Column: Coming to terms with profound loss and tragedy
Chris Baumert, CT Guest Columnist
April 19, 2007
Having just graduated from Virginia Tech in December, I have known just about every emotion a college student can encounter, but Monday's mass shootings have added one more emotion to a list I thought I had completed along with my bachelor's degree: a sense of loss. Blacksburg, Virginia is a stranger to losing; its alumni refuse to forget its charm, its sports teams find pride in success, and its students even sometimes find it difficult to cross the stage as I did just a few short months ago. Blacksburg is a town that gives birth to success; it is a community that embraces its children and smiles as it watches them grow, change, and affect change. It was my home for the better part of four years, and as reports continue to trickle in from friends and acquaintances, I have never felt more that it is truly an extended family in the guise of a rural college town.
Monday, however, that family experienced a loss that is profound and unmatched. Not only has it lost several students, faculty, and staff to an incomprehensible tragedy, but it has also had to face the scrutiny of an international media cross-examination and experience the pain of questions that it cannot and may never be able to answer. Was emergency response fast enough? Should we start gun control discussion anew? Even our president was quick to point out his political sympathy for the Second Amendment in his immediate responsorial speech. As a directly impacted Virginia Tech family member, however, I fail to see a single benefit in hastily pinpointing a social illness as a causation of the day's events. No amount of politicizing and finger-pointing can brighten the blackness of what transpired. A lone gunman fired, and he killed.
Among the deceased was Dr. G.V. Loganathan, a frequent recipient of teaching awards and of students' smiles in the hallway. I will forever remember his excitable, thickly-accented manner of incorporating Star Trek's Mr. Spock into engineering problems when I think of fluid mechanics. Two of my close friends were more fortunate; they will suffer only minor physical scars as reminders of the day's events. The community's emotional scars, however, will linger long after their wounds heal.
A day before the shootings, my sister visited Virginia Tech's pristine mountain campus and proclaimed it her college of choice. The large-school educational opportunities it afforded in a charming small-town setting were perfect for her, she declared. Yet the next morning, after she had excitedly donned her Teech sweatshirt in expectation of meeting warm congratulations from her classmates, she instead met a waterfall of media speculation concerning her newly chosen institution that seemed to funnel into one important question: how could we have allowed this to happen?
Blacksburg is no different from the other countless towns in the United States that have experienced tragic loss, but the misfortune of the event lies in the fact that it is now the most recent of all losses in American history. As such, it will be subject to the generalizations and gossip that spring from the immediacy of news. However, in an age of instantaneous media coverage, it is all the more imperative that we consider when and to whom we are asking questions of an ideological nature. Blacksburg is not Washington, D.C., nor should it ever be made to answer the questions posed there.
Like other members of the Virginia Tech community, I grieve. I grieve, but I also hope. I have lost acquaintances and professors in the shootings, but I have also been lucky enough to have friends who will soon come home from the hospital. They will recover, and I will recover, and I hope the nation will join us in remembering that one idea that should outshine all others: the idea of community. My sister will be one of the first to declare her intent not to let a random act of violence tarnish her ideal Blacksburg community. Monday's loss is not a defeat; we will come together as Virginia Tech alumni, students, and faculty with the local and international community we as Virginia Tech Hokies affect.
I will never stop being proud to be a Hokie.