Poet Moves Campus Mourners: 'We Will Prevail'
BLACKSBURG, VA.–At an emotional convocation marked by words of condolence from President Bush and Virginia Gov. Timothy Kaine, it was the rousing words of Virginia Tech University distinguished professor and poet Nikki Giovanni that produced the most stunning response on this campus of 26,000 students, still visibly shaken by Monday's tragic school shooting that claimed 33 lives.
"We will continue to reinvent the future, through our blood, and tears, and all this sadness," Giovanni told the crowd, speaking with the cadences of a gospel preacher as she closed the ceremony: "We will prevail. We are Virginia Tech!" Students responded by leaping to their feet, pumping their fists in the air, and chanting "Let's go, Hokies."
It was a fitting end to the packed ceremony in Cassell Coliseum that was marked by memories of the day before, prayers to God, and tributes to the strength of the student and faculty community of this school, nestled between the mountains in southwestern Virginia. Kaine evoked that community, recalling how as he watched TV half a world away at a trade summit in Japan, he was impressed by composed students, many dressed in the blazing orange-and-crimson colors of the school they so love.
"What an amazing community this is," Kaine said. "Even in the midst of the darkest day in the history of this campus, what you showed to the world yesterday was an amazing thing."
Bush referred to the tragedy as a "day of sadness for the entire nation." He told the families of the victims, "Across the town of Blacksburg and in towns all across America, houses of worship from every faith have opened their doors and have lifted you up in prayer."
The president left the convocation and shortly after signed a large cardboard memorial set up by students on the campus Drill Field, the central green on campus.
Afterward junior Ross Pinkett, a 22-year-old from Williamsburg, Va., sat in the front-row seat where the president had sat just minutes earlier. He called the ending of the ceremony–as delivered by Giovanni–"absolutely perfect."
"It really showed what we're all about around here," the hospital and tourism management major told U.S. News. "And that's being a true community–a family even–and helping each other out."
Still, at the convocation today, Pinkett, like some other students here, said he felt frustrated and confused by the response– especially the lag time displayed by the police in deciding to notify students. He said friends from the West Ambler Johnston dormitory, the site of the first shooting, were "just driving around" like nothing was wrong and "clearly not on lockdown" shortly after the shooting there. Some of them came to Pinkett's off-campus home later in the morning.
"I felt angry yesterday," Pinkett said. "That there was a shooting on campus and nobody took more dramatic measures to shut down our school. It's pretty incomprehensible."
He said many of his friends expressed the same sentiment and felt the same way a full day after the shooting. Still, other groups of students became emotional at the suggestion of poor decisions made by the police. They blamed the media for turning a tragic incident into a classic blame game.
"It's all very somber and stunning to me," said Thomas King, a 19-year-old freshman born and raised in Blacksburg, who called the media's response "totally extreme."
"The police did the absolute best they could," he added. King called his hometown the kind of place where "people leave their doors unlocked at night" and "strangers feed others' parking meters."
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