After hearing about the tragic massacre of 33 people at Virginia Tech all day yesterday, I was hoping that it would not hit home for anyone on the Cape. I woke up this morning to read articles about the newest information regarding the school shooting. I came across an article in the Cape Cod Times and sadly read that for two Sandwich families, the country’s largest mass murder in history hit too close to home.
Two young women, recent graduates of Sandwich High School, Laura Gonser and Carly Siegel, were right there on campus during the madness yesterday. Fortunately, they were not injured at all. Neither had been informed of the situation’s severity. According to the Times, both students had not known about the first shooting of the first two students at 7:15 yesterday morning. The majority of the shootings took place at around 9:50 AM in Norris Hall, the engineering academic building. But why were students even sent to classes after a shooting had taken place only a couple of hours prior?
Last night at the CNN press conference the college’s president, Charles Steger, was barraged with very discerning questions. Why were the students not informed immediately after the initial murders that there had been a shooting on campus? And why weren’t any precautions taken? Asking the campus community to “report anything suspicious” certainly was not a safety measure. But blame is not the answer to this problem today.
After hearing about this shrilling “historic massacre” and seeing the frightening cell phone video coverage of the graduate student, Jamal Albarghouti, running for hours last night on CNN, I just thought of all of those families who still had yet to know that their son or daughter was one of the casualties of America’s biggest mass shooting. My heart goes out to all the students and faculty and the families with lost loved ones.
The massacre is still under investigation, naturally. But for more information please check out CNN.com. Stories are constantly being updated with the latest information. Also the live broadcast of the VT convocation today will be on NBC at 2 PM and George W. Bush's short address at the ceremony can be viewed on NBC.com.
I really did not want to write about this tragedy. It worries me knowing that my small college in a small suburban town could encounter the same situation. It makes me feel uneasy and nauseous. This reality immediately yanked the feeling of security that I had right out of me, and I’m sure the same goes for thousands across the country today.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment