Hey everyone, I tried to post this lastnight, but I couldn’t get onto the Dope so I’ll post it now. I just wanted to come back with some more updates, good and bad. (Sorry that this post is so long. It was a long day.)
I spent most of the day with my friends again, first at the convocational this afternoon and then at the candlelight vigil this evening.
The convocational was scheduled to begin at 2 o’clock and be held in the coliseum on campus (it’s where basketball games are held) and I was planning to go with the same group of friends from church that I spent yesterday evening with. Thinking that we’d get there early to get good seats, we agreed to meet outside the main student center at noon to head over to the coliseum. Well, it turns out that only 5 people showed up. We called some others on their cell phones and discovered that they’d already gotten in line, that the line was several blocks long and that there was no way the whole line would get into the coliseum. We hurried across campus to join them in line and did manage to get in. (Evidently those who didn’t get in watched the proceedings on the jumbotron in the football stadium about a block away.)
There were a number of high profile speakers at the convocation but I didn’t get to hear them very well (the sound system isn’t great and not all of the speakers spoke very clearly into the microphone.) President Bush was there as was the Governor of Virginia and number of high level university officials. I was pretty pleased with how it went (although I’d still love to know the other half of what was said. I’ll probably look for a transcript later.)
As we were leaving the coliseum to go meet up with more friends and try to get dinner together, one of the girls got a phone call and we learned that the girl who we hadn’t been able to reach has been confirmed to be dead. It hit us all kind of hard. We gathered at a friend’s house and spent some time together in prayer before going to dinner.
There was also a candle light vigil this evening in front of Burruss hall on the drill field (a big open field in the center of the campus.) On our way to the vigil, we met up with some more friends, including a girl who works in the same dining hall as I do. She informed me that our dining hall had lost 3 people in the shootings. One who used to work there before I started, one who worked in a different shop from me and whom I had never met and finally a girl who was one of my first supervisors when I started work in the fall.
Finding out that she was dead was a terrible shock. She was transferred to another shop months ago but she was still friends with everybody in my shop who had known her. Just a few days ago, some coworkers and I were lamenting the fact that this girl had been passed over for a promotion to student manager and all of a sudden I’m finding out that she’s dead. I still can’t say it’s fully sunken in.
The vigil drew a massive crowd. (I think the estimate beforehand was in the vicinity of 4000 people expected to be there.) As we waited for things to start, rumors ran through the crowd that Oprah was around somewhere. I don’t know about that, but apparently one of my friends spoke to Geraldo Rivera (whom he invited to be the guest of honor at this year’s iteration of an annual party in Blacksburg known as the Mustache Bash. Geraldo declined.)
The official program for the vigil was very brief. There was some brief speaking on the importance of community and of being there for each other. Echo taps were played. (I always cry when I hear taps.) After that, the crowd was encouraged to stay around as long as we like. My friends and I stayed for another half hour during which time the crowd sang a few songs together (we started out humming Amazing Grace, but somehow half way through we found ourselves singing The Star Spangled Banner. We eventually got back to Amazing Grace.) and a few Virginia Tech cheers were chanted.
I spent a few hours after that just hanging out with the friends at one of the church group leaders’ houses. We sang and prayed and just talked about what was going on.
Once I got back to my dorm room, I went out to get something to eat with my best friend and then spent a half hour trying to find a newspaper dispenser thing that still had any copies of today’s Collegiate Times (featuring, of course, a front page story about Monday’s incident.) I didn’t manage to find one so I’ll probably contact the CT offices and see about ordering one. It just seems like the sort of thing I’d like to show my kids someday.
That’s about it. There are still plenty of police around campus. I was stopped by a few as I went to pick up my bike from the rack outside the building where I was locked down. I guess it’s because it’s so close to Norris Hall that they have police posted there. The mood is still a bit tense but people are definitely coming together in the aftermath of the shootings. They said it at the convocation and again at the vigil. We will recover. We will move on. But we will never forget.
