I don't work at Virginia Tech. But, today I feel shattered by the irrational murders of students, faculty and staff there. It's my job - a job I assumed on college campuses for 8 years as a paraprofessional and then professional live-in staff member - to take care of college students. And, today I feel I failed. I know I don't work at Virginia Tech, but the responsibility to care for students transcends campus boundaries or rivalries or distances between sleepy college towns.
Now, as a doctoral student studying how to help students best learn and develop as scholars, civic-minded society members, and leaders of the future, I'm shaken. How can we achieve such lofty goals if our students cannot be and feel safe from one another and the outside world?
I do not know any of the 33 people who died today at Virginia Tech. But I do remember Jason and Mike Schordje, Andy Fluhart, Katie Odle, Charley Blondis, Jesse Valencia, and many other students or university staff who have died or been killed in my years working at universities. I can't imagine what it would be like to lose those campus community members 30 times over.
At CMSU, I watched students (mostly young men) be deployed to Iraq after 9/11. I remember crying for them, for their futures - many of them never returned. I vividly recall helping to organize a campus memorial service at Millikin when the Schordje brothers were killed in a car accident. In my mind's eye, I can see the men of Kappa Sig mourning the loss of a brother after a fire tore through their fraternity house the summer before I started grad school. I recollect the vigil at Mizzou for Charley - my sitting and thinking of our joking exchanges over a smoke - after he was shot to death at a party. And, every time another student dies, I feel the loss for their friends and families and classmates.
In college, a fraternity member in the house next door to my residence hall brought a loaded rifle into a chapter meeting. And he pointed it in the faces of his fraternity brothers, many of whom were residents in my small hall. I remember their faces - the fear - hours and days after the event. And our tiny campus was devastated by the reality we were dealt. In that incident, beyond the psychological terror experienced by the guys in that room, no one was physically harmed. But we lost something that day. Some may call it innocence.
In the background, on my television, I hear journalists ask the unfeeling questions they have to about today's events... how could this happen? why no lockdown? how come students didn't know? And, I know how hard those calls are to make. In spite of all our best efforts, we just cannot keep students safe enough. No matter how many times I try to stop a stranger from entering a locked residence hall, a trusting student behind me will let them slide by. And, I sit in classrooms all the time, never even thinking someone might be lurking in the hallway, planning my demise.
Maryland's President Mote issued a statement tonight that included this sentiment to which I can relate: "All of us in higher education are one at a moment such as this. While Blacksburg is hundreds of miles away, our anguish is not bounded by distance."
I ache for my higher education community. And I pray for its healing.
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