VT shooting: black mark on an otherwise growing reputation

Before Monday's shootings, Virginia Tech had won honors with its influx of foreign students.

from the April 19, 2007 edition

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After the shooting, frantic calls came in from Seoul to Istanbul. "This became an international incident, not a Blacksburg incident," says Mr. Dasiyici.

"What makes this university unusual is that it's a social island far from the urban atmosphere of most major colleges," says Roger Ehrich, a 30-year computer science professor at Virginia Tech.

And while some in town grumble about the gown, the economic and cultural impact of the growth of Virginia Tech has been part of a gradual transformation of southwest Virginia from a coal-and-corn region to a viable part of a state that last year exported, in value, more computer chips than tobacco.

"Campuses and the state have changed to become much more diverse, and these students on the whole are completely comfortable with that," says Herman Schwartz.

Foreign students get Americanized

Many foreign students become thoroughly Americanized, even taking on the "God-and-guns" culture of the South. Student Wayne Chiang, a self-described gun nut whom some bloggers mistakenly fingered as the killer after discovering his site, professed his American right to bear arms to the Roanoke Times one day after the shooting.

But after the killings, one student, Noelle Anastasi, said her Portuguese roommate went too far in railing against America's gun culture, especially as its effects were complicated in this case by the nationality of the shooter. "Massacres can happen and do happen in every culture," says Ms. Anastasi, a forestry student.

On campus this week, as the names of the victims became known, the range of ethnic surnames described a cross-section of a diverse campus, brought, if anything, together by the tragedy. Overflow crowds attended Tuesday's convocation – visited by President Bush – and even more came to a candlelight vigil.

Motive still eludes investigators, and the self-questioning on the part of the university – and the state – has begun.

"Maybe we could have done better, and maybe we could have changed things; maybe we couldn't. We don't know that," says Mr. Ehrich.

"I think it bothers people here that this reputation will dog us for some time. This is not what we want to be known for," he adds.

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Introductions: President Bush greets Virginia Tech’s student body president Adeel Khan (left) at the Cassell Coliseum on the Virginia Tech campus before Tuesday’s convocation. Josh Armstrong/Special to The Christian Science Monitor After the massacre, a convocation