School officials did all they could in shooting

To the editor:

As president of the Las Vegas chapter of the Virginia Tech Alumni Association, I must tell you that the events of April 16 have left a hole in my heart. What further hurts is all the negativity shown to university officials and the police.

University President Charles Steger and his staff made the right decisions at the right time with the information they had. While it is easy to speculate about what actions Virginia Tech administrators and police should have taken after the first shooting, would they really have changed anything?

Virginia Tech is a large campus. There are some 26,000 undergraduate students, only 9,000 of which live on campus. It would be nearly impossible to contact all students to tell them to stay away during an event like this. Many college students are lucky if they get showered after they roll out of bed to get to class, let alone read e-mails, turn on the TV or radio. Even if university officials closed down the dormitories and classroom buildings, students, faculty, staff and visitors still would have been coming onto campus, unaware of the tragic events. Would this have stopped the shooter?

We now know what a troubled individual Seung-Hui Cho was. Closing down campus would not have stopped him. Would the other 32 members of the Virginia Tech community still have been shot? Maybe not, but Seung-Hui Cho has shown us he was out for blood. He still would have found a way to kill many people. It could have been at a restaurant in town, or a grocery store. It didn't matter where -- he was going to act.

I lived in the dormitory where the first shooting took place. I attended classes in the Norris Hall. I have a friend, who is a professor who works in that building, who lost a dear but heroic colleague. It is so upsetting to those of us who love Virginia Tech. Forever our memories of the beautiful Hokie stoned buildings surrounding the drill field will be tarnished by the vivid images of April 16.

But I don't want to remember my beloved alma mater in this manner. It is unfair that this great university, which is known for its premier engineering college, ranking business program and athletics, will now be first known as the site of this horrific tragedy. We want to remember the good things about Virginia Tech, and ask the nation and the world to do so also.

On behalf of the Las Vegas chapter of the Virginia Tech Alumni Association, we wish to thank everyone in the community for their outpouring of sympathy. It certainly helps us heal, while we can not quite understand the tragic events.

Poet Nikki Giovanni said it best in her convocation address. "The Hokie Nation embraces our own and reaches out with open heart and hands to those who offer their hearts and minds. We are strong, and brave, and innocent and unafraid. We are better than we think and not quite what we want to be. We are alive to the imaginations and the possibilities. We will continue to invent the future through our blood and tears and through all our sadness. We are the Hokies."

julie chadburn

LAS VEGAS