"Something's Happening Here..."

"What it is ain't exactly clear."

This has been a rough week for us all. Where do you go to begin to explain the deaths of 32 innocent souls?

Monday, the first RSS feed said one dead at Virginia Tech, and I am ashamed to say that I hardly blinked at the report. We have become so numb to the fact that people are dying everyday. One more death somewhere else hardly registers anymore. But the juniors in my block 2 class have friends at Tech. they kept scanning the internet for more news. Unfortunately it kept coming. 1, 2, 17, 21, 22. Finally the count stopped at 32.

At lunch I talked to the football coach. He had called several Goochland students at Tech. they were okay. Even better news - they had been in contact with all the other students from Goochland. Everyone was fine and accounted for. Two freshmen overslept and were not in the Engineering building when the shooting started. The Goochland students had networked together using their laptops and cell phones to check on each other. The good news traveled fast.

By the end of the school day we knew that the killer was dead and we tried to understand how all of this could happen. What drives someone so far away from sanity to become so destructive? Why have events like this become so common in the past ten years?

Tuesday through Thursday I tried to keep on doing my job, keeping students on task, grading assignments, and watching my students behavior, but the whole time I had this pain in my stomach as I thought about all those lives that had been destroyed.

Friday we all became Hokies. We wore VT jerseys, tee shirts, and hats. We wore anything that was maroon and orange. We wore little ribbons to honor the dead. We took a moment to think about and remember those who had fallen, but we will take forever to wonder why it all happened.

ORIGINALLY POSTED ELSEWHERE ON APRIL 21, 2007.