Reeling From the Scene of a Massacre

Thursday, April 19, at 12 noon, U.S. Eastern Time

A member of the team of Chronicle reporters in Blacksburg, Va.

A transcript of the chat follows.

Goldie Blumenstyk (Moderator):
    Hello and thank you for joining us today for this unusual Brown Bag discussion. I'm Goldie Blumenstyk a senior reporter here at The Chronicle and like most of you, I've been following these tragic events in Blacksburg unfold from afar.

And like you, I'm eager to hear directly from someone who has been on the scene for the past three days - listening to the stories of Virginia Tech's students, faculty members, administrators as they have tried to deal with these terrible events.

And so with thanks to our guest, Eric Hoover, let's get started. Please send any questions now.

Question from Goldie Blumenstyk:
    As more and more information about the Mr. Cho becomes known, how do students seem to be reacting? From what you have been hearing, does their knowing more about him seem to be generating more anger? Compassion?

And I guess as a follow-up to that, if there is anger, at whom are they directing it?

Eric Hoover:
    I think yesterday as students learned more about this student they were feeling more angry. Many students I talked to couldn't stop talking about the horrible things he had said on his video tapes, and many were have trouble squaring what they were learning about him with their view of their fellow students on the campus. They described Virginia Tech as a small town community that just happened to be a very large campus. A number of students I talked to wondered, however, if a student like this was more likely to pose a threat to others on a campus like Virginia Tech's because of the vast number of students there.

Most students were directing their anger at the alleged shooter and not at the administration, although a majority of students I interviewed believed that the institution did not handle Monday's incident well. Most defended the administration and insisted that Virginia Tech's president and other officials acted with student's best interest in mind as best they could at the time.

Question from Goldie Blumenstyk:
    I watched some of the TV coverage of the convocation Tuesday and when those students started that "Hokies" chant, it sent chills up my spine. It reminded me a bit of the defiance I heard from some folks here in DC after 9/11. Have you talked to students about that response?

Eric Hoover:
    I talked to many students about the convocation and all of them said it was the most emotional thing they had ever experienced.

The ceremony had been quiet and still, and according to several students and administrators, one man standing near the podium stood up suddenly and started the chant. It caught on throughout the whole arena in just seconds. I was standing on the football field with thousands of people, right next door, and they immediately started chanting too. One man I was standing next to was jumping up and down and yelling so hard that his hat fell off and his glasses almost slid off his face.

I think it was just one of many moments where Tech students who were famous for their school spirit were able to express themselves passionately after having spoken in hush tones for the previous 24 hours.

Question from Goldie Blumenstyk:
    Many of us have seen clips and pictures of those big VTs that students are signing. Have you noticed other kinds of makeshift memorials around the campus and if so, can you describe one or two of them?

Eric Hoover:
    Near that memorial in front of the main administration building, there is a row of white wooden boards on which students are writing messages in black magic markers. One of the most striking things about many of those messages is that they're written in the present tense. I saw messages that students had written to their friends that had died talking about how much they loved them, how much they enjoyed hanging out with them. They were written as if that person were standing right there.

Question from Goldie Blumenstyk:
    Another of our colleagues send this along: Some people seem to be suggesting Virginia Tech administrators should have closed or locked down the university after the first two shootings Monday morning. But with 26,000 students and thousands more employees, we're talking about the population of a small city.

Closing even a small liberal-arts college would be a difficult undertaking; how would you close Virginia Tech? When you're dealing with that many people, don't you have to weigh the chances of creating more havoc by trying to close or lock down, rather than less?

Eric Hoover:
    You're right. It's impossible to completely secure all buildings on a campus of that size. School officials I talked to said that the definition of lock down would generally mean stationing police officers at all the main entrances to the campus, but they and many students said that even if that had been done, it's impossible to know if that and other measures could have prevented the shootings in Norris Hall.

Some students wondered if Virginia Tech had been able to send out text messages to all students warning them of the danger, if that might have even caused greater panic and made things even worse.

Question from Maxine Kaplan, Austin Community College:
    Student don't usually squeal about others and students, being young, historically do not pay attention to what's going on around them. While we don't want everyone looking over their shoulders in fear, young people should be more aware of their surroundings and told that it's okay to report weird stuff. Had this happened, possibly the outcome would have been different. Hind sight is always 20/20 but we can make good changes for the future. Thank you.

Eric Hoover:
    Students I talked to were wrestling with the question of whether or not a fellow student could have said or done anything that might have prevented what happened. Some hoped that the incident would prompt students to think harder and reflect more on those people around them and what they may be going through. Some students were hopeful that their peers would make greater efforts to get to know more people around them, more people outside their cliques, even people that were hard to get to know.

Question from Goldie Blumenstyk:
    Did the mood on the campus change once parents starting showing up? Did they seem less forgiving of the institution than the students?

Eric Hoover:
    Because many parents were still making their way to the campus, some parents were still waiting for their son or daughter's body to be identified. Their mood was one of sustained shock and grief, and the mood among students, though, did change significantly after Tuesday night's candlelight vigil.

Up until then students had been trying to hold themselves and their friends together, and to cope with the sadness, but after the release of emotions at the vigil students started thinking about the days ahead and many said that they had become more angry. Many were also anxious about what to do with this unexpected week off. Many felt an obligation to stay with friends who planned to remain on the campus, but most also felt like the best thing to do was to go home. Many students just felt like escaping the media would allow them to better deal with what had happened.

Question from Dan Carnevale:
    How are students and faculty responding to the overwhelming media presence there? Are they happy they have an outlet to express their grief to the rest of the world? Or are they getting to the point when they want the hysteria to end?

Eric Hoover:
    The first thing I should say is that the vast majority of administrators, professors, and especially students were as open as they could possibly be with reporters. Some students said they wanted to talk to as many journalists as they could, because they believed it gave them a chance to talk about their friends and their campus. By Wednesday morning, however, students felt they had been saturated with the same questions over and over again, and though many continued to honor reporter's requests for interviews there was a strong sense of fatigue among them.

Yesterday afternoon, somone placed orange signs in different parts of the campus that read "Let Hokie Nation Heal," and "Hokies Stay Strong, Media Stay Away."

Question from Gary:
    What are the reactions of the Korean and/or international student community on campus. Have they been the focus of any unfair attention or blame.

Eric Hoover:
    Students I talked to said that they had not heard of any negative words or gestures expressed at Asian Americans. Minority students that I talked to said they had made a special effort to reach out to each other, and some said administrators and staff had been especially receptive to their concerns and feelings once the identity and ethnicity of the alleged shooter had been revealed.

Question from Jason Breslow, The Chronicle of Higher Education:
    Are students struggling in any way to ignore what has happened on campus and continue with life as usual?

Eric Hoover:
    Yesterday evening I was visiting with three seniors who weren’t sure how to both reflect on what had happened and go on with their normal routine, especially since they had had all this unexpected time off. These three young men talked about how they had wanted to go out for some beers on Tuesday night but had decided against it because they worried it might seem disrespectful to their fellow students who had died. But, they decided they couldn’t stand to sit around and watch any more television coverage of the murders, so they compromised by staying home, having a glass of wine and shooting darts in their living room.

Goldie Blumenstyk (Moderator):
    We've had a few questions about Mr. Cho's parents. Since Eric has been working from Blacksburg, he's not in the best position to answer those. Sorry.

Goldie Blumenstyk (Moderator):
    That's all the time we have for today. Thanks to Eric for his observations during this discussion, and for all the dispatches he and others have been sending from Blacksburg these past few days, which you can find on our web site now, and in even fuller form in the pages of the next edition of The Chronicle in print. We also invite you to join in the many online discussions about this incident and its aftermath, now underway on the Forums pages of our web site.

Please join us next week, for our postponed Brown Bag discussion with Cornell's David Wippman, on globalzing the campus.