Recovery may take years, experts say
BLACKSBURG, Va. — Virginia Tech students have spent much of the week seeking solace with family, friends, or counselors; lighting candles on the ghostly quiet campus; and writing remembrances of the 32 people killed in Monday’s shooting.
Yesterday, university officials gave them a choice on how best to deal with their grief: Finish the last three weeks of the semester or stay home.
This is just the beginning of a long journey. The emotional toll on students, faculty, and staff will last for decades, predicted those who have counseled survivors of past shootings on college campuses. After victims have been identified and funerals planned, universities face a daunting task of comforting thousands of students and faculty belonging to the many diverse communities on campus. Pain lingers even after generations of students have graduated.
At the University of Iowa, the Rev. Jason Chen for years made weekly rounds among professors in the physics department, finding excuses just to chat. It was Chen’s way of keeping emotional tabs on faculty members after a physics graduate student killed five people and then shot himself.
Chen said his role as grief counselor on the 29,000-student campus in Iowa City intensifies every November during the anniversary of the 1991 shootings.
‘‘This is something that is impossible to forget,’’ said Chen, who retired two years ago. ‘‘Even after 15 years the impact is still so great that it’s hard to speak about.’’
Some, like the research scientist who tried to save a dying professor before fleeing upon the gunman’s return, responded with forthright accounts of survivor’s guilt. Others still cannot speak of the tragedy.
At Virginia Tech, where student Seung-Hui Cho shot classmates and faculty before killing himself, officials are hoping their beginning efforts to reach out to the more than 25,000 students on campus will make a difference later. They posted a letter yesterday on the university website from the provost, who encouraged students to return to class Monday, where they would discuss this week’s tragedy, but also said students may request to take off the rest of the school year.
‘‘We realize we can’t go back to normal,’’ said education professor Kerry Redican, president of the Faculty Senate. ‘‘If I were 18 or 19 years old dealing with something this devastating, I’d want to be home right now with my family.’’
Virginia Tech officials said the university initially will focus on helping students and families of the victims cope. They also alerted students, faculty, and staff of campus sites where counselors will be available.
Professors, meanwhile, have e-mailed hundreds of students, offering to talk.
‘‘Just the fact that you know people are there for you, that means the world to us because we know they’re going through a lot, too,’’ said Amanda Sparks, 19. ‘‘To be honest, I don’t know if some kids will return after a week. Students are more on alert and more paranoid than they need to be. Unless normalcy resumes, it’s not a good place to be.’’
In Iowa, the gunman, who was from China, killed three physics professors, a rival Chinese graduate student, and the university’s vice president.
After the shootings, Chen helped organize group discussions, prayers, and vigils and visited dorms to speak with students.
But Chen worried about the faculty and staff, who would remain on campus long after the students.
Virginia Tech’s university president and department heads should encourage faculty to express concern for one another, as well as students, Chen said.
‘‘Partly because professors are busy and they have developed a lifestyle in which they seem to be impenetrable, they in a way become kind of alien to themselves and their needs,’’ he said.
One Iowa administrator dared not leave the security of his office on the Nov. 1 anniversary, for fear of getting shot. During the 15-year commemoration last fall, an administrator backed out of an invitation to talk. Others have trouble forgiving and moving on.
Along with addressing the grief on campus, Iowa administrators worked to prevent backlash against Chinese students, some of whom received harassing phone calls and hid in their apartments as the campus reeled from shock and anger, Chen said.
Administrators met with the university’s 2,000 international students, many of whom were Chinese, to emphasize the violence was the act of an individual and unlikely to reoccur.
Brothers of the slain vice president wrote a letter to the gunman’s parents in China, telling them that even as they grieved for their sister, they recognized the pain the killer’s family was going through and would remember them in prayers. The letter was published in the student newspaper, which was healing for the community, Chen said.
On the Virginia Tech campus, some Asian students have said they worry about repercussions because the shooter was South Korean.
A memorial has sprung up in the center of the Drillfield: 32 stones — one for each victim — have been arranged in a semicircle around candles, flowers, and pictures.
‘‘At this point, it’s just about the people who were taken from us,’’ said Sumeet Bagai, 23, a senior.
Students are talking about permanent memorials. Norris Hall, the engineering building where 30 students and faculty were shot, has been cordoned off with police tape and closed for the rest of the year; Sparks, a sophomore, said the building should be renovated and a memorial erected nearby.
At California State University at Fullerton, where a custodian shot and killed seven people in the library in 1976, the school has dedicated a memorial grove, where a tree was planted for each of the victims. The University of Texas at Austin, where a student sniper shot and killed 14 people from a tower before police killed him in 1966, installed a plaque memorializing the event nearly 41 years later.
After the Texas shooting, the college canceled classes, held a memorial service, and offered counseling but then ‘‘pretty much just let it go,’’ recalled Neal Spelce, 71, a former radio and television reporter who broadcasted live for 90 minutes during the gun battle between the sniper and police and townspeople who fired back with hunting rifles.
Recalling the one-year anniversary of the shootings, Spelce said, ‘‘I raised questions at the time that they weren’t recognizing this horrible event and they said the campus had moved past that.’’
In contrast, Iowa held annual remembrances for a decade as a way to honor the dead and check in with the campus community because people continued to hurt, Chen said. The university set up permanent memorials, including a rock with the names of victims in front of the physics building and a walkway dedicated to the vice president.
At each anniversary, someone from the campus ministry prepared a memorial wreath of flowers and pinned a piece of paper naming the five victims as well as the gunman. Chen, at remembrances, would talk about the killer, even though some professors and administrators objected.
‘‘One would have to be willing to forgive to move on, let go, and allow the healing to take place,’’ he said.
Marcella Bombardieri reported from Blacksburg, Va.; Tracy Jan from Boston. 