to talk to his children about his role with the SWAT team on April 16.

Burnett, however, remembers returning home, wet and dirty, seeing his children watching TV off of their DVD player in the back of the car with his wife.

The power had gone out, and this was the first time speaking to her since his brief visit to the coffee shop because the telephone lines were bogged all morning and night.

“I was tired. I was worn out. I was just physically and emotionally spent, and by the time I got home, we all went inside the house and slept,” Burnett said.

“My wife woke me up the next morning to let me know they were going to try to find a hotel because the power was still out, and unfortunately with the rain and my boots and equipment, now that it was daylight, I had walked through water going into the house, and we had bloody footprints all over the carpet and all over the floors of the house because (of) the water from my boots … My wife was trying to let me sleep in, and when I woke up they had already gone to the hotel and I walked into the kitchen and it was a mess. It started to really settle in there, so I had some time to myself to try to think about things.”

Hill, who also had young children at the time, says this was the first time his wife and kids ever saw him cry.

“It was hard (crying),” Hill said. “It was hard watching my two year old tell me it was OK.” Given the reputation of Virginia Tech students to dominate downtown Blacksburg, Hill couldn’t wait for annoying college kids to fill the streets again. “When it was well over and the dust had settled, a lot of the ER folks went to Sharkey’s at noon on Friday and we sat there in the middle, right when you walk in the door, we took a whole table and we just sat there and watched kids come in,” Hill said, as his voice began to break.

“You know the obnoxious kids who we can’t wait to go home in the summer because they take over downtown Blacksburg? …

For that day, that’s all I wanted,” Hill said. “I wanted to see that they were moving on and they were getting better, that they were partying and having a good time.

I think that was the big day for me that I needed … They didn’t have

a clue who we were, we were just down there, that was our purpose — drink beer, eat chicken wings and watch obnoxious drunk Tech kids try to pick up girls.”

Above all hardships, the patient care in Montgomery Regional was exemplary. First bringing the marching band and then Tim Kaine, the hospital staff saw relatively little change in morale from their patients no matter how hard they tried to raise their spirits.

Frank Beamer, however, was t he begin n ing of a new perspective.

“I have some friends who knew coach Beamer and Bud Foster, and Bud Foster called me and I said, ‘Hey man, is there anyway you all could come by?’” Hill said.

“Shoot man, when they found out that Beamer and Bud Foster and Charley Wiles were coming, girls were getting out of bed. They were fixing their hair, they were putting on makeup. That was like, it was the biggest deal that, ‘Oh coaches are coming. I’ve got to get up,’ and I’m like, ‘I’ve been trying to get you out of bed for three days.’

“And there is a picture of one of the girls that was in ICU looking out the window and if you look close at the picture she had tons of tubes and things hanging out, but that’s how much it meant to her to have something other than blah, so we did other things with them.”

WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

Ten years ago, Hill, Hawthorne and Burnett lived the same unforgettable tale, all placed at different facets of the story. Through it all, they have each chosen to continue their profession at their same hospitals with most of their same co-workers on that day.

The first responders, according to director of Cook Counseling Center Christopher Flynn, both on the frontline and behind the scenes, deserve to be recognized for their remarkable service.

“The first responders, the Virginia (Tech) rescue squad and the other responders from the community did amazing work,” Flynn said. “So the trouble that all human beings have is that we have an imagination, right? It’s pretty vivid. We can imagine what it was like in there or certainly talk to people who were in the building during that day.”

“I also have felt a part of the Virginia Tech family I think after that event,” Burnett said smiling.

“It makes me feel like I have Virginia Tech blood so to speak, so for that it’s always had a special place in my heart.”

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April 13, 2017 PAGE 3

Hokies come together in remembrance The HokieBird kneels in front of cadets, families, students and community members at the April 16 memorial on the Drillfield at the candlelight vigil.

BEN WEIDLICH / COLLEGIATE TIMES

On the lookout for the next school shooter

Graduate students in the English department are instructed to monitor their classrooms for hints of another tragedy.

In

orientation for graduate teach i ng assist a nts (GTAs) we learn how not to violate our students’ FERPA rights, how not to violate our students’ Title IX rights and how not to violate our students. Orientation for GTAs is an 8-hour long day of 30-minute mini sessions related to the topics listed above with nothing but decaf coffee and a slice of pizza to shake things up.

And still, when a Virginia Tech police lieutenant said the date “April 16,” I stiffened in my seat and focused my attention as if it were mini-session one.

Lt. Tony Haga of the VTPD explained to a Colonial Hall bursting with new GTAs the importance of identifying and, when necessary, addressing a red flag. He explained, handing three index cards to three different GTAs, that each of us as teachers may know something about a specific student. “Family troubles,” read one index card, a potential red flag noticed by a single GTA. “Recent break-up,” read another index card, in another GTAs exclusive possession. “Academic struggles,” read a third card, yet another GTAs private knowledge. These three facts about a single student are seemingly harmless, manageable, not worth mentioning when separated as such.

Just as several faculty members separately noticed red flags in Seung-Hui Cho’s behavior.

I realized, for the first time, the responsibility that falls not only on full-time faculty and tenured professors, but also on GTAs. I thought about my four years at Virginia Tech as a student sitting in 20-person English courses concerned only with coasting my way through efficiently enough that the professor couldn’t tell I never read. Then I thought about standing in front of a 20-person English course concerned that one of my students failed to attend class for an entire week, concerned that one of my students submitted a writing exercise full of violent imagery, concerned that one of my students might kill someone if I don’t stop it from happening.

In the midst of Haga’s anecdote about befriending students in need of support, I observed the incoming class of GTAs. Of the 650 plus of us in Colonial Hall that morning, the majority did not look up from phone screens, did not close prematurely purchased textbooks, did not awaken from seated slumbers.

As far as I could tell, none of the graduate students seated around me were sharing my moment of alarmed revelation.

As an alumna, as someone who attended Virginia Tech for four years as an undergraduate, I realized I understood April 16 differently than any GTA arriving in Blacksburg who entered a VT classroom and experienced the Hokie community for the first time this academic year. While I was not here in 2007, I still understood standing on the Drillfield with a candle in front of the memorial. I still understood everything encompassed in the moment of silence before the 3.2 for 32. I still understood the weight of what happened here. And I understood the weight that was now on us.

Capable of anything

“I distinctly remember, I was sitting in art history one day, and that was in Torg 1000 something.

So the stage was at the bottom, there was stadium, graduated seating and there were doors at the bottom and up at the top. And I recall one day, a student coming in the door that was at the back of the classroom, which was at the top of the stairs. It rarely ever happened, if ever. Students always came in the front. And I remember seeing a look of panic on my professor’s face. The first thing that came into my mind was, yeah, that must be terrifying … what must go through your mind of what could be coming through that door.”

Amanda McGlone attended Virginia Tech for her undergraduate degree from 2010–14 before returning in the fall 2014 semester for graduate school and a position as a graduate teaching assistant. She completed her master’s in 2016 and began as a full-time instructor with the English department in the fall 2016 semester.

As her role in the Virginia Tech community evolved, so did the impact of April 16 on her everyday life.

As an undergraduate, McGlone came to Virginia Tech with a sense of heightened vigilance.

“Once I was a student here, I just have a lot of memories of being very hyper-aware because it was only three years since the event had happened, and it was very much in the forefront of my mind as I was sitting in classes,” McGlone said. “As the years went on, my hyper-awareness sort of drifted away. I got more comfortable.

As I said, I think the April 16 events started to drop off the further we got away from 2007. So it seemed to be on the forefront of my mind less as I continued on with my undergraduate degree.”

Once McGlone became an instructor, the passive hyperawareness from her early years in Blacksburg returned, but in a more active sense to fit her active role as an instructor.

“I think back to what I saw when I was a freshman, and that teacher who looked panicked when the door opened, and now I’m that teacher,” McGlone said. “As a teacher, I definitely feel like April 16 has been part of the way that I approach my classroom and my students, to ensure I keep them safe and myself safe on an everyday basis … I’m not sure I would have that kind of vigilance if I wasn’t teaching at this university or hadn’t been part of the student body for so long.”

“

As the bits and pieces of information came in, it looked more and more like it was one of our students.”

Edward Falco English professor

McGlone attended a similar GTA orientation session in the fall of 2014 and then another human resources (HR) daylong orientation before she began working as a fulltime instructor, but found both to be underwhelming.

“It is worth nothing, I know not every department is like this, but in the English department, we attend that workshop before the fall semester starts of our first year, but we don’t go into the classroom until the spring semester … so we get all this knowledge that’s meant to stick with us, but we don’t put it into practice for an entire semester, an entire three or four months,” McGlone said.

McGlone suggests changes that could be made in order to help better prepare GTAs. “If we’re thinking about how do we reform or how do we prepare our teachers, particularly our GTAs, for going into the classroom and how we present this to them, can we present this information to them in smaller groups? Can we ensure that there is a closer relationship between the students getting this information and the police officer talking to them?

“Then again, I think there is that issue of how much can you prepare someone for something like that,” McGlone said. “And if that actually happened, would that police officer’s voice be in the back of my head, or would I be working on pure instinct and adrenaline? It’s probably the latter.”

Consistent with McGlone’s hypothesis, when she found out last academic year that one of her students had allegedly murdered a 13-year-old

girl, the red flag training she and I both received proved frighteningly useless.

David Eisenhauer, the Virginia Tech student accused of killing Nicole Lovell last January, took McGlone’s ENGL 1105 course in the fall and had just begun spring semester coursework in McGlone’s ENGL 1106 course when he was arrested.

“Hindsight was not 20/20. I didn’t have that moment where I looked back and thought, ‘Wow, I missed all those things that would have told me that he would have been arrested and all those things would have happened,’” McGlone said. “In fact, I looked back and thought he’s just like all the other students that I teach, or many of them. He has a similar major, similar way he participated in class, a similar temperament to the other students I teach. He didn’t stand out to me in any way.”

While both the GTA and HR training attempted to provide instructors with the skills to recognize students capable of these types of acts of violence, Eisenhauer exhibited none of the signs we were taught to see.

“In that way, it’s taught me that my students could be capable of anything.

No matter what. Even if there is no red flag, even if there is nothing that tells me, ‘Hey, this student might be struggling with something or they might be capable of something like this,’ that threat is always present,” McGlone said. “His case in particular was so evident of that, because not only was he arrested for this crime, but I also saw him after he supposedly committed it. He came back to my classroom and sat in class even after it happened. Not only was he capable of that, he was capable of coming back and going on about his school day as if nothing happened. That shows me my students are capable of anything.”

McGlone taught Eisenhauer for an entire semester prior to his arrest.

As English instructors and GTAs, we’ve been told that we may be the only teachers who know our students’ names. Apart from our 20-person English course, freshman students may have nothing but 300-person plus lecture halls, classes in which they are nothing more than their student ID numbers. We know their names. If any faculty member is to notice a red flag, we have been told, it will be us.

But what if there’s nothing to notice?

“It’s changed my view of my students in the way that nothing has changed. I have no action to take,” McGlone said. “I have no more knowledge than I had before, but it at least makes me that much more aware of what my students are capable of, not only to other members in the community, but to each other.”

There was nothing

Edward Falco, author and English professor with Virginia Tech’s MFA program, had Cho as a student.

“It was very odd. He didn’t speak at all in class, and so the first thing I did was try to talk to him afterwards ... I remember he was clearly different,” Falco said. “One of the things you’ll do with a student who is inward and not communicating is you might initiate some contact.

And I remember putting my hand on his arm, and instead of the kind of opening up you might feel he just sort of shut down, locked up. Obviously he didn’t like it, so I took my hand away.

Immediately.”

Falco taught Cho’s playwriting class the semester of April 16, 2007, and recounted the experience of slowly discovering the shooter was one of his students.

“We slowly got little bits and pieces of information about who did the shooting, and as the bits and pieces of information came in, it looked more and more like it was one of our students,” Falco said.

“The description, the details we were getting, and as we were putting the pieces together there was this growing anxiety that it would be this

particular student. And then we eventually found out it was.”

Falco said he never had any concerns about Cho harming others or himself.

“No. No. There was nothing he ever did that indicated that could be an issue.”

Similar to McGlone’s comments about Eisenhauer, Falco reiterated multiple times throughout the interview that Cho showed none of the red flags that would have provided some warning of what was to come. No change to Falco’s classroom management or teaching methods would have altered the events that would soon transpire so, in line with McGlone’s experience, Falco’s teaching ideologies remained unchanged after April 16.

“We had a lot of discussions about and a lot of back and forth about recognizing danger signals in students and how to handle disturbing writing, but again, none of those pertained to the shooter. None of them pertained to him. He didn’t give any indications that there were in any way, that there was some sort of issue,” Falco said.

Falco refrained from using Cho’s name for the entirety of the interview.

Specifically in creative writing courses, in which students are encouraged to express the full spectrum of emotions, identifying potentially dangerous situations becomes further complicated.

“We began talking about what if a student turns in disturbing writing.

It’s a very complicated issue for creative writers because writing can be violent. Just because you write something that’s violent doesn’t mean that you’re violent,” Falco explained. “So you often get writing that’s violent, and you don’t want to be in the position where you have to turn people into the system because they’ve written something that’s violent. Plus, you need freedom, and you need a place where you can write what you need without worrying about being turned into somebody in the creative writing community.”

While Cho’s writing was violent, it did not warrant any alarm.

“There was some violence in his plays. But it was the kind of juvenile violence. It’s like beginning artists drawing skulls and crossbones. That kind of juvenile rather than sophisticated. And there was nothing in it that stood out and said, ‘There’s some danger here.’”

As tenured professors, faculty instructors and GTAs, we are provided with training to spot red flags that, on at least two occasions, have arguably failed to exist.

“There’s a distinction obviously. If somebody writes hate-filled writing, and you can see the hatred in it, and that person seems dangerous then I think any creative writing person would take a step with that. Talk to the student and then talk to others, but that happens so rarely. Hardly ever happens,” Falco explained, reiterating again that these types of warning signs were not exhibited by the shooter.

He went on to explain the dangers of attempting to take on the role of another profession in the pursuit of these types of indicators.

“We put ourselves in a very dangerous position if we pretend that we’re not teachers but psychologists and psychiatrists, and that’s not what we’re trained to do,” Falco said.

“We’re not trained in those fields.

We’re trained to examine writing and see how it’s working from a literary perspective.”

Falco described the events of the day as “a horror story just sort of injecting itself into your life.” When asked if he ever felt guilty after hearing that the shooter was one of his own students, Falco responded without hesitation.

“Heartbroken is better than guilty.

There’s nothing to feel guilty about.

There was no way of knowing what was going to happen. Nobody could have guessed what was going to

happen. There’s no way anybody could have assumed. No reason to have assumed. So no. I didn’t feel guilty. I felt terribly, but not guilty, no.”

Falco sent out an email to his students soon after the shooting that conveyed this message to a class he knew might experience feelings of guilt.

“The gist of what I said was it doesn’t do anybody any good to review, to take on a sense of guilt over what happened. Nothing happened in that classroom that they could have changed.

“He was a strange student. And that’s all we knew about him,” Falco continued. “You don’t want to live in a world where somebody who’s strange suddenly gets ostracized from the community … There’s got to be room in the world for odd people and forpeople who don’t fit. You don’t pull them all out and stick them in a corner some place.”

Say something, nothing

say

Both McGlone and Falco stood in the front of a room of students and attempted to teach accused murderers how to write. Both discovered the incomprehensibly horrible capabilities of these students. Both recalled a lack of warning signs in the students; the red flags that I, as a GTA, was trained to spot as a means of protecting both my students and myself from harm.

In Cho’s case, he exhibited what other English department faculty did identify as red flags worth communicating. Lucinda Roy, the chair of the Department of English at the time of the shootings, now an MFA instructor alongside Falco, wrote a book in 2009 titled “No Right to Remain Silent” in which she provides an examination of how the university handled both Cho and the events of April 16.

“He had been taken over, actually.

One of the professors, Lisa Norris, offered to walk him over to the counseling center. And others had offered to help him in any way they could in terms of getting counseling for his issues,” Falco said. “I knew that others had already done those kinds of interventions, but not because they were worried about him hurting anybody.

He obviously had some sort of issue, some sort of developmental issue that kept him from speaking.”

Unfortunately, Roy wrote that any help response Cho received from Cook Counseling was “tragically inadequate.”

Some faculty members saw no threat from Cho, said nothing about him, and the events of April 16 occurred.

Some faculty members saw Cho as a threat, said something about him, and the events of April 16 occurred.

As tenured professors, faculty instructors and GTAs today, 10 years later, the question still remains.

Can the threat assessment training required of all teachers at Virginia Tech adequately prepare us to handle these extreme situations of danger?

Is it even possible to be adequately prepared for those types of situations?

Ten years after the deadliest school shooting in U.S. history, some of my first-year composition students do not know what happened here on April 16. They crack open the classroom door, arriving 20 minutes late and have no idea that I contemplate, if only for less than a second, the full range of horrors that could be coming through my door. They point out the dangling cord from the digital clock display and don’t wonder whether the unplugged cord means we will miss an impending emergency alert, this time not broadcasting as a drill. They hear the same bang in the hallway that I do, but while they remain half awake and bored out of their minds, I pause mid-lecture, sure it was the first bang of hundreds.

LIBBY HOWE

D

WeRemember32.com

PAGE 4 April 13, 2017

editor@collegiatetimes.com

The 33rd death: April 16 and mental health policies Cho dealt with mental illness throughout his life — could better mental health policies have prevented the shooting?

S

eung-Hui Cho, who killed himself in addition to 32 others during the April 16 shooting, was afflicted by serious mental health issues that went unaddressed. The state and Virginia Tech led the way in response to and prevention of campus crises across the nation.

Cho’s mental health history

Seung-Hui Cho entered Virginia Tech as a freshman in the fall of 2003 as a business information technology major in the Pamplin College of Business; although, he eventually switched into the English department. A graduate of Westfield High School, Cho was born in South Korea but grew up in northern Virginia.

According to the Governor’s Panel that investigated the April 16 shooting, during middle and high school, Cho exhibited signs of mental illness. He originally only received treatment for selective mutism and depression, but then teachers noticed suicidal and homicidal ideations in his writing in the aftermath of the Columbine shooting in 1999.

Upon discovering his fantasies after the Columbine shooting, Cho was given psychiatric counseling and was put on medication for a short period of time. These homicidal fantasies following the shooting, however, were apparently unknown to Cho’s parents.

According to The New York Times, Cho also encountered bullying for his mute condition; and when he did speak, students made fun of his voice.

When Cho came to Virginia Tech, the university did not have access to his previous history of mental health, including the information that his high school had gathered over the years. His family members, however, were aware of his mental state and supported him as best they could. “(Cho’s) parents were pretty remarkable,” said Christopher Flynn, director of Cook Counseling Center both currently and during April 16, 2007. “They knew about his emotional difficulties. When he was a freshman, they drove down here every weekend to see him.

They drove from northern Virginia down every Sunday, spent time with him, and turned around and drove back, so that they could help him.”

In 2005, during Cho’s junior year at Virginia Tech, he was admitted to Carilion Clinic Saint Albans Hospital and stayed overnight. On the morning of Dec. 13, 2005, the Virginia Tech Police Department (VTPD) was contacted because a female Virginia Tech student complained that Cho was harassing her. According to the student, Cho was sending her unwanted instant messages and left a message on a dry erase board outside of her dorm.

Additionally, VTPD had been previously contacted about Cho by one of his roommates, to whom Cho had sent a message expressing suicidal thoughts.

Cho was evaluated at the Carilion New River Valley Medical Center and he received the diagnosis of mood disorder. At this time, he denied having any suicidal thoughts and claimed that the entire incident was a joke. After his discharge, follow-ups and aftercare were to be coordinated with Cook Counseling Center.

Cho also engaged in phone triages with Cook Counseling Center both before and after his admittance to Saint Albans including on Nov. 30, 2005; Dec. 12, 2005; and an in-person follow-up on Dec. 14, 2005. During his triage on Dec. 14, counselor Sherry Lynch Conrad

encouraged Cho to return for an appointment in January after winter break. This appointment, however, was never scheduled.

Cho’s time at Virginia Tech

Within the English department, professors encountered issues with Cho in class and recognized his need for counseling. Professor Ed Falco had Cho as a student in creative writing.

“We’re a relatively small community in creative writing, and so I knew the other professors, and I had already talked to them early on to decide whether or not I should let him take my class. And I had learned that one of the professors, Lisa Norris, offered to walk him over to the counseling center. And others had offered to help him in any way they could in terms of getting counseling for his issues.

“So I knew that others had already done those kinds of interventions, but not because they were worried about him hurting anybody, but just because he obviously had some sort of issue, some sort of developmental issue that kept him from speaking,” Falco said.

In his senior year, Cho took a playwriting workshop taught by Falco.

“He didn’t speak at all in class, and so the first thing I did was try to talk to him afterwards because usually if you have a student who’s very shy, or has some sort of issue, you can just talk to them one-toone ... I remember he was clearly different. You know, one of the things you’ll do with a student who is inward and not communicating is you might initiate some contact.

And I remember putting my hand on his arm, and instead of the kind of opening up you might feel, he just sort of shut down, locked up.

Obviously he didn’t like it, so I took my hand away. Immediately.

“I talked to other people because I didn’t see how he could be in my workshop ... I talked to other creative writing professors and learned that he was a senior, and had already been through the other workshops, and that they had all made accommodations for him.

And so I considered it a health issue, a handicap, and agreed to sort of work around it. So he didn’t speak during the class, but he turned in written responses to the plays,” Falco said.

According to Falco, Cho sat quietly during each class, wearing a baseball cap, and had virtually no interaction with the other students.

After the shooting, one of Cho’s former classmates in Falco’s playwriting class sent two plays that Cho wrote, “Richard McBeef” and “Mr. Brownstone,” to AOL News. According to the former classmate, Ian MacFarlane (who was also an employee of AOL News), “When I first heard about the multiple shootings at Virginia Tech yesterday, my first thought was about my friends, and my second thought was, ‘I bet it was Seung Cho,’ … When we read Cho’s plays, it was like something out of a nightmare. The plays had really twisted, macabre violence that used weapons I wouldn’t have even thought of.”

Falco also described Cho’s plays as violent, but said that the works were immature.

“It just seemed like immature writing. Writing in a fantastical manner. Very unskilled and uncontrolled, but nothing that was a red flag,” Falco said.

Falco emphasized that Cho’s violent writing was never a real concern.

“We began to talk about what if a student turns in disturbing writing.

It’s a very complicated issue for creative writers because writing can be violent. Just because you write something that’s violent doesn’t mean that you’re violent ... If Toni Morrison had written a scene like she wrote in ‘Beloved,’ where the mother takes a hack sword to the child’s neck and kills them, would we have turned her in and said, ‘Sorry this is a dangerous writer?’

No, and that scene is relevant to the story she wrote because it’s necessary. There’s lots of violence that turns up in writing, the question is, is it literary?”

Falco also emphasized that he did not feel guilty for not knowing what his former student would do, and urged his students not to feel guilty as well.

“I wrote them all an email telling them that … it doesn’t do anybody any good to review, to take on a sense of guilt over what happened, there was nothing that happened in that classroom that they could have changed ... he was a strange student, and that’s all we knew about him.

“In 33 years of students, I’ve had a handful of students who were different and strange, but none of them committed acts of violence.

They were just odd. There’s got to be room in the world for odd people and for people who don’t fit. You don’t pull them all out, stick them in a corner some place.”

In 2005, while Lucinda Roy served as the chair of the English department, she encountered issues with Cho, according to her book “No Right to Remain Silent.” She alerted the Division of Student Affairs, the Cook Counseling Center, the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences and the VTPD about her concerns.

Roy contacted VTPD because of a poem he wrote in a poetry class. “(Cho) had read the poem aloud in class, and although his piece could perhaps be viewed as immature student venting, it could also be interpreted in a more threatening way,” Roy wrote.

Additionally, according to Roy’s book, he took photos of girls in class, sometimes from under his desk, without their permission.

Cho, however, was unwilling to go to the Cook Counseling Center, and Tech policies did not allow someone to be treated unless he or she went in voluntarily.

Virginia Tech’s response

In the aftermath of the shooting, the families of two victims, Julia Pryde and Erin Peterson, filed identical lawsuits regarding negligence against agents and individuals employed by Virginia Tech, including the Cook Counseling Center and a few of its counselors.

One of the allegations of negligence regarding the Cook Counseling Center was that counselors should have followed up with Cho after his final meeting at Cook. Many had the idea that Cho had interacted with the Cook Counseling Center on many occasions; however, in reality, Cho only visited Cook in person once.

“There was a lot of miscommunication about what the role of the Cook Counseling Center was,” Flynn said. “I think if you read some books on the subject or some of the interviews at the time with people, they would say that Mr. Cho had multiple contacts with the Cook Counseling Center. That’s not actually true ... Mr. Cho was referred to the Cook Counseling Center on a number of occasions, but he called for telephone triages, talked to one person. They made an appointment (for Cho), he didn’t show up. We followed up and talked with him again, he didn’t show up for a follow-up interview, and then

NICK JEREMIAH / COLLEGIATE TIMES Christopher Flynn, director of Cook Counseling Center, addresses reporters and the university at a press conference, April 19, 2007. Flynn came to Virginia Tech in 2006, replacing Robert Miller as director.

he was hospitalized. This was back in (2005).

“On the day he was discharged from the hospital, it was the last day of exams at Virginia Tech, so he came and met with a counselor who did not know about the hospitalization nor had she had any history (on Cho’s mental health). It was the last day of classes so he was going home immediately afterwards.

He went home, a month later he returned and then he did not contact the Cook Counseling Center again … We had no particular reason (to follow up), I think it would have been helpful, of course, that he come in, and I think everyone agrees he could have used the assistance, but he did not follow up.”

“

All of college mental health has changed since the incident ... The shooting on our campus changed the face of prevention, intervention, crisis response, across the United States.”

Christopher Flynn director of Cook Counseling Center

In the aftermath of the shooting, it was discovered that several of Cho’s files had been missing. According to Flynn, his staff spent 100–150 hours searching through files to ensure that they were not simply misplaced and were actually missing.

Then, six months later, an attorney representing Robert Miller, who was the former director of Cook Counseling until he was fired in 2005, called Flynn to inform him that he had the missing files.

According to the Washington Post, “Miller said he found Cho’s medical records, long thought to be lost, in his home in July while looking for documents relevant to the lawsuit (referring to the lawsuits filed by the Pryde and Peterson families).”

When asked about the discovery of Cho’s missing files in Miller’s home, Flynn defended Miller.

“There was no gain to be had …

Why this person? Of all the files, why would that one — but he had left the year before, right, so he had been gone a year. So why? He wouldn’t even know to hide it … I mean, his story had every bit of truth associated with it. It was unfortunate, but, you know, when things go wrong, they go wrong in a big way. It’s always that way,” Flynn said.

Additionally, following the shooting, several panels, including the Governor’s Panel, an internal panel and the Office of the Inspector General’s panel, investigated the shooting to determine how to prevent a tragedy of this sort from happening again.

The panels determined that one of the main ways Virginia Tech could improve was in terms of communication. Had one counselor had access to all of Cho’s files, there is no telling if said counselor could have determined Cho to be a threat, but this counselor certainly would have had a better picture of him as a whole.

According to Sen. Tim Kaine, who was governor of Virginia at the time of the shooting, “We’ve made some improvements (since the shooting); in Virginia we passed a law … basically allowing colleges, after a student has been admitted, to get information about their medical history.

“One of the greatest ‘what ifs?’ is what if Virginia Tech had just known what the high school knew about how to help this young man manage his own mental illness and be successful? The lack of anybody ever calling this young man’s parents and saying we have a lot of suspicions about him — teachers, RAs, campus mental health — nobody reached out to the family and said, ‘Hey, you know what, maybe you should get down here and spend some time with your son.’”

Due to a misunderstanding of federal privacy laws at the time, the university was under the impression that it was forbidden from discussing Cho’s mental health with his parents.

The claims in the lawsuits, along with the panels of investigation, provided insight into how to prevent a tragedy of this kind from happening in the future, and how to respond, if it does.

“All of college mental health has changed since the incident.

It’s not just the Cook Counseling Center,” Flynn said. “The shooting on our campus changed the face of prevention, intervention, crisis response, across the United States.

It hasn’t just been us, but Virginia Tech has probably led the way in

terms of changes to how we relate to, with departments among themselves, about sharing information, about being responsive to students, faculty and staff who may have difficulty. So, it wasn’t just the Cook Counseling Center, but we were really, those investigations I think were helpful in pointing the way and pointing the direction.”

Flynn addressed flaws in Cho’s treatment and how the university has responded in the aftermath of the shooting.

“Oftentimes, if a student is hospitalized and they get a temporary detention order and emergency custody order, there is a hearing that follows, where at those hearings we send our case manager there. We follow up with students to make sure they’re OK. So that this issue of follow up that Cho missed does not happen on our campus,” Flynn explained, referring to Cook’s failure to follow up with Cho when he did not schedule a next appointment.

He also expressed the ways in which Cook has grown following the tragedy.

“I would say that Cook was relatively understaffed when I started here. So, at that time, when I started in 2006, we had nine counselors.

We have 24 counselors now. We had one person in psychiatry and we had one part-time person. We now have three. We have two full-time psychiatrists, full-time nurse practitioner and a part-time nurse practitioner. All of whom can prescribe medication. So, we have expanded outside of McComas. We have satellite clinics in East Eggleston, by the bookstore, Kent Square and in athletics, as well as drop-in centers at Vet-Med, Graduate Life Center and other places across campus. So, we are much larger and much more able to see students. Whereas we saw maybe 1,000 to 1,500 students back then. Last year we saw 4,000 students. We see a lot of students here,” Flynn said.

Since the tragedy, Flynn has shared his insights in responding to campus crises. One way he has done so is by co-authoring a piece with Micky Sharma, director of counseling and consultation at The Ohio State University, titled “Mental Health Aspects of Responding to Campus Crises.” In this piece, Flynn and Sharma explain how and provide tips to best respond to tragedies on college campuses.

All in all, however, Flynn believes that under the circumstances, Virginia Tech responded very well.

“I think that Virginia Tech did an amazing job,” Flynn said. “I think there’s always things that could be improved, right? So that’s why we do these after-action reviews, we go back and do a lot of that, I would say that in the aftermath of the shooting here, whenever there was a shooting on other campuses, they would call.

I went to a number of sites where there had been shootings and in the aftermath have consulted with a number of universities.”

Cho, a student in pain

According to the Roanoke Times, “Cho’s family fled their Northern Virginia home and media glare for a few months in 2007, but eventually moved back. They live there still. No one in the neighborhood really talks about the shooting anymore.”

While Cho’s family has not been outspoken regarding the incident, they are still remembered every year during the anniversary of the shooting.

“I do feel for his parents. Always,” Flynn said. “You know, I mean, and his sister. I mean what have they gone through? What hell do they live in? They had a huge loss too.”

Cho was a victim of serious mental illness, which unfortunately went for the most part unaddressed.

“We shouldn’t forget that he committed suicide, there was some pain that was driving him,” Flynn said.

Mental illness remains a prevalent issue in the United States, and mental health problems can have severe consequences, should they go untreated. Methods to recognize, treat and respond to affected individuals are constantly being improved. Although good has come out of the tragedy in terms of prevention and response to campus crises, the Virginia Tech community is still experiencing the aftermath of the shooting.

“It was like a horror story sort of just injecting itself into your life.

The very fabric of the community got ripped by the event. It got torn by the event. And I don’t think the people who were here can ever quite get over it,” Falco said.

JESSICA BRADY AND MEG CONNORS

WeRemember32.com

editor@collegiatetimes.com

April 13, 2017 PAGE 5

STATISTICS: Chief of police: ‘I don’t believe Tech is cursed’ from page 1

population, or is the university truly “America’s Cursed College?”

THE STATISTICAL EVIDENCE

Like any American college campus, crime has happened to and because of Virginia Tech students.

In 2014, on the main Blacksburg campus, there were 18 burglaries, one count of motor vehicle theft and 617 liquor law violation referrals.

However, when comparing tragedies across universities, we usually don’t look to liquor law violations, we look to murder. And typically, we turn to one of the most poignant variety of campus murders: school shootings.

Unfortunately, comprehensive school shooting data is difficult to obtain. Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund offers one of the most complete datasets, albeit for only three years — between 2013 and 2015, Everytown recorded 160 incidents of gunfire in K-12 and higher education schools that resulted in 59 deaths and 124 non-fatal injuries.

In this dataset, the Commonwealth of Virginia ranks No. 35 in the nation for total number of gunfire incidents on campuses (adjusted for population). This number is relatively consistent with historical but less complete datasets, including those that contain the Virginia Tech shooting, the most fatal school shooting in American history.

While this information is interesting, it falls short in two regards: one, it considers Virginia as a whole rather than Virginia Tech specifically; and two, it addresses only a fraction of the tragedies that occur in college communities.

For instance, in January 2016, 13-year-old Blacksburg native Nicole Lovell was reported missing.

Blacksburg Police recruited locals to assist in the search, including 115 members of the Corps of Cadets, and the community banded together to find the missing girl. Ultimately, her body was found in the woods near Route 89 with multiple stab wounds to the neck.

The tragedy understandably wracked the university community and beyond. CNN, CBS, the Washington Post, NBC, the Chicago Tribune and others all followed the story. The Collegiate Times has written nearly 20 articles on the developing case.

Even a story as tragic as the Lovell murder would not be represented by school shooting statistics, however, since a knife was the murder weapon.

Instead, we turn to university annual security reports, which have been required since 1992.

The data in these reports offers statistics on several major campus crimes: murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault, to name a few.

From these reports, we gather that crime at Virginia Tech, in general, matches crime at other schools.

Unfortunately, because only on-campus incidents count as Clery Act incidents, even these data are

lacking.

For instance, in 2013 a firefight broke out between a Liberty University Emergency Services officer and a male student in Liberty University Residential Annex II, a female dorm located three miles from the campus. The student died and the officer was severely injured.

Because the location is technically off-campus, the incident was not reported in Liberty University’s annual security report.

While these datasets do not offer conclusive findings, they do reveal interesting trends: in general, Virginia tends to have fewer campus gunfire events than other states, for a state of its size; and in general, crime at Virginia Tech matches that of other Virginia schools.

The only statistical anomaly is the severity of the Virginia Tech shooting a decade ago.

“I think what happened on April 16 could have happened on any campus, and it was Virginia Tech,” said President Tim Sands in an interview with the Collegiate Times. “It was an incredible tragedy, a magnitude that I don’t think anybody was prepared to deal with at that time, but since then we’ve seen that it does happen everywhere. And maybe not at that magnitude, but almost every major campus has had some kind of an incident that reminds them of that.”

With a better understanding of Virginia Tech’s comparative standing in terms of school tragedies, we turn to the continued role of the April 16 shooting in national media coverage.

MEDIA COVERAGE SINCE 2007

NUMBER OF GUN-RELATED INCIDENTS BY POPULATION LEAST

Johnston Hall, the same co-ed residence hall where the first two people were killed in the 2007 campus massacre that left 32 dead.”

The list goes on. After 2007, murder at Virginia Tech and the infamous shootings became inseparable. It’s easy to see how Virginia Tech became “America’s cursed college” in the eyes of the nation.

Is this perception accurate? Or has the severity of the April 16 shootings cast an oversized shadow on every crime since?

“I’m always fascinated by who thinks that there’s a ‘curse’ or some problem (at Virginia Tech),” said Sands, who was appointed university president in 2014. He remembers hearing about the 2007 shootings from afar and being shocked by the university community’s instant solidarity.

“My immediate response was, ‘Wow, that’s interesting, I wouldn’t have expected that,’” Sands said.

“But then when you see, and I reflect on what I saw from a distance, yeah, I would want to be part of that community … That’s a special place, a place that really people value each other and really support each other.”

In the past decade, hundreds of shots have rung out from college campuses across the country, though national media coverage has been inconsistent. Sometimes national outlets cover a case devotedly from start to finish, and sometimes a shooting gets just a single story.

Virginia Tech, however, nearly always falls into the first category.

1970 And when national outlets do Fifty miles south of Lake Erie cover a death involving the Virginia sits a university that, on paper, looks Tech community, they nearly always a lot like Virginia Tech. The public tie it back to that infamous day. research university boasts a student population of 30,000 on its main A FEW EXAMPLES: campus, is prominently Caucasian, A Fox News article reporting on economically dominates its local the 2009 on-campus decapitation town and has even gone toe-to-toe of graduate student Xin Yang reads, with the Hokies in Lane Stadium.

“The killing stunned a campus That school, Kent State University, that still has vivid memories of the shares another striking similarity mass slayings in April 2007, when a with Virginia Tech — a tragic student gunman shot 32 people and on-campus shooting that left four then took his own life.” students dead on university grounds.

In 2009, when part-time The story begins on April 30, Radford student Ross Ashley shot 1970, when Richard Nixon, beleaOfficer Crouse and then himself, guered by the increasingly unpopular CNN published an article stating, Vietnam War, appeared on all “Thursday’s double shooting three U.S. television networks to conjured memories from April 16, address the American people. Nixon 2007, when student Seung-Hui Cho announced he was sending soldiers killed 33 people at Virginia Tech in a into the neutral country of Cambodia mass shooting.” to dismantle Vietnamese forces And nearly nine years after the hiding there. shooting, when Virginia Tech student “We live in an age of anarchy, David Eisenhauer was charged both abroad and at home,” Nixon with the death of local teenager said to the nation. “We see mindless Nicole Lovell, a CBS News article attacks on all the great institutions read, “Eisenhauer lived in Ambler which have been created by free

MOST

civilizations in the last 500 years.

Even here in the United States, great universities are being systematically destroyed.”

Student protests broke out across the country. What started as peaceful protests at Kent State devolved into beer bottles being thrown at police cars and bonfires lit in the streets.

Kent Mayor LeRoy Satrom declared a state of emergency and Ohio Gov. Jim Rhodes requested the Ohio National Guard to come and restore the peace, though the soldiers did not arrive on campus until after anonymous arsonists lit the campus ROTC building on fire. Jeering protesters slashed fire hoses until they were forced away by tear gas.

On the fourth day of protests, the Ohio National Guard confronted an estimated 2,000 protesters in the center of campus. The wind that day made tear gas ineffective, and the protesters threw back taunts. Soon, their ammo escalated to rocks, tear gas canisters and other projectiles, and the guardsmen — reportedly fearing for their lives — opened fire on the protesters.

It is not certain how long the shooting lasted. Estimates vary between 13 seconds and a full minute.

However long it was, four students were killed and nine wounded. The shooting of unarmed students shook a nation at a time of divisiveness unseen since the Civil War. After the historic shootings, Kent State University tended to garner national news coverage whenever tragic incidents occurred on or near its campus. And, like nearly any university of its size, there have been several.

A 1991 drive-by shooting left a 51-year-old campus custodian dead, and in 1992, a graduate student was shot in the chest on university grounds, though she survived the incident. In 2009 a student was beaten to death in a street fight. A gun was fired into the ground on campus during an argument in 2014, and last February an 18-year-old Kent State student was shot to death in an apartment building near campus in a robbery gone wrong.

Whether it’s because of the 1970 tragedies or not, crime at Kent State is covered exceptionally well on a national level, receiving coverage from CBS News, ABC News and

USA Today. Despite the fact that the Kent State shootings occurred nearly half a century ago, the name “Kent State” is still intimately intertwined with memories of that tragedy.

Virginia Tech was home to the deadliest school shooting in U.S. history with a death toll of more than eight times that of the Kent State shootings. That’s not easy for the rest of the nation to ignore. But, to echo Sands’ words, “I think what happened on April 16 could have happened on any campus, and it was Virginia Tech.”

Forgetting this tragedy doesn’t seem to be part of the Virginia Tech ethos, either. The annual 3.2 for 32 run drives thousands to the Drillfield, students publicly read the biographies of the 32 lost that day, and rain or shine the candlelight vigil is packed — University Spokesman Mark Owczarski roughly estimated 20,000 would attend this year.

Perhaps it’s this unwillingness to let go that keeps the April 16 shootings so fresh in the nation’s collective consciousness. However, the university administration has made it clear that the Virginia Tech community draws strength from this dark piece of history, and it has no plans to change any time soon.

“I think there are certainly some people that think we ought to somehow forget, but we’re never going to forget,” Sands said. “It’s part of who we are, and it’s part of what brings our community together. I think that it’s become a strength. It’s not something you would wish on any community, but it really is a source of strength.”

AMERICA’S COLLEGE

April 16 is the main reason Chief Foust currently leads the Virginia Tech police force. Called in from the Roanoke FBI office, Foust remembers two things: the cooperation of law enforcement from local up to national and the vigil held the following night, on April 17.

“You kind of had to be there to understand it. Thousands upon thousands upon thousands of students, community members, everybody getting on the Drillfield that night to pull together as a community to honor and support those who suffered so greatly,” Foust said. “And that’s the picture you see from time to time, you know, of people holding up the candles ... it stretched all the way from Chapel all the way to the far end of the Drillfield. Just thousands of people. I mean it was an incredible thing to see.”

At the end of the day, it’s not possible to lay out all tragedies that affect every college community in a direct comparison. At least not yet.

But it would be nearly impossible to visit campus in mid-April and lose yourself in the sea of tens of thousands of Hokies standing in solidarity and consider anything about the community cursed — instead, a different thought naturally comes: “This is home.”

LEWIS MILLHOLLAND

BEAMER: Coach becomes leader of Hokie healing process — everyone’s going in the same direction: our alumni, our students, press conferences — both because our band, our hightechs, we all have of his job and because of the shooting the same purpose. We all have the — Beamer made sure to spread a same goal. We all want the same message of hope, one that let the thing at the end of the day. Having country know Virginia Tech would said that, we all needed to be going not be remembered for the actions of in the same direction on this, and a “sick individual.” for the most part, I think we did as Despite the national attention a university, and there’s no question Beamer and his team received in about that,” Beamer said. “But I the aftermath of the shooting, it is thought that was a time that people the personal moments that Beamer could come, have a cause and make remembers with the most clarity. sure we were all together working “I’ll never forget John Ballein and with each other for our common I walking through campus, which goal that particular day. I remember we did every day, but particularly taking the field through the stadium during that time. I just thought people and everybody jumping and I never needed to see someone they recog— maybe I just imagined this — but nized, and put some normal situation I never felt like that before, and it was back into this. But there was a girl, a something different than I had ever sweet little girl over there, a student,” experienced.”

The sports world outside of Blacksburg took notice as well, sending an outpouring of support.

When the Hokies canceled their spring game, colleges around the country, including Penn State and Ohio State, showed support at their own spring games, with the Buckeyes wearing VT helmets. Angels pitcher Joe Saunders, along with other MLB players, received special permission from the league to wear Virginia Tech hats and patches. Even NBA legend Allen Iverson, who is a Virginia native, wore a patch with Tech’s logo on his arm sleeve for the remainder of the 2007 season.

“I think it really rings back that fact that there was a lot of people thinking about us, a lot of people that ZACK WAJSGRAS / COLLEGIATE TIMES knew what a great campus Virginia Coach Frank Beamer and the Hokies prepare to take Wallace Wade Tech is,” Beamer said, “and that they field before the start of the Duke game. wanted to let everybody know that from page 1

Beamer recalled, pointing to his left as if she were still sitting next to him, “and you could just tell she was deep in thought. When we walked over to her, she was crying. We sat down and talked with her for a few minutes, and she needed that. She needed to be able to talk to someone that hopefully made her feel better and made her feel like things are going to be OK. And we are. We are going to get through this, and we’re not going to let that sick guy defeat Virginia Tech.”

Sports, particularly the start of football season, brought a sense of normalcy back to campus. It served as a positive unifying event in a point in time where most unification took place in conjunction with solace.

“When we’re in that stadium — Lane Stadium over there

they were thinking about us, and like I said, you really do appreciate it at that particular time.”

Among the sports figures and athletes paying tribute to Virginia Tech, one team especially stood out: the New York Yankees.

“We thought we were going to get the Columbus Clippers, but no, there was A-Rod and Jeter and Jorge Posada,” Roth said. “It was their regular team. And I remember visiting with Joe Girardi after the game and he was crying.”

On March 18, 2008, almost a year after the shooting, the Yankees flew to Blacksburg for a scrimmage against the Hokie baseball team.

New York’s manager Joe Girardi watched the game from the stands with Beamer as Alex Rodriguez, who exited the game in the fourth inning along with the rest of the stars, sat in the Hokies’ dugout to sign autographs and chat with the players.

In the press conference following the Hokies’ scrimmage with the Bronx Bombers, Rodriguez said it was arguably the most important game he had played in a Yankees uniform.

“There’s something special about that team. For them to fly in here, and to see how it impacted those guys, they helped bring us back together,” Roth said. “I mean, if you think about it, there are a lot of tragedies in this country, and that team came here, for free, to play our team. That doesn’t happen. It hasn’t happened before or since, for any pro sports team. And they did it for free.”

The Yankees were also one of many organizations that gave significant monetary donations to Virginia

Tech and the victims’ families.

“And then the Yankees played the Red Sox, and they gave the Hokies the gate. They said whatever ticket revenue we make for this game, we’re giving it to the survivors’ fund. It was over a million dollars. The Yankees are in a very unique financial situation that they’re able to do something like that. It was just to help our students and our alums heal, and sports played a big role in bringing everyone together.”

Communities are often remembered for the tragedies they suffer.

Both Beamer and Roth believe that this has not been the case at Virginia Tech.

“What happened here didn’t define our university,” Roth said. “I can give you the name of three or four different places, where as soon as you hear it you think shooting and death.

And this country doesn’t think that when it hears Virginia Tech anymore.

You think of our school, sports teams and our academic programs and what our people are like.”

Sports did not make Virginia Tech forget its tragedy; however, they did help in the healing process, growth and reinforcement of the core values that the Tech community is and has been known for.

“I just think that that’s something that Virginia Tech has like no other school. I think we’re the best in the country about caring, respecting, helping each other and a Hokie taking care of a Hokie,” Beamer said.

“I don’t think anyone could beat us in that category.”

KYLE COOKE AND FAIZAN HASNANY

PAGE 6 April 13, 2017

We Remember 32 WeRemember32.com

editor@collegiatetimes.com

Below are the faces of the 32 victims who fell on April 16. Their stories are all unique in their own way, but they all have one common denominator — their love and passion for Virginia Tech. If you would like to learn more about the men and women below, please visit our website, weremember32.com, which has the biographies of the victims along with in-depth articles about April 16.

Ross A. Alameddine

Christopher James Bishop

Brian R. Bluhm

Ryan Christopher Clark

Austin Michelle Cloyd

Jocelyne Couture-Nowak

Kevin P. Granata

Matthew Gregory Gwaltney

Caitlin Millar Hammaren

Jeremy Michael Herbstritt

Rachael Elizabeth Hill

Emily Jane Hilscher

Jarrett Lee Lane

Matthew Joseph La Porte

Henry J. Lee

Liviu Librescu

G.V. Loganathan

Partahi Mamora Halomoan Lumbantoruan

Lauren Ashley McCain

Daniel Patrick O’Neil

Juan Ramon Ortiz-Ortiz

Minal Hiralal Panchal

Daniel Alejandro Perez Cueva

Erin Nicole Peterson

Michael Steven Pohle Jr.

Julia Kathleen Pryde

Mary Karen Read

Reema Joseph Samaha

Waleed Mohamed Shaalan

Leslie Geraldine Sherman

Maxine Shelly Turner

Nicole Regina White

KAINE: Then-governor recalls recovery in wake of tragedy from page 1

Holton met then-President George W. Bush and First Lady Laura Bush at Andrews Air Force Base and flew to Blacksburg.

Once in Blacksburg, the two executives and first ladies visited with the families of victims in Cassell Coliseum.

After this, Kaine described a gathering in an auditorium of the Virginia Tech community and some special guests: “Others had come too, which was really remarkable. The entire Virginia federal legislative delegation — two senators, members of Congress — had all flown down.”

Kaine described the powerful speeches that were given at this gathering in an effort to offer comfort to a grieving community.

“Nikki Giovanni was really powerful and President Bush was really, really gracious,” Kaine said.

He then contrasted these speeches to his own, which he felt were hurt by his rigorous travel. “I was extremely jetlagged because of flying between and flying back, and had just thought about some things to say when I was on the plane coming back.”

MOVING FORWARD

Following meetings with Virginia Tech faculty to discuss the shooting, Kaine and Holton spent the night at The Grove, the residence for the university president. Kaine described Charles Steger, who was president of the university at the time, as “a very, very dear friend.”

Kaine and Steger sat down that night and discussed what their next steps should be.

“By the end of the day, I had decided that we needed to appoint a panel to investigate everything that had happened, what had gone wrong, what we could fix, how we could reduce the chance of this ever happening again, not only in Virginia, but anywhere,” Kaine explained.

After creating a panel, Kaine decided that this panel should be completely independent of the university and people impacted by the tragedy — a decision that would create controversy at the time.

“The panel needed to be all people who had either no tie with the families and no tie with Virginia Tech,” Kaine

said. “I got some pushback on both ends of that, there were some who felt like folks with Virginia Tech ties should be involved, and there were definitely family members who wanted family members to participate on the panel, but I felt like the right panel would be one that could just ask really tough questions and be as candid as could be.”

rates by turning gun offenses to the federal court system.

Currently, Kaine is dealing with a proposed budget that would slash federal healthcare spending, including funds previously allocated for mental health.

“I think it’s ridiculous and I’m going to spend time fighting against that,” Kaine explained. “I get that in any budget decision, somebody’s made a ALL TOO FAMILIAR: The compelling argument for something Sandy Hook and Orlando shootings else, but spending less and less money Kaine is discouraged that there on mental health is no way to go.” have been so many similar tragedies since the shooting at Virginia Tech.

YEARS IN THE SENATE “I’ve always … hoped that there Kaine was elected to the Senate in would never be a worse shooting 2012 and has since worked to support tragedy (than) at Virginia Tech. You reasonable gun safety measures. don’t want that for your school, you Regarding an increase in gun don’t want that for your common- safety measures, he continues to be wealth, but I desperately wanted there optimistic. to never be a shooting that would be as “I think we will (take meaningful egregious.” steps forward) because I’m not aware Unfortunately, mass shootings of any situation where the American continue to rage throughout the public has been overwhelmingly in country, and Orlando’s Pulse one place and Congress refuses to nightclub was one of the most recent to listen for a long time,” Kaine said. fall victim to this epidemic. As a vice “Sometimes it takes Congress a while presidential candidate, Kaine visited to listen, but there’s not a permanent the site. issue where Congress has refused to “I hoped I would never go to a site listen to the American public on an of a shooting that had been worse issue like background record checks.” because what that meant is we didn’t In pursuit of preventing gun learn anything, and violence has violence, Kaine supports curtailing continued and it’s gotten worse, and gun accessories. “I support a so that was emotional to see that and restriction on high-capacity magathink, ‘Wow, we really haven’t learned zines that tend to get used in these anything,’” Kaine said. crimes to just kill tons of people, and Kaine’s take on the National Rifle I don’t think they have any real use Association (NRA) and budget beyond carnage.”

Kaine believes that over time, the He is additionally a strong advocate NRA has switched its allegiance from for background checks. “When you gun owners to gun manufacturers. don’t have a background check system, “The NRA does have some you’re basically saying I’d rather political power, and I think they’re have felons buy guns and committing not as powerful as a lot of folks do, but crimes with them than enforce the law they have political power,” Kaine said. that says a felon shouldn’t be able to “The members of Congress aren’t buy a gun,” Kaine said. listening to voters because they’re According to the Toronto Star, afraid of the organization.”

Seung-Hui Cho, who killed 32 people Throughout the interview, Kaine and then himself during the shooting, reiterated that he is a gun owner and a was able to buy a 9mm Glock 19 pistol supporter of the Second Amendment. and 50 rounds of ammunition in one However, Kaine has perennially transaction, and a .22-calibre Walther received an “F” rating from the NRA. in another.

“I’ve worked on projects that However, the Roanoke Times they’ve liked, like Project Exile, found that in 2005, “a Virginia court which was a project in Richmond branded Cho as a danger to himself when I was mayor that brought down and ordered him to receive outpatient gun violence,” Kaine said. The 1997 psychiatric treatment, which he did program was aimed at lowering crime not. Under federal law, that 2005 order

STEPHEN LYNN / COLLEGIATE TIMES Gov. Tim Kaine took only one or two questions at the candlelight vigil held on Tuesday, April 17, 2007, to remember victims of the tragedy.

meant Cho was not legally authorized to buy either guns or ammunition.”

On March 12, 2007, Cho purchased a gun and ammunition from Roanoke Firearms. His pre-purchase background check lasted about a minute.

survived the Soviet Union’s takeover of his country where he was getting frozen out because he was a Jew. He basically had his teaching privileges successively reduced and eliminated, and then he was allowed to emigrate to Israel. At some point when he was teaching at Hebrew University in Israel, he came to Tech for a one-year teaching fellowship, fell in love with Blacksburg and then stayed for many years. He was teaching at 75 years old.

“It’s kind of haunting that someone who could survive the Holocaust and could survive the Soviet Union taking over his country, couldn’t survive this carnage of gun violence in the United States. I feel like in some ways that lesson is maybe one of the more powerful ones,” Kaine said.

Kaine finally called on other elected officials to see beyond party lines.

“All of us in this job every day, we’ve got to remind ourselves that we’re put here not just because of our head, but also because of our heart and maybe especially because of our backbone.”

Ten years later, Kaine remembers the victims of the shooting.

“To me, that’s always going to be the thing that I think most about because the people who were killed were students of all kinds of backgrounds, from communities 10 miles away from Blacksburg and from communities halfway around the world.

Undergraduates, graduate students, teachers — French teacher, engineering teacher, German teachers, teachers of the year at Blacksburg, world renowned scholars in certain areas,” Kaine explained.

Kaine identified the story of Professor Liviu Librescu, who was killed by the shooting, as an example of how far the U.S. has to come in preventing gun violence.

“The person I always think about, because in some ways his example is the most sort of challenging to us, is Professor Liviu Librescu, who was MEG CONNORS Romanian born, Holocaust survivor, AND LINDSEY GROOMS