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In the wake of the shootings at Virginia Tech, we asked a number of scholars, college presidents, and writers to answer this question: If you were giving the commencement address at Virginia Tech this year, what is the core of the message you would like to leave with the graduates? Amy Gutmann | Michael Eric Dyson |Ariel Dorfman | Lionel Shriver | Edward J.W. Park | Donna E. Shalala | Barry R. Glassner | Sissela Bok | Robert Coles | Karla Jay | Bobby Fong April 20, 2007Robert Coles, professor of psychiatry and author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning 'Children of Crisis' seriesDon’t Give Him Hate: Death, in an ironic and painful way, brings us closer to life — prompts us to ponder its meaning, to wonder what we have aimed to do, to be, and why, during that spell of time given us before we disappear altogether, alive then only in the memories of others. Death is no stranger, though, that visits us at life’s end — rather the occurrence of death, that of others, haunts us throughout out time here: a reminder that some day, some time, our heart’s last beat will occur, our lungs’ last intake of air be accomplished. Today, here at Virginia Tech, many of you prepare to leave, and a new life beckons, even as memories tell of those who are not here, will never again be here, because a terrible fate has befallen them, a student’s wanton murderousness become for classmates and teachers, 32 of them, an awful destiny. To be cut down in cold blood at the behest of a gun’s trigger pulled, its bullets mercilessly, insistently, crazily brandished, sent forth with a kind of fierce insistence that boggles our stunned minds today, and will do so for decades to come, as people across this land, and others, wonder why. Why the hurried impulse, the declared comments, dispatched to the public through the workings of technology: a final statement, and, yes, horribly, a murderer’s chance to exclaim his reasons across space and time, so that countless viewers, listeners, can become his audience — one so desperately sought, it seems. As I try to take in what I’ve read and heard of late, what you all here have come to know firsthand and so tragically, my mind takes me back to a 12-year-old girl I got to know when I worked at Children’s Hospital Boston. The year: 1959. She had been hit by a driver, drunk on whiskey, as she crossed the street a block away from her home. When I saw her she was already paralyzed, and all too aware of what life would now hold for her: “They have a name for it , but I say, ‘cripple for life.‘” I got to know her fairly well as a physician, but I was also a fellow human being; I was saddened by what happened to her, and enraged by the heedless assault upon her, wrought by a 25-year-old man who had gone to college and had declared his interest in becoming a lawyer. Instead he was headed for a courtroom and very likely a jail sentence. What I heard from his victim was this: “I feel sorry for him. He must be in some kind of trouble, to do that, get drunk, driving and hitting a kid, then driving off. At least someone saw it all happen! At least he was caught — but I keep thinking this: If you do something like that, you’ve been captured — because you’ll never forget what you did.” At that, I stood near her bedside, neurological hammer in hand, ready to do my medical bedside work, but halted, wondering: What did she mean, “captured”? By whom? How to ask her a question, follow up on her (to me) unnerving, hard-to-fathom comment? Then her voice — she had read my face and was ready to respond: “In church they talk of the Devil — that it has slippery shoes. That guy, he’d become the Devil, and his car’s tires became his shoes, you could say. He hit me and ran — like the Devil does. Now, I think of him and one minute I say good riddance, and the next I think he’s punished himself pretty bad, and he’ll get his comeuppance (my mom says) when he meets the good Lord and gets sent for a long time of burning.” Silence then, and a look from her, directed at me. I realized later that she must have sensed my doctor’s mind, my shrink’s head, at work — so this: “I won’t give him hate — like my mom said. Then he’ll be the winner. He hurt me, but look what he did to himself: ‘a guy who could have been good, gone bad, really bad,’ my dad says over and over. He knows the guy’s family.” “So endeth the lesson,” as we hear said in churches and synagoguesa hurt youngster still teaching her onetime bedside doc, even as he stands here among you at this fine Virginia educational institution, remembering a youngster’s stoic bravery in the face of tragedy, and, in doing so, thinking of you as you go forth with life ahead of you, with painful memories, yes, but with the determination to show yourself and the world what resilience we humans can find in ourselves, drunken drivers and mass murderers notwithstanding. May the good Lord bless all of you, all of us here in this strong and generous nation we are lucky to call our own. Posted on Friday April 20, 2007 | Permalink |Comments
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I’m sorry, but this is one shoddily-written (and morally ambiguous) story. A drunk driver becomes the embodiment of the devil? I’m not defending what the young man did, but a 25-year-old ruining his own life (and his victim’s) by making one horribly stupid decision is just not on a par with the coldblooded slaughter of dozens who you perceive to “deserve it.” “Drunk drivers and mass murders” are equated in one breath, and neither seems an image to bring much comfort to the VT victims or their families. I thought this might be a little parable of forgiveness. Instead it’s reflective of a creepy and disturbing thirst for vengeance…not to mention poor taste.
— Felix Apr 23, 02:26 AM #
This is a beautiful and moving statement. If I were a parent of one of the students killed, I would feel some consolation. It’s an acknowledgement that evil exists, and that we are called to drown it in an abundance of love.
— David B. House Apr 23, 11:27 AM #