Stormy?

[GT2000]

Post to let us know you're ight.. and then let us know what you know about that shit which went down today.. I found out about the shooting on the news.. then a few hours later I found out about the rest...

[GT2000]

oh yeah.. driving, can't find a link to post.. but look up Va Tech shooting today in news if you haven't heard.

[raublekick]

yes, it is extremely sad :(

[Stormy]

Thank you for your concern. It means a lot to me. Thankfully I go to UVa and not VT--but I know people there. My boyfriend's brother is actually an engineering student there, but he's alright. Everyone else I know is alright. I indirectly know people who injured themselves--mostly by jumping out of windows.

I first heard about this at lunch, around 11:30, and the death toll was 1... the injured around 10 or so. I wasn't that surprised, as this isn't the first incident of shooting at Tech. I got back from classes at 2, checked my email, and my stomach sort of dropped. It was 21 people then. Now it's 33, including the shooter. What a tumultuous parallel to the blustery, cold weather.

I recently watched the press conference--which was decidedly useless. If anything, it only made me angrier. It was a media attack on the university president and chief of the police force: "you should've done this, this and this," or, "why didn't you put the school on lock down," or "why assume such things and not do this, this and this?" Before the conference, a man who owns a company to train SWAT teams kept reiterating the failure of the police team to "hit the threat at its source," returning again and again to what should have been done. This situation doesn't need a witch hunt, that only destroys community: it needs unification. This situation doesn't need retrospective analysis, not now; what it needs is resolution and lots of hugs. I hate to sound like Bush after 9/11, but love and community really must follow any kind of tragedy.

I'll keep you guys posted on anything I hear. I'm lucky enough to be involved in a residential community with plenty of networking. Fingers crossed that you guys don't know anyone at Tech, and that those I do know continue to be safe.

[GT2000]

Ah, I sometimes (often) get those two confused, glad you're ok, and hopefully all of your friends are as well.

[raublekick]

Stormy, the same thing happened to me with watching the death count increase as the day went on.

And I agree, there is way too much stress on retrospective prevention on stuff like this lately. You really can't train to prevent something like this, but you can train to deal with it. Attacking the police and president of the school do not help to deal with it.

[johnny]

glad yer okay stormy. i wasn't sure which school you attended.

this is actually the first i've heard of this, since i'm usually out of the loop until i watch the 11 o'clock news. pretty fucked up.

[Subsy]

I first heard the news on the radio at work when the death toll was 22. I thought it wasn't the same school you went to, but I wasn't positive. So I was scared the rest of the day :(

Thank whoever's up there you weren't caught up in that insanity.

[Jesse]

I'm glad everybody here is alright.

The capacity that some people have to hate makes me sick to my stomach.

I can't even begin to sympathize, I've never suffered a loss of this magnitude.

[thecreeper]

im glad everyone is alright. this is totally fucked up.

[Liss]

yea, when i first saw the news, it's interesting--I guess you guys are the only virginians I know--but you were the ones I thought of. I knew you went to uva, stormy, but I figured you'd have friends at vt...I'm glad everyone you know there is ok. And otherwise, Im just stunned, the same way I was with the Pennsylvania shooting...it's hard to believe that people are capable of such things. And for the poor kids that witnessed their peers' deaths or had to jump out windows to survive...I can't even come close to imagining...

[Optimus Funk]

Yeah I have to say humans are so amazing, we can do suck fucked up horrid things, and such amazing beautiful things. It always wondered if you had the chance to give up your favorite most noteworthy accomplishment to undo a horrid event. Would you do it?, and then think if a great artist, or author had been asked the same question. To give of one of their greatest works(it would be as though it never happened, only they would know it was missing and could never recreate it again). I dont know why I thought that at all.

I agree with stormy, and Andrew about the media's attack of the people. We always try to find the reason of the attack and rarely focus on the attack's victims and the people left to rebuild lives that have been completely shattered by it.