Column: Convocation ceremony
David Covucci, CT Regular Columnist
April 18, 2007
This doesn't happen to us.
It just plain doesn't happen to us.
It's one of those things you see on the TV and think "My God!" For a while, you're glued to the TV, in shock and horror. But then you move on, because it wasn't us. So it wasn't real.
It's never us; it's always somewhere else, somewhere far away where we don't have to worry about it. It happens to other people, in other places, at other times.
So Monday couldn't have been real, it can't be. It just can't.
That isn't us on the TV, that isn't our buildings, our friends. No, this can't be real. This doesn't happen to us.
Monday, as everyone around the world watched the news, it wasn't real to them, because it wasn't them. Monday they could comfort themselves be saying thank heaven it wasn't us.
So it must not have been us either.
It has to. Does it? Why else would 20,000 people headed to Cassell Coliseum on a Tuesday afternoon. Because it was us? No. Yes?
If someone was looking from above, watching all the throngs flow into Cassell, they would assume we were heading in to cheer on some Hokies.
Were we? There were no basketball or football stars out on that court. There wasn't a distinction that separated those people on the court from those people in the stands. So why were we there?
And why were these others people here too? President Bush? Gov. Kaine? Both our Senators? What are they doing here? Is it for us? They certainly talked like it.
"I'm the son of a doctor," said Sen. John Warner. "And he used to tell me that a mind can fracture and break just like a leg or an arm. This seems to fall into this area, but only time will tell."
What are you talking about?
Senator Jim Webb said the same thing: "You just never know the volatility of the human mind."
What? Why are you here? This didn't happen to us. This doesn't happen to us. It happens to other people. We aren't we watching this ceremony on TV? Why need to worry about the people these kinds of things happen to. Go comfort them, not us. It's not us.
Then out came Charles Steger. We gave him a standing ovation.
"We mourn, we grieve, all along hoping we will awaken from this nightmare," he said.
That has to it. Right, one terrible, collectively bad dream? Because this can't be real.
Are you sure it's us?
Tim Kaine, who was woken up by the news, must haven known it was a dream. He'll set us straight, tell us we have nothing to worry about, tell us it wasn't us.
But no, he said that "this is the darkest day in the history of this university."
No, no, you're wrong. This didn't happen.
The President spoke next. The President doesn't speak here. He has no reason to come here. Why did is he here?
This can't be happening.
"We take comfort in the grace and guidance of a loving God," he said. "We must overcome evil with good."
No, it wasn't real, because Bush, Webb and Warner already left. They're gone. Today, Kaine will leave. And soon with them, slowly but surely, will the mass of media. Soon too the thoughts about this will leave the minds of other people.
And that's probably when it's going to hit ours.
See, we're all still in shock, in disbelief. This couldn't have happened, this is as safe town, a happy campus. But at the same time, there's something tiny in the back of are heads that says it's real. No matter how much we don't want to believe it.
Because we know, no matter how hard we don't want it to be, it is us.
So maybe that's why we packed Cassell. Because we knew, that finally, it wasn't them. It was us. And this is real.
And that's why, at the end of all this, a cheer of "Let's Go Hokies!" rang out. It rang from the stage to the rafters, louder than it has ever been chanted before. Because it is us.
At that moment, we knew. At that moment, that's why every pair of eyes welled up. Because it is us. And at that moment, that moment, we decided that our college careers, our lives, would not be defined by one person.
No, at that moment, we decided, that out college careers, our lives, would be about us. Not him. It has to be about us, because this time, for the first time ever, it was us.
So let's go, Hokies.