April 20, 2007
VT
Albright students and staff are observing Hokie Hope Day in remembrance of the students and staff that lost their lives in the horrific events this week. Students, staff, and visitors watched in horror on Monday as the day’s events unfolded. You run the gauntlet of emotions with an event like this. I don’t know what stage I’m at right now. All I know is that it doesn’t really matter where I’m at. Only that my thoughts and prayers go out to all those effected, alive and deceased, by this senseless event.
In 1994 three students from Albright College developed the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. I find that there is six degrees to every person or event. The Virginia Tech shootings will reach almost everyone. Kelley Snead, one of our admission counselors, has five friends at Virginia Tech. She spent Monday trying to get in contact with them. In the office we waited to find out if they were ok. We waited to hear from peers in the VT admission office. In the middle of the afternoon an email came out on our national association’s list serve that all members of the office and their visitors were fine.
I’m sure you all know someone who goes to VT or works at VT. Or you know someone that knows someone who has a connection to VT. We are all connected in this small world. Sometimes it takes momentous occasions to realize how close we really are.
I don’t know if the VT security could have prevented this, I don’t know if tighter gun control laws could have stopped the young man, I don’t know if it was wrong of NBC to show the videos of Cho Seung-Hui; we can all form our own opinions of that. It may assist us in handling or averting the next massacre. But it won’t bring back the lives of those lost at VT. And that makes me sad.
Today, I’m a Hokie. I have maroon and orange on as does my blog. I don’t know anyone that goes to VT, but I’m not separated by the students there by very much. My connection is less than six degrees.
Posted by Chris Boehm at April 20, 2007 7:52 AM