Virginia Tech students give each other support

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- A group of students had been hanging out at the Catholic campus ministry center at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va., when an alert was issued midday Dec. 8 warning all students and faculty members to stay indoors.

For the next few hours, the students stayed put, knowing a shooting had taken place on campus and initially that the shooter was on the loose, but not much more.

After a campus police officer had been shot and killed that afternoon in his parked cruiser, police and SWAT teams searched the university for the gunman, calling to mind images of the 2007 shooting on campus that left 32 students and faculty, as well as the gunman, dead.

The unidentified shooter Dec. 8, who was not a student, fled on foot, changed clothes in a campus greenhouse and was spotted by police in a campus parking lot before fatally shooting himself, The Associated Press reported.

Not long after the university was finally given the all-clear signal, students packed the Catholic student center chapel for a Mass for the feast of the Immaculate Conception. The Mass had been postponed for a half hour because of the day’s lockdown.

“Mass was a great contrast to the day’s events,” said Father John Grace, a Richmond diocesan priest who is director of Virginia Tech’s Catholic campus ministry. He said it reminded students of how to live their faith in the context of real world.

After Mass, some students were talking about the day but he primarily sensed “a strong feeling of support and community.”

The priest, who spoke to Catholic News Service by phone Dec. 9, said that kind of support isn’t “something you can create at a moment of crisis. You cultivate it year after year. It is really what the Catholic community stands for.”

In a Dec. 9 letter posted on the Newman center’s website, Father Grace said the campus Mass “was the perfect way to mark who we are in faith, service and community.”

He said words could not undo the tragic events but it is “here where our faith must speak the clearest. It’s now when our community must be present in hope and solidarity.”

Father Grace, who came to the university just three months after the 2007 campus shooting, said there was no question that the Dec. 8 shooting brought back memories of the events of nearly five years ago, especially for graduate students and faculty staff who were at the university at the time.

But for everyone, the day’s shooting and campus lockdown highlighted the effect of violence and the “vulnerability everyone feels.”

“It was scary for a lot of people because no one knew what was happening,” he said. The priest, who had been on his way to lunch when the school alarms sounded, said the university “responded quickly and without panic.”

“The drills paid off” he said, noting that the university issued multiple alerts and updates and showed a “real sense of calm.”

The campus was a quieter than usual because it was the day between the end of classes and the start of exams, called “reading day.” According to news reports, only 20,000 of the university’s 30,000 students were on campus when the officer was shot. Exams were postponed until Dec. 10.

About 150 students gathered for a silent candlelight vigil the evening of Dec. 8 by the university’s memorial for the 2007 shooting victims. An official vigil was scheduled for Dec. 9.

The shooting took place the same day as a hearing in Washington where Virginia Tech officials were appealing a $55,000 fine by the U.S. Department of Education for the university’s response to the 2007 shooting. The department said the university had violated the law by waiting more than two hours to issue an alert that failed to give enough specific information.

Father Grace said he thought the 2007 campus shootings had made the university students more aware of the needs of others.