MERGED--> Shooter loose on Virginia Tech campus

The friendliest place on the web for anyone that follows U2.
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
See posts with no answers
Status
Not open for further replies.
bono_212 said:


Which is true, and I see the importance in updating us on what are security measures are so we're night frightened ourselves, but maybe I should've noted, this email was sent out only four hours after all this had happened, it was the first time that day I'd even been out of classes, and so I'm upset that i just got a brief note of what had happened, I don't know if that makes sense or not...anyway...I've convfused myself now.
Click to expand...

When the first plane hit the towers, most thought it was just pilot error.

I think early on everyone was confused

What if this had been a terrorist attack with 19 individuals with guns and chains on 19 American campus'?

Unless I see an obvious dereliction of duty, I hesitate to condemn anyone for something that is almost impossible to plan for or prevent.
 
Last edited:
My university is holding a candlelight vigil tomorrow night, and students and staff will be writing notes to send to students at VT. I'm going to try to attend, but I'll be skipping this part:

Immediately afterwards, there will be a large discussion on campus security at our University, as well as a discussion on how something like this could ever happen.
Click to expand...

I applaud the student government for putting together the service so quickly, but I feel like it's in poor taste on the administration's part to lump this sort of discussion together with a remembrance service. It's not time for the university to cover its ass; it's time to mourn. There will be plenty of time for "long discussions" later.

An email also went out this morning from the university president talking in very abstract terms about how safe our campus is and how good our campus police are. It seems like she's missing the point completely--I'm sure VT's campus felt very safe to the student body until yesterday morning. Safety comes from so much more than campus police. It's about having a strong support system in place for students. I certainly don't baby my students, but I remind myself that many of them are far away from their families, so I feel like part of my job as a teacher is to help them feel safe to learn and grow.
 
Right, I believe Bush did the right thing by going down to Tech and being there for the students, faculty and their families.

I have to attempt to get some homework done but I'm really having trouble thinking about it.
 
I saw Mia on CNN too. I was really surprised, and afterwards was shocked how I seemed to have this connection that I didn't expect.

:sad:
 
As ridicuolous as this sounds, a quote from "Desperate Housewives" has been stuck in my head for a long time now, especially when the questions (which I have asked myself over and over again) about the gap in notifying students, etc. have been raised. In it, one of the characters, Lynette, is having a dream about a neighbor, Mary Alice, who had killed herself. She's carried a load of guilt around ever since the event because she saw Mary Alice visibly upset the day of the suicide, but she figured she was too busy to talk to her. In the dream Lynette ends up going to talk to Mary Alice who smiles and says...."We can't prevent what we can't predict. All we can do is enjoy this beautiful day. We get so few of them."
 
Last edited:
I just got back from a chapel service held on our campus. Faculty members from the Christian, Jewish and Muslim traditions led prayers. The moment when I totally lost it was when the chaplain had thirty-three participants come up to the front to read some of the thoughts/prayers/questions that had been written down at last night's silent vigil. Just the magnitude of seeing thirty-three people...it somehow made what is a vague number really concrete and gut-wrenching. The service was very emotional and powerful but also cathartic in a way to come together as a community and pray, cry, reflect and hold hands with one another. :sad:
 
I was on Michigan's campus today, looking at the buildings, looking at the students and the profs walking near Rackham Auditorium, and thinking, "This could have been any of us." Everyone here is shaken up and we have everyone at VT in our thoughts.
 
U2democrat said:
Right, I believe Bush did the right thing by going down to Tech and being there for the students, faculty and their families.

I have to attempt to get some homework done but I'm really having trouble thinking about it.
Click to expand...

I think he did too, good for him

Have you talked to your parents or a counselor at school about how you're feeling? It helps just to talk about how you're feeling, even if nothing anyone can say can truly help.
 
Yeah, I'm kinda glad Bush came. I mean, I would've criticized him if he didn't...and I criticized him for coming. I'm a hard woman to please.

But I have to say, I think I could've done without his speech. I don't understand why he had to recall those details like that. We came there for healing, not to relive those horrific moments. He also went off on cue cards. Kaine's speech was wonderful. He is a great man. It was very heartfelt.

Nikki G is my hero.

I tried to do the hokie chants at the end, but I got choked up and the tears fell again. I don't know if I'm ready for that yet. It was just too much :(

But I gotta say something about hokie spirit. It is an amazing thing. Even when walking to football games, Im so full of emotion, so much energy, I start crying. AT A FOOTBALL GAME! Hokie spirit is wild. It has carried us through some other tough times, like when we've lost some of our students in the war. It will continue to move us through this one.
 
Last edited:
capt.f26974654d224c3094b2b8ec7a4a9aca.virginia_tech_shooting_names_jrl828.jpg


JERUSALEM – Liviu Librescu survived the Nazi Holocaust. He died trying to keep a gunman from shooting his students in a killing spree at Virginia Tech – a heroic feat later recounted in e-mails from students to his wife.
Librescu, an aeronautics engineer and teacher at the school for 20 years, saved the lives of several students by using his body to barricade a classroom door before he was gunned down in Monday's massacre, which coincided with Holocaust Remembrance Day.

His son, Joe Librescu, told The Associated Press on Tuesday that his mother received e-mails from students shortly after learning of her husband's death.

“My father blocked the doorway with his body and asked the students to flee,” Joe Librescu said in a telephone interview from his home outside of Tel Aviv. “Students started opening windows and jumping out.”

Joe Librescu told CNN that one of the e-mails was from the last student left in the room. The student said he looked back and saw his teacher struggling to hold the door, and “he was torn between jumping out the window and coming and helping my dad.”

“He chose, and possibly made the right decision, to jump out the window,” the son said.

The gunman, identified as 23-year-old Cho Seung-Hui, an English major and native of South Korea, killed 32 people before committing suicide, officials said, in what was the deadliest shooting rampage in modern U.S. history.

Librescu, 76, had known hardship since his childhood.

When Romania joined forces with Nazi Germany in World War II, he was first interned at a labor camp in Transnistria and then deported along with his family and thousands of other Jews to a ghetto in the Romanian city of Focsani, his son said.

According to a report compiled by the Romanian government in 2004, between 280,000 and 380,000 Jews were killed by Romania's Nazi-allied regime during the war.

“We were in Romania during the Second World War, and we were Jews there among the Germans, and among the anti-Semitic Romanians,” Marlena Librescu told Israeli Channel 10 TV on Tuesday.

After the war, Librescu became a successful engineer under the postwar communist government and worked at Romania's aerospace agency. But his career was stymied in the 1970s because he refused to swear allegiance to dictator Nicolae Ceausescu's regime, his son said, and he was later fired when he requested permission to move to Israel.

After years of government refusal, according to his son, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin personally intervened to get the family an emigration permit. They moved to Israel in 1978.

Librescu left Israel for Virginia in 1985 for a year sabbatical, but eventually made the move permanent, said Joe Librescu, who himself studied at Virginia Tech from 1989-1994. The elder Librescu, who was an engineering and math lecturer at the school, published extensively and received numerous awards for his work.

“His work was his life in a sense,” his son said.

In Romania, the academic community mourned Librescu's death.

“It is a great loss,” said Ecaterina Andronescu, rector of the Polytechnic University in Bucharest, where Librescu graduated in 1953. “We have immense consideration for the way he reacted and defended his students with his life.”

At the university, where Librescu received an honorary degree in 2000, his picture was placed on a table and a candle was lit. People lay flowers nearby.

Professor Nicolae Serban Tomescu described Librescu as “strong and dignified.”

“He had a huge affection for his students and he sacrificed his life for them,” Tomescu told AP Television News.
Click to expand...
 
Wow. He survived the holocaust??? He lived in one of those ghettos where nazi germans were killing all jews at first sight. :shocked: And he put himself in danger to save all these students lives! Amazing! :sad: :applaud:
 
I just got back from a candlelight vigil at my school. I can't tell you how moved I am by how many people showed up...including our school's president and the city mayor...and just the mass of students.


I truly cried for the first time since Kerry lost the election in 2004...and it felt so good to have my friends right there with their arms around me crying with me.

My heart goes out to all at Tech, especially my friends and especially Mia. :hug::heart::hug:
 
I watched the convocation earlier and I too thought that Governor Kaine gave a beautiful speech. Was impossible to hold back the tears as I witnessed the pain on everyone's face. My heart is with everyone there right now :hug:

Laura your sig is very touching :hug:
 
Our hearts go out to our friends at VT.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/tx/4720352.html

April 16, 2007, 6:56PM
© 2007 The Associated Press

COLLEGE STATION, Texas — Students at Texas A&M University are sending condolences and holding a memorial for the more than 30 people shot and killed on the Virginia Tech University campus on Monday.

The Aggies, led by student body president Nick Taunton, plan to set up tables at the student center this week where people can send cards and notes of support to the university and to the friends and family of the at least 32 people who were killed after a gunman opened fire in a dorm and classroom building. The gunman then killed himself.

A&M suffered its own loss in 1999 when 12 Aggies died in the collapse of a partly-constructed bonfire, part of a long-standing tradition at the university.

A ceremony scheduled for late Monday at the College Station campus, about 100 miles northwest of Houston, was to play Taps, the haunting bugle call that is a symbol of lights out and frequently played at funerals for members of the military.
 
Dreadsox said:


Elementary schools drill now too.
Click to expand...

Congrats Dred on the new position. Best of luck!

Oddly, there was a "School Security" Conference in town here yesterday as the events were unfolding at VT.

Not to deflect attention from the VT incident, but the local A.M. talk radio station had some guests on last evening talking about drills. One mentioned that haz mat incidents and deaths far out-numbered school shooting incidents and deaths - yet drills are not done for these types of events.




As a former RA...my heart goes out to Ryan's friends (mia) and family. :(
 
I cannot stop crying this evening. My heart again goes out to anyone who is connected on a personal level to VT.

What are we to do?:(
 
Thanks again everyone for your kind words. :hug:
For all those who have been keeping us in our hearts, including having vigils, passing words of comfort and hope, displaying images of support; I want to say, on behalf of the VT community, thank you. The only way we can get through this is with your support. We're grateful to be embraced by so many people all over the world. Please continue to send your thoughts and prayers as we move through this difficult time.
 
Last edited:
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

O
Better late than never “they” say…
Replies
1
Views
285
Headache in a Suitcase
Headache in a Suitcase
K
U2 Show Logistics Question/Theories
Replies
7
Views
742
lazarus
lazarus
W
A Boy Falls From the Sky is some U2's best work
Replies
3
Views
2K
zoocarolina
Z
N
NBA 2023-24 Thread
11 12 13
Replies
369
Views
10K
iron yuppie
iron yuppie
O
Live U2 concerts for sale
Replies
0
Views
586
one_cool_dude17
O

Latest posts

Back
Top Bottom