Virginia Tech, colleges, and living in fear again

[hildy89]

I rode on the Metro this morning with a mother and daughter clearly doing the college tour, noting each of the different Metro stops and their attached schools. When I was in high school, we toured colleges in batches. We did the New England tour for Boston University and Northeastern. I was not MIT or Harvard material. (My locker partner wound up at Yale, Harvard Law School and eventually teaching at Stanford. Talk about getting an inferiority complex...) While I loved Boston, I don't think I was cut out for New England weather. We did the Southern tour of my mother's alma mater Columbia College and my eventual choice University of Alabama. We did the Virginia school tour, but I was unenthusiastic about all of them, especially UVA. It felt more like a museum than a school. They didn't have a journalism program anyway. Much as I adored Williamsburg, I didn't think I was a good enough student for William & Mary. Virginia Tech was more my style with its big quad and grey stone buildings. Tech wound up being the only Virginia school I applied to. In the end, I chose Bama, wanting to get out of my comfort zone. I'd lived in Virginia all my life. I wasn't sure I could manage on my own at that point. Whether I can is still up for debate, mind you.

So colleges were very much on my mind today, when I heard the news about the shootings at Virginia Tech. I heard about it when it first started, but I came back from lunch even the security guards at the front door were talking about it. The number of victims had climbed sharply.

I found myself rereading my LJ entries from October 2002 about the DC sniper attacks. While there are obvious differences, my feelings were very similar. Is there any safe place anymore? Or are we just kidding ourselves?

Comments

[jordannamorgan]

Usually I don't have much of an emotional reaction to news stories, but the two spikes in today's death toll knocked the breath out of me each time. I don't think anybody responsible for that is still running around, but stay safe up there, all the same.

As an aside: it occurred to me repeatedly that the buildings of VA Tech have an amazing resemblance to the Xavier Institute.

[annef.livejournal.com]

In the first X movie, the Xavier Institute is Casa Loma in Toronto, but the following movies were not filmed there.

[jordannamorgan]

Royal Roads University in British Columbia stood in for Xavier's in the latter movies. Those were the buildings I was reminded of, minus the greenery.

[kyranthia.livejournal.com]

I'll never understand what causes someone to snap and murder innocent people. It's like Columbine again, though sadly, more lives were lost.

I guess we just never know what will happen tomorrow.