Column: 32 stones, not 33
Dan Sheehan, CT Regular Columnist
April 27, 2007
I have to say I was pretty disturbed by the letter "Remembering everyone who died in the VT tragedy" (CT, April 25). The author said she is "saddened and outraged" over the stone representing the shooter being removed. I am also saddened and outraged: I am saddened and outraged that a stone representing a mass murderer would be placed next to those which are memorializing his victims. The 32 members of our Virginia Tech family were gifts to the world: dancers, artists, scholars, world-renowned researchers, and that gunman (I swore I'd never speak his name again and I won't) stole them from us. The shooter was given help from numerous outlets. The English department reached out to him. The university reached out to him. His roommates reached out to him. It didn't matter to him. For the author to say that we are collectively responsible for creating "him" is misguided and unfair. He made him. He was able to rationalize the murder of 32 completely innocent people, and he alone is responsible for that choice. No one ever "raped his soul," "shoved trash down his throat" or did any of that bulls--- he talked about in his rant that many broadcast news stations forced on me. He was deranged, we gave him help, and mistakenly placed enough faith in him that he would look out for his own best interest, as he wouldn't let anyone else in close enough to help him.
Virginia Tech is a place of 26,000 students. There is something for everyone here. Even people with the most obscure tastes and hobbies can find a crowd to run with. I think the way the author trivialized the "Hokie Family" and implied that we lack "care and concern for each other" is groundless. There were plenty of people trying to help the gunman; he wasn't interested. It's becoming evident that this was pre-meditated and pre-planned. This isn't someone who just snapped one day, this is someone who calculated ways to murder people from the same community who did reach out to help him.
While I don't doubt that your intentions are well placed, your decision to put a stone in memorial of the gunman next to his 32 victims shows a complete absence of propriety. It is not your place to memorialize him. Forgiveness will come with time, but that time is not now. Now is the time to mourn the loss of those poor people who were ruthlessly and deliberately murdered by the gunman. To put a stone for him next to theirs is completely disrespectful. If the families of the slain decide that it's appropriate to put something there, then I will go along with that. But you have no right to speak on behalf of 26,000 of us, and you do not decide when and if we choose to offer forgiveness.
Contrary to the author's belief, my parents raised me to follow my conscience, and it tells me that those 32 people deserve more respect than to be memorialized alongside their killer. I am a very flawed person, and do not write or speak with the degree of self-righteousness that my counterpart does. I grieve terribly for the Cho family. They, like the families of the 32, do not deserve the grief that will burden them for years to come. I bear no ill-will towards them, and no one else should either. I believe in forgiveness, I think there's healing in it. But I have enough respect for the families of the deceased to know that it's not my place to forgive on their behalf. We memorialize people to honor their accomplishments and mourn their passing. The gunman deserves no such tribute. If you continue to place a stone for him at the memorial at 4 a.m., I'll come at 5 a.m.