Blacksburg, Va.
As darkness fell over the Virginia Tech campus here on Monday night, hundreds of students clutched one another in tears at the Holtzman Alumni Center to wait for news about friends they feared had died in the deadliest shooting rampage in American history.
Hours earlier a gunman had opened fire in a classroom building, killing 30 people and injuring at least 30 others before turning the gun on himself. Before that, the police say, he killed two people in a dormitory.
The rampage stunned those on this close-knit but sprawling 2,600-acre campus that is nestled in the Blue Ridge mountains.
And even as Virginia Tech reeled from the massacre, many people questioned the university’s response. They wanted to know why it took more than two hours to notify the 26,000-student campus of the first shootings, and why more buildings were not locked down sooner.
Meanwhile, outside Blacksburg, conservative pundits asked another question: Could the day’s tragedy have been curtailed if others on the campus were allowed to carry guns? (See article.) And as the May 1 admission deadline nears, students considering Virginia Tech are left to ponder a more basic question: Is it safe?
The shootings started at 7:15 a.m. when a male gunman opened fire in a dormitory, West Ambler Johnston Hall, killing a male resident assistant and a female student.
About two hours later, as the police were investigating those shootings, shots rang out in Norris Hall, an engineering building about a half-mile away. By the time the police reached the second location, they found two doors to the building chained shut. When they reached the classrooms, they found at least 60 people injured or dead.
In a news conference on Monday, Wendell Flinchum, the campus police chief, gave no motive for the attack and did not release the gunman’s name, nor the identities of any of those who were injured or killed.
Soon after the attack, however, students began raising questions about the university’s response. Many complained that officials did not send out wide enough notice of the first shootings, allowing students to roam most of the campus even though two people had just been killed and the gunman was on the loose.
“They should’ve closed down campus after the first shooting,” said Michelle Le, a freshman biochemistry major. “We learned about it too late, and a lot of us felt like the second shooting could’ve been preventable.”
The university sent an e-mail message at 9:26 a.m. alerting students that the first shootings had occurred. Within minutes, the second set of shootings began. Using his cellphone, a student captured the sound of 27 gunshots as they rang out from Norris Hall. Other students said they saw people jumping from classroom windows.
Charles W. Steger, Virginia Tech’s president, said at a news conference that he was overcome by the tragedy. “I want to repeat my horror, disbelief, and profound sorrow at the events of today,” he said. “People from around the world have expressed their shock and sorrow and endless sadness that has transpired today. I am at a loss for words to explain or understand the carnage that visited our campus.”
Both Mr. Steger and the campus police chief defended the university’s response, saying that officials had handled the situation properly, given that they believed the first shootings were an isolated domestic incident.
Administrators and students at colleges around the country reacted quickly to the tragedy with offers of support, expressions of sympathy, and speedy revisions of campus security policies.
Radford University, 15 miles from the Virginia Tech campus, sent police officers to Blacksburg to aid in the response to the emergency and also increased the number of security patrols on its own campus. At an afternoon prayer service at Radford, students filled a 24-foot banner with messages of condolence, and the university offered to send counseling and other support-staff members to Virginia Tech to assist with the crisis.
At nearby Roanoke College, a previously scheduled Holocaust memorial service was rededicated to also honor victims of the Virginia Tech shootings.
And in a matter of hours, hundreds of discussion groups were created at the networking site Facebook, offering sympathy to friends and family of the dead.By Monday night, one group had more than 60,000 members. Students also shared information on Facebook about classmates who were still missing, as well as those they heard had died.
Even campuses far from Blacksburg responded by stepping up campus security and updating emergency protocols.The University of Oklahoma, for instance, announced that it would keep its residence halls locked 24 hours a day for the remainder of the semester. At the University of Arizona, administrators encouraged faculty and staff members to call university counselors if the Virginia Tech shooting brought back painful memories of the 2002 shooting of three professors by a disgruntled Arizona nursing student (The Chronicle, October 29, 2002).
At least one student said that the fatal shooting spree would not affect her plans to attend Virginia Tech. Kimberly Virag, who is currently taking classes at Longwood University, in Farmville, Va., said she would still enroll as a transfer student at Virginia Tech next fall because it had an excellent premedical program.
“You take your life into your hands just by getting into a car,” said Ms. Virag. “You can’t live your life out of fear.”
Ms. Virag did worry, however, that the university’s reputation would be harmed, and that Monday’s events would overshadow everything else about Virginia Tech.
“I can just see, when I mention that I’m going there, that people will say, ‘Ooh, that college where those people got shot?’” said Ms. Virag. “They’re not going to say, ‘Wow, congrats on getting in.’”
Virginia Tech has canceled classes for today and is considering a longer suspension. The university has set up counseling centers for students and faculty and staff members. A convocation is planned for today at 2 p.m. Virginia’s governor, Tim Kaine, is returning from Japan to attend, and President Bush may be there as well.
Brad Wolverton, Scott Smallwood, Sara Lipka, Elizabeth F. Farrell, Paula Wasley, and Peter Schmidt contributed to this report.
