Three Month Anniversary
Posted on Monday, July 16th, 2007 at 9:54.
Transcript
It’s July 16th.
It’s been three months since Seung-Hui Cho murdered 32 people before committing suicide on the Virginia Tech campus.
April 16th was a gray and overcast, much like today, which is rare in Los Angeles.
I heard about the shootings on NPR as I drove into work. My stomach cringed when I heard an RA had been killed and the mention of an engineering building. I texted my best friend from high school, an RA and an engineering student at Virginia Tech.
A media blitz surrounded that campus for weeks after the shootings. Even though I usually feel a world away from my home state, I felt like I was there with each news report. I had planned on attending Virginia Tech my senior year of high school. And I hate the thought, because it’s so cliche and filled with self-pity, but I knew that I could have been killed that day had I not gone to Emerson.
A few weeks earlier, I spoke with another friend from high school. He doesn’t keep in touch with many people from the class of 2002, but he sent me an email and we talked for over an hour when he called. My stomach cringed when he told me was being deployed for a third time to Iraq, but I was happy he chose me to call before he was shipped out.
In the three months since the massacre at Virginia Tech, there have been ten-times as many American military deaths in Iraq. Most of those people are my age as well, but there hasn’t been a media blitz about their loss.
There have been few protests, candle light vigils, and people asking “Why did this happen?” for the dead in Iraq. The nation hasn’t mourned the loss of the troops like they did for the victims at Virginia Tech because we never get the chance to ponder, “It could have been me.”
I cringe everytime I hear a troop from Virginia was killed in Iraq. Unlike Virginia Tech, this nation doesn’t have to suffer another loss in Iraq. I guess the controlled senselessness of the tragedies in Iraq make it less tragic to the news media, but three months later, I’m not sure why.
Very thought-provoking.
Say a prayer for my Maxwell!