UWRF remembers Va. Tech.

A candlelight vigil was held Tuesday evening in remembrance of those who lost their lives at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech.) in Blacksburg, Va.

At 8 p.m. more than 80 UW-River Falls students and staff congregated around the fire pit on the south side of the University Center, expressing sympathy and sorrow for the families and friends of the victims of Monday’s shootings. Those attending the vigil were also able to sign a banner that will be sent to Virginia Tech. late Friday afternoon.

The banner was available for students and staff to sign in the University Center throughout the week.

Though Monday’s events occurred a little over 1,000 miles away, they have made a lasting impression on the lives of people at UWRF.

Junior Amanda Krier has a friend who attends Virginia Tech.

Krier said when she first heard about the shootings, she “blanked” on the fact that she knew someone who went to college there. After realizing a friend of hers attended college there, she tried to call him and sent e-mails, to which she did not receive a response until Tuesday evening.

In the e-mail Krier received from him, he said he was fine and didn’t know any of the victims. Krier said he was too devastated to respond immediately and had been mourning since the shootings.

As a college student, Krier was among the many students across the country who were surprised at the events that took place on the Virginia Tech. campus.

“I’m just shocked,” Krier said. “I can’t believe something like that would happen. It’s just devastating.”

Theatre Professor Gorden Hedahl said his daughter, Melissa, graduated from Virginia Tech. six years ago and lives with her husband, Jeremy Kirkendall, in Christiansburg, Va., which is less than ten miles away from Blacksburg, Va.

Kirkendall attends college at Virginia Tech. and was in class when the shootings took place.

“I got a call from Melissa on Monday morning, indicating that Jeremy had been on campus in class at the time of the shooting and was safe in a lock-down in a different building,” Hedahl said.

Hedahl said tragic events are more personal when immediate family members are involved, but realizes it affects those who aren’t directly impacted as well.

“ ... This event is disturbing to everyone, particularly to those who live and work on an open university campus,” he said. “It undermines the sense of safety and security that we have in familiar surroundings, and it thrusts us into the realization that we simply can’t know and predict what is in store for us.”

Though the incident took place in Virginia may cause alarm, Hedahl said he hopes people will not live in fear that their lives are constantly in danger.

“I hope that this incident doesn’t move us into a position of constant fear where we build increasingly thick walls of security around us,” Hedahl said. “Instead, I hope that it will help us realize that every moment is precious and that we need to live life fully.”

Speech professor Ken Stofferahn said he was an assistant professor of theatre arts at Virginia Tech. from 1985-87 and was shocked by the events that occurred Monday morning.

“The first radio reports that I heard were of a single shooting,” Stofferahn said. “Then as the day went on and the tragedy escalated, I became more shocked.”

Stofferahn said his old office at Virginia Tech. was in a building close to Norris Hall, where the second shooting occurred.

“I could see my old office window in the background of the news footage as I became glued to CNN during the day,” he said.

As information regarding the events unfolded on television news channels Monday, Stofferahn said he began trying to contact acquaintances at Virginia Tech.

“I tried to call old friends and colleagues to see if they were OK but phones were either busy or no answer,” he said. “I e-mailed friends and did find out Tuesday morning everyone I knew and their families were fine. The waiting for that news was the hardest part for me.”

Sociology Professor Rich Wallace said he was a faculty member at Virginia Tech. from 1991-95.

“Virginia Tech. is a place that my wife and I considered home, a place [that] was comfortable and fit us in a way that made us feel that we were meant to be there,” Wallace said. “To think that someone would violate the trust of others and willfully show such a disregard for life at a place where we emphasize life and growth at maturation is disturbing.”

Wallace said many of the faculty members he knew during his tenure at Virginia Tech. were still employees when Monday’s shootings occurred.

“At this point I haven’t gotten any word that the people I knew were even in the building, which I am eternally thankful for, but it is such an awful blemish on the university,” he said.

Wallace said that those who work at and attend Virginia Tech. are the ones who make the university the school it has become.

“It is their spirit, their drive and their desire that should be how the university is seen and remembered, not the behavior of a single individual,” he said.

Terry Brown, professor and dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, said she received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Virginia Tech.

“It is personally devastating to me to see photos of police carrying wounded students out of buildings where I had classes as an undergraduate,” Brown said. “ ... I struggle now to shut out the horrifying images from [Monday] with memories of the beautiful Blue Ridge hills where the campus is nestled, tubing after class down the New River in spring and studying the poems of Coleridge under a tree along the Drill Field.”