Neither Necessary Nor Helpful But Something I Felt Like Writing

I am sitting at Deet's Place. Deet's Place is Virginia Tech's on-campus coffee shop. In front of me is a co-ed whose thighs are protruding through her too short shorts. Behind me are two girls trying really hard to be good college students. Beside me are two guys trying to get laid. Deet's Place is a whole lot like the Eagle's Nest at my alma mater Bridgewater College. I suspect it is a whole lot like every college in America.

It is October 16th. It has been a year and a half since a crazy adolescent passed Deet's Place on his way to kill 32 unexpecting Hokies. It has been five years since I arrived on this campus. I want to say something has changed. I want to say Virginia Tech is a better place or at least a safer place. But either one would be lies. Besides construction zones and the rare building completion, this place hasn't changed much in five years.

Maybe things are not supposed to change. I never believed that "the only constant is change." Places and people change but at the end of the day, most of life stays the same. I get up. I eat. I breath. I love. I hate. I long. I sleep. Same old shit, different day.

When I saw the video of the crazy adolescent, all I could think about was what if I had made the effort to talk to him. What if I sat down with him in Deet's Place or the D2 cafeteria? What if someone became his friend instead of his enemy? Most of this was foolish. But "We Are Virginia Tech." "We are all Hokies today." I vowed to make a change. Life was too precious to be worrying about co-ed's thighs. Life was too precious to be so introverted that crazy people were able to slip through the cracks. I have felt some of the loneliness that crazy kid must have felt. It hurts. It does not justify what he did. But it hurts. We cannot deny pain.

I remember the press conferences. I remember that the University President (who is and was more of a politician than an educator) refused to say: "Let us grieve. We will review our policies. We will learn from this. But this is not about blame. It is about recovery. It is about grief. It is about making life changes for the better. Let us grieve." He did a great public relations job. Applications were up. Virginia Tech capitalized on the nation's attention. But the university did not change. Except the new dorms and research buildings being built.

Doors to most buildings are now difficult to chain shut. There are other ways to block doors. There are boards telling people what to do during an emergency. These serve as constant reminders of the evil of that day. There are electronic updatable boards telling people if there is an emergency. There are automatic Emails and text messages. I do not know what good these will do in case of a a real emergency. I guess they might help after the fact, but I do not see their prevention value.

I remember going into Deet's place a few weeks after the shootings. All I could think about was that you would need state troopers at every door. And it still wouldn't be enough. That was the moment when I got over the shootings. We have to live. We have to be. I have given up trying to explain unexplainable things.

I gained 20 pounds in the three months after the shootings. I have lost 110 pounds in the fifteen months since. It was just something I did. The doctor told me I was going to eventually die. So I lost weight. I vowed to make a change.

But I am still a lonely introvert sitting at Deet's Place commenting on crazy adolescent males trying to score. I still do no have the courage to sit down with the guy who looks lonely, the guy or the girl who looks like the world has left a gaping wound upon their heart.

At a conference in Orlando, a fellow graduate student from Siberia asked if anything had changed at Tech. I was taken back by the question and gave a quick and unthoughtful response.

Now I would answer: "No. Was anything supposed to?"