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Monday, May 14, 2007
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Pain and Pomp as Virginia Tech Marks Commencement 25 Days After Shootings
More coverage: Links to all of The Chronicle's coverage of the shootings at Virginia Tech.
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Members of the crowd look over images of slain Virginia Tech students during an undergraduate graduation ceremony at the university's Lane Stadium on Friday, May 11. (Carolyn Kaster, AP Images)
For John O. Woods, the pomp and circumstance of graduation from Virginia Tech this past weekend was mixed with pain.
Less than four weeks earlier, Maxine Shelly Turner, a close friend and former girlfriend, died in her German class, one of 32 students and professors murdered in the deadliest shooting rampage on an American college campus. Ms. Turner, known as Max, was to have earned an honors degree in chemical engineering.
"People talk about this as a celebration," Mr. Woods, a computer-science major, said before Friday evening's commencement ceremonies. "But I don't feel much like celebrating."
Mr. Woods, who starts a doctoral program in cell and molecular biology at the University of Texas at Austin this summer, said that as he wraps up his time at Virginia Tech, he is haunted by the idea that "something is missing."
"I feel like I'm leaving people behind," he said.
Like Mr. Woods, Virginia Tech officials sought to strike the right balance of celebration and sorrow throughout the weekend, as tears of joy mixed with those of grief.
At the graduation Friday night at Lane Stadium, President Charles W. Steger paid tribute to the victims, whom he called "innocent and beautiful minds."
"Please know that moving on is not the same as forgetting," he told the 5,000 graduates. "We shall not forget."
Making a Pilgrimage
At times on Friday afternoon, Virginia Tech, basking in a summerlike sun, seemed like any campus, during any commencement weekend. Graduates in cap and gown posed as proud parents snapped photograph after photograph. Friends strolled the campus one last time, arm in arm. Alumni revisited old haunts, trundling infants swaddled in orange and maroon, the college's colors.
But there were many reminders, too, that this is a college deeply marked by the events of four weeks ago. Entire generations of some families had rejected traditional suits and dresses, choosing instead to wear T-shirts, sold by a student-led volunteer group, that proclaimed "Hokies United." Signs warned the news media, whose representatives numbered in the hundreds, to give graduates and their relatives space to mark this rite of passage. And faculty members and seniors mingled at a departmental reception not far from Norris Hall, the classroom building where most of the victims were shot.
Many visitors appeared to make the conscious decision to steer clear of the building, while others chose to make what one woman called a "pilgrimage" to the scene of the shooting.
"It's like visiting Arlington Cemetery," she said, in a low voice, to her companion.
"No," her friend said, "it's like the World Trade Center."
While the building's fate remains undecided, a petition drive is under way to rename it in honor of Liviu Librescu, the professor who died while trying to block the gunman from entering his classroom.
On the Drillfield, the grassy expanse in the center of campus, a steady stream of people filed past the memorials created for each victim in the shootings' immediate aftermath, many pausing to study photos and mementos and to read cards and letters sent by well-wishers from around the country.
One middle-aged woman stood crying in front of stuffed animals and balloons that marked the memorial to Caitlin Millar Hammaren, an international-studies and French major who would have turned 20 on May 4. The woman, who did not want to give her name, said she was the mother of a daughter graduating this weekend from Virginia Tech.
"I can't imagine, as a parent, the pain," she said.
A Chance for Healing
And yet many looked at the weekend's events -- which, in addition to Friday's universitywide proceedings, included a graduate commencement and smaller departmental ceremonies at which undergraduate students received their diplomas -- as a chance for healing.
The engineering-science and mechanics department lost two faculty members, Mr. Librescu and Kevin P. Granata, on April 16. Ishwar K. Puri, the department's chairman, said he and his colleagues have mourned their loss. This past weekend, he said, was a time to honor the contributions they made.
"If you look at the ceremony in a very somber fashion," he said, "then you reflect more on the tragedy inflicted on us, rather than celebrating their lives."
At Friday's commencement, ushers handed out black-covered programs that recounted anecdotes, accomplishments, and quirks of the students and professors killed by gunman Seung-Hui Cho, a Virginia Tech senior. (Mr. Cho, who took his own life, was not mentioned during the ceremony.) Photographs of all 32 murder victims were pictured on the scoreboard above Lane Stadium, and, with "Alma Mater," the school song, playing softly, Mr. Steger walked onto the football field to present class rings to the relatives of the 18 slain undergraduates.
As the graduating class of 2007 was announced, students broke into a chant, heard often since the slayings, "We are Hokies."
Gen. John Philip Abizaid, the commencement speaker and a former commander of the United States Central Command who retired this year, told the graduates, "Adversity has a way of challenging all of us, sooner or later.
"How we collectively bear up to the pressures of unexpected tragedy, how we care for and honor those who suffer loss, how we hold on to our values despite the seductive lure of simple, quick, and easy solutions to the complex problems we face -- how we deal with such things defines us forever."
Mr. Woods said he hopes to honor the memory of his friend Max -- her appreciation of a good joke, how she stuck out her tongue in photographs, her passions. "I want to feel like Max inspired me to do something," he said.
For now, Mr. Woods has bought a class ring, which he plans to have engraved with a single sentence, the title of one of Ms. Turner's favorite books, the vampire novel I Am Legend.
"I like to think that she's a legend," he said. "I want to carry her with me."