Reaction to Tragedy Is a Grimly Practiced Response
BLACKSBURG, Va.–It says something about how Americans now react to violence when early word that two people had been shot dead in a Virginia Tech dormitory Monday was deemed by many "a relief–no big deal," as a local radio host said during drive time here this morning.
Folks felt free to continue their morning routines; classes were held as scheduled at the university.
But when the horror on this sprawling, wind-whipped campus quickly expanded to 33 massacred students and instructors–the worst mass shooting in U.S. history–it was just as telling to watch, in this post-Columbine, post-9/11, post-Amish school killings world, how grimly practiced the response to such tragedies has become.
Dr. Phil opined on Larry King about campus security. Cable talkers debated gun control. And here the now-familiar dance of the media, law enforcement, politicians, and survivors began Monday under a cobalt blue evening sky and in the shadow of unimaginable carnage.
"We are here, nestled into a little corner of the Appalachians," said Sherman Wright, who works at the Blacksburg Baptist Church, just across from campus. "And this has jerked them into the real world."
Monday night, that real world was part media circus, part quiet reflection, and part unalloyed grief. Hundreds of reporters spilled out of a conference room at the Holtzman Alumni Center, converted to a media center, where they grilled police and university officials on their decision not to lock down the campus after the first shootings.
Just several hundred yards away–in the Virginia Tech Inn, a wing of the same complex–grief-stricken students and family members gathered to learn the fate of loved ones. Young women in Tech sweats sobbed and held each other as word came by cellphone and text message confirming one of the dead. Family members, heads bowed, were hustled to a room set aside for them. And a handful of students sat impassively in the bar where chairs had been set up for them to watch television reports detailing the massacre on their campus.
Later, shortly after midnight, students gathered on the campus's Drill Field and talked emotionally about the horrible day just past. There was some anger about the official response to the first shootings–though supporters of President Charles W. Steger emphasized that he "didn't pull the trigger." But there was also talk about what students here had lost, shattered by a rampage they would learn early today was allegedly undertaken by one of their own, Cho Seung-Hui.
"Our campus is relatively quiet most of the year," said senior Jon Hess of Council, Va. "Usually the biggest thing that comes to town is a good football game–that's why I love going to school here.
"I was in town today and a local woman told me she'd never let her children go to Tech," Hess said. "It just breaks your heart."
On Tuesday morning, the streets of usually bustling downtown Blacksburg were deserted. The throngs of students usually filling the sidewalks and grabbing breakfast at Gillies or coffee at Bollo's were either in their dorms or apartments, or had headed home to be with their shaken families.
Richard Gregory, a local architect and 1971 Tech graduate, walked his dog along the quiet streets and said he wonders about how the university will recover when Katie Couric and Shepard Smith and the rest of the media pack up–probably within about 24 hours–and attention fades. And he worries, as others do, about the Columbine-like link the university will now have with the massacre.
"The Virginia Tech family is pretty close-knit," he said. "But this does not bode well for our reputation with unfamiliar people."
As he spoke, the post-tragedy dance continued just across campus. Police were naming the shooter, reporters were again pressing officials on the their actions after the first shootings, and security was scrambling to prepare for President Bush's arrival for an afternoon memorial service.
The hubbub, if history serves, will subside by this time tomorrow. Eyewitnesses will have been interviewed, officials held accountable, and network anchors, celebrities, and reporters will pack up, and the dozens of satellite trucks will have been dispatched to the latest big thing. They're expected back in a year–anniversary stories.
But this rural little corner of Virginia, on a 2,000-foot plateau between the Appalachian and Blue Ridge mountains, "in the middle of nowhere," as Tech sophomore Ryan Hulleatt characterizes it, will continue grieving in private.
Here, the mountainsides are just beginning to green, and there's only a hint of spring warm in the wind. Finals are yet to be taken, and graduation is less than three weeks away.
"Pray for us–pray for the families," Gregory said, as he continued his walk down the empty sidewalk.