BLACKSBURG, Va. (ABP) — Two days after Cho Seung-Hui shot and killed at least 32 students and professors on the campus of Virginia Tech, students are searching for something good to come of the massacre.
“There are people out there trying to turn this into something good,” said Kristen Jones, a Baptist student who lives on the third floor of West Ambler Johnston Hall, where two of the murders occurred.
“I noticed that one of the local news stations had a help line and most of the people who were answering the phones were missionaries or pastors, and that was a comfort to think that people like that were available and that students were calling them,” she said.
Indeed, local churches have sprung into action. Across the street from campus, Blacksburg Baptist Church was scheduled to hold a prayer vigil and service of remembrance on the evening of April 18. The congregation includes students, faculty, staff and alumni of the school.
The church's pastoral staff has also been ministering among the thousands of grieving people since the morning of the shooting.
“The personal impact is deep and wide,” said Sarah Ballew, a native of Blacksburg, whose father served as the Baptist campus minister at Virginia Tech for 26 years. She serves in China with her husband, Larry, as a mission worker of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.
“Blacksburg is a small community of 40,000 people and 26,000 university students. Everyone is connecting with Virginia Tech somehow. This is devastating for everyone on the campus and in the community and for the many, many people who have connections to Virginia Tech.”
That sense of closeness was evident April 17 when an overflow crowd of 20,000 people packed into Lane Football Stadium for a campus-wide memorial service that featured remarks from President Bush. Other mourners had waited in lines stretching for blocks to get a seat in Cassell Coliseum, where the convocation was centered. The arena's 10,000 seats rapidly filled with students and supporters wearing the school colors of orange and maroon.
After the memorial convocation, many students gathered for the second night in a row just off campus at the Virginia Tech's Baptist Collegiate Ministries center. Jones, the Baptist student, said she did not lose any close friends in the shooting, but she and others are still dealing with its effects.
“I got up early that morning and left the [West Ambler Johnston] dorm before the gunman arrived,” Jones said. “I was with a friend at her apartment when I heard the news. My roommate left the dorm about the same time the killer would have left the building. That kind of freaked her out a little bit. She had a really hard time last night, and I sat up with her and talked with her to calm her down.”
Other religious groups, like the Council on American-Islamic Relations, have offered their own condolences to the university.
“We offer the American Muslim community's sincere and heartfelt condolences to the families and loved ones of all those who were killed or injured in yesterday's tragic events on the campus of Virginia Tech,” a statement from the group's headquarters said. “It is at such times of tragedy and loss that Americans must come together to offer support to those who suffered such heartbreaking losses as a result of this senseless crime.”
But for all the positive work of Baptists and other religious groups, some conservative leaders have begun offering critiques related to the Virginia Tech tragedy. A handful of conservative commentators, for instance, have decried the lack of prayers “in the name of Jesus” offered at the convocation. Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist and Lutheran leaders had each offered condolences during the service at the state-run school. The crowd also repeated the Lord's Prayer as part of the ceremony.
Wiley Drake, a Southern Baptist Convention officer and pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Buena Park, Calif., compared the attacks to abortion. During the April 18 broadcast of his radio show, he said he'd continue to pray for those affected by the shooting — but that what he considers a larger massacre happens every day in America.
“None — zero — of these young people deserved to be brutally killed, but neither do the 3,000 human beings who will be murdered today,” he said, referring to abortions in the United States. “They do not deserve to be killed.” Drake noted that, earlier in the day, the Supreme Court had upheld a ban on certain late-term abortion procedures.
Despite such controversy, Jones said she had hope for the future: “I think this kind of tragedy has the potential to bring people to some kind of faith — hopefully the Christian faith.”
A complete list of victims had not been released as of late afternoon April 18, but police have confirmed the following victims: Ross Alameddine, Jamie Bishop, Brian Bluhm, Ryan Clark, Austin Cloyd, Jocelyne Couture-Nowak, Matthew Gwaltney, Kevin Granata, Caitlin Hammaren, Jeremy Herbstritt, Rachel Hill, Emily Hilscher, Matthew La Porte, Jarrett Lane, Henry Lee, Liviu Librescu, G.V. Loganathan, Partahi Lombantoruan, Lauren McCain, Daniel O'Neil, Juan Ramon Ortiz, Minal Panchal, Daniel Perez Cueva, Erin Peterson, Michael Pohle, Julia Pryde, Mary Read, Reema Samaha, Leslie Sherman, Maxine Turner, and Nicole White.
-30-