Making sense of the senseless

BY MARTIN C. EVANS | martin.evans@newsday.com

April 18, 2007

BLACKSBURG, W.Va. - The heart of Virginia Tech is a wide green quad, around which the institution's oldest academic and residence buildings are arrayed.

On most days, students stream across the grass, on their way to and from physics, poultry sciences, German or any of dozens of other courses taught at this 135-year-old university.

But yesterday, red-eyed students lingered to share tearful hugs or to drop flowers on a makeshift memorial to the 32 students and faculty who were killed in buildings that flanked the quad, in the worst shooting rampage in modern U.S. history.

Mandy Wiloth came with her friend Kristin Fields to drop a supermarket bouquet at the base of the memorial, a 6-foot maroon "VT" crafted from art supplies, upon which students scribbled sorrowful notes.

The freshmen, both 18 - Wiloth from a small Maryland town, Fields from Newport, Va. - had begun taking Wednesday-night belly-dancing lessons shortly after they had enrolled in the fall.

A fellow freshman who is Lebanese - Reema Samaha, of Centreville, Va. - had organized the dancing class, and both Wiloth and Fields were enthusiastic learners.

"She was so sweet," Fields said.

"She loved what she did," Wiloth added.

"She was good at it, too," Fields said.

They spoke in the past tense. Samaha was among those who had been shot dead.

"We were supposed to have a performance this Saturday," Wiloth said, her voice now glum. "That won't work out now. "

The campus, which was bathed in sunshine yesterday, remained a solemn place a day after the shootings. Word spread among students yesterday that a senior Virginia Tech English major, Cho Seung-Hui, 23, had been identified by police as the killer.

Fellow students walked past as Fields and Wiloth spoke, heading up the hill in groups of twos, threes and fours toward a 2 p.m. memorial convocation in the university's Cassel Coliseum basketball arena.

Mo Yang, 20, an accounting student from Xian, China, was in the crowd that pressed toward the gym. Yang was among several students of Asian heritage who had worried that early descriptions of the shooter as "Asian" would fan xenophobic hostilities against them.

"When I first heard about this, someone said it was a Chinese student here on a visa," said Yang, who immigrated to midtown Manhattan three years ago. "That concerned me. I was afraid there would be a backlash.

"I'm feeling a little ashamed of him," Yang said. "This is a big disgrace. But living in an on-campus dormitory, I really feel part of the community. It is a very diverse campus and with very caring people. "

A short while later inside the Cassel Coliseum, President George W. Bush tried to comfort the students, who sat in a mostly hushed silence that was broken by an occasional sob.

Bush said the Virginia Tech community, which also endured a campus shooting on its first day of fall classes, would one day get beyond its pain. "And when it does, you will always remember the friends and teachers who were lost yesterday, and the time you shared with them, and the lives they hoped to lead. "

Poet Nikki Giovanni, a professor at the university, ignited the somber audience with closing remarks, saying "Through our blood and tears, through all this sadness ... we are Virginia Tech. "

Members of the crowd, many with faces still wet from tears, rose to their feet, shouting "Let's go, Hokies! Let's go, Hokies!"

The day's developments

KILLER ID'd. The gunman was identified as Cho Seung-Hui, 23, of Virginia, an English major. He reportedly left a rambling note raging against women, religion and rich kids.

SHOOTINGS LINKED. Ballistics tests showed that one of two guns found in a classroom building where most of the shootings took place was used both there and at an earlier dorm shooting.

GUNS TRACED. Receipts in Cho's backpack led police to Roanoke Firearms, where the owner said his shop sold a Glock and a box of ammunition to Cho 36 days ago for $571. Cho bought his second gun, a Walther .22-caliber, in February at a pawnshop across the street from campus.

ER DOC REACTS. Dr. Joseph Cacioppo at Montgomery Regional Hospital's emergency room laid bare the brutality of the attack. "There wasn't a shooting victim that didn't have less than three bullet wounds in him," he said.

BUSH AT MEMORIAL. President George W. Bush was one of thousands who attended a two-hour memorial service at the university. "It's impossible to make sense of such violence and suffering," Bush said. He ordered flags to fly at half-staff through Sunday.

RESPONSE PROBED. Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine said he will appoint a panel at the university's request to review complaints that officials should have locked down the campus after the first two killings and didn't do enough to warn people.

JITTERY NATION. Threats of violence sparked evacuations and lockdowns at universities in Texas, Oklahoma, Tennessee, North Dakota, South Dakota and Michigan, and schools in Louisiana.