The San Matean

Issue date: 5/27/08 Section: Features

Media Credit: Ricky Light A crowd of 32 students gathered on Wednesday, April 26 to honor the victims of the Virginia Tech Massacre. The participants dressed in black, and wore maroon and orange ribbons around their necks to represent the VA Tech school colors.

Much of this overview was in response to the deadliest campus massacre ever, when 33 people were defenselessly gunned down by their fellow student, Seung-Hui Cho, who opened fire in a dormitory and classroom building on the Virginia Tech campus before committing suicide on April 16, 2007. The first attack was around 7:15 a.m., when two people were shot and killed at a dormitory. More than two and a half hours later, 31 others, including the gunman, were shot and killed in an ongoing rampage in this time in a classroom building, where some of the doors had been chained. At least 15 people were wounded severely by the gunman.

This shooting was the second in the past year that forced a campus lock down at Virginia Tech. In August of 2006, an escaped jail inmate shot and killed a deputy sheriff and an unarmed security guard at a nearby hospital before the police caught him in the woods near the campus. The university's president, Charles Steger, expressed this tragedy as being one of monumental proportions. Responding police described the crime scene as 'horrific,' according to an article published in The New York Times the day of the attack written by Christine Hauser and Anahad O'Conner.

This spring, thirty-two CSM students participated in a lie-in to honor the victims of the Virginia Tech Massacre. The lie-in took place Wed. April 16 and was organized by student Chris Corgas.

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