Entries for April 17, 2007

One of the survivors of Monday's attacks on the campus of Virginia Tech gave the Collegiate Times a chilling account of what she witnessed in that German course. "It's a small class, about 25 people," she said. "And I would say no more than two people didn't show up, were absent. And of those of us that were in there today, only four of us walked out of that room, but two of us had been injured during the shooting."

"It seemed so strange," the student tells the Times. "Because he peeked in twice, earlier in the lesson, like he was looking for someone, somebody, before he started shooting. But then we all heard something like drilling in the walls, and someone thought they sounded like bullets. That's when we blockaded the door to stop anyone from coming in."

The student also described for the Times the actual violence she witnessed. "I saw bullets hit people's bodies," Sheehan said. "There was blood everywhere. People in the class were passed out, I don't know maybe from shock from the pain. But I was one of only four that made it out of that classroom. The rest were dead or injured."--Kenneth Terrell

Faced with the unfathomable tragedy unfolding Monday, the Collegiate Times, Virginia Tech's newspaper, proved to be a commendable resource to its campus and the media at large. The Times began filing at 9:47 a.m. yesterday and has not stopped since. "Its Web server inevitably crashed under the sudden influx of worldwide interest, but the student journalists quickly came up with a way to redirect traffic elsewhere," notes the Press Gazette. In addition to its ongoing coverage, the Times also has one of the most up-to-date lists of confirmed victims.

"When you know kids--I'm sure there are people in the newsroom that know kids who were shot or wounded--how do you begin to cover that as a campus newspaper?" asks Ryan McCartney, editor-in-chief of the Duke Chronicle. With the professionalism and courage the Times has demonstrated. --Kenneth Terrell with E.W.G.