By: Hagy
4.22.07

This is a piece about music.

And this is a piece about tragedy.

In case you’ve been under a rock somewhere, the greatest single school “massacre” in United States history happened this week. On Monday, April 16, 2007 Cho Seung-Hui took a pair of handguns and murdered two people in their dorm rooms. He then walked across campus, chained the doors shut to Norris Hall, and started opening classroom doors and killing people.

By the time he was done, 32 people had lost their lives.

I’m sure as you’re reading this you’re thinking: “Geez, I’ve already heard all of this before. Why must I read this on a music website? And what does this guy have to offer?” We’ll for those of you that don’t know, I live in Blacksburg, VA. As a website, The Open G String is based out of Blacksburg. I went to VT for undergrad and still go on the campus usually on a weekly basis. I live in a student apartment complex. My two roommates are PhD physics students at the university. Some of my best friends still go there, as do many of my old coworkers and the amount of acquaintances I have that call Virginia Tech their home is pretty high.

I was unharmed. Although that didn’t stop the barrage of text, voicemail, frantic calls, and myspace/Facebook messages from pouring in. I deeply appreciated everyone, and I mean what seemed like everyone’s, concern.

To try and drop you in my position, I want you to imagine a weekday that you didn’t go to class or your job (whichever may apply.) Instead, all day long you try and contact everyone you know because nearby 32 random people lost their lives. You don’t know the victim’s names, so you can’t rule out that they might very well be your friends. To add to this, all cell phones are not working due to the heavy traffic on the wireless network. Power goes on and off roughly 20 times, because of all the heavy wind and the elements, so that throws checking people’s away messages right out the window. You send blanket emails and post to Facebook groups when you can as you’re looking for anybody and everybody. Slowly, your friends start checking in and conversations start to resemble something like this: “Cory’s OK,” or “Yeah, Matt and Clay are with me.” “Miranda’s safe, let everyone know.” “Bruce just came online, he’s alright.” “I just got a text message from Brittani. She’s alive.”

Then slowly you start to focus on the list of people you haven’t heard from versus the ones you have. “Has anyone heard from Craig? He works in Norris Hall,” and “Have you gotten a message through to Emily yet?” And then, once the entire day eclipses, the conversation turns to “I’m really worried about Grace. No one has heard from her all day.” Finally, the two people that I was really concerned about checked in that night.

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