Sad Days at Virginia Tech

Thursday night in Greenville, N.C., the Virginia Tech Hokies played a hard fought battle in a defensive game against East Carolina. The Hokies were victorious 13-3, breaking a two game losing streak and bringing some joy to VT alumnus even in a tough win.

The game was a much needed distraction for the school and alumnus, as yesterday was once again a sad black eye on a university suffering through a horrific stretch of tragedy.

The events over 1,000 miles from Blacksburg put the school back into the spotlight it wants no part of.

None of this has to do with Michael Vick, although the school definitely got negative publicity for the actions of a famous attendee of their school (I’m making the wild assumption he did not graduate).

Most of the tragedy has little to do with renegade football players. In terms of producing bad citizens from their football team, they are nowhere near the kings of crime Tennessee, and are behind rival West Virginia.

So many bad events have taken place involving Virginia Tech students or alumnus in the last few years that it makes me want to see their teams do well just to give a community some positive feelings.

Although some joy was brought from the Virginia Tech road victory on Thursday, two events going on around campus are trumping a 10-point victory.

The first involves student Morgan Harrington, who has been missing for three weeks since attending a concert.

The second is the tragedy at Fort Hood and the 13 murders on the Army Base. Nidal Malik Hassan was a Virginia Tech graduate in 1995, and survived the shootings, and will eventually be put on a high-profile trial.

His murders also have the potential to bring very sensitive issues to the forefront. The news of the tragedy is horrific to all Americans, but knowing that he has an association with the same school that has seen so much in the last few years must feel like a stomach punch to the community.

The opening game loss in Atlanta to Alabama may have hurt Virginia Tech fans for a few moments, but that’s just a feeling of disappointment. The entire school still feels the sting of the events of April 16, 2007.

Just the fact that a student was on campus and killed 32 people has to stick with all of the people around the university for a long time.

NBC publishing the pictures of Seung-Hui Cho provided a vision to the horror so the negative feelings and thoughts would linger in the minds of the Blacksburg community.

Now knowing that two mass murderers in the last three years are students or former students of the school puts the school in a position that few can comprehend.

Why is this happening? How come tragedy is overflowing in the Virginia Tech community? There are so many questions and the only answers appear to be more sad events.

When a football team loses three games unexpectedly, it’s disappointing. When a school loses three students through murder in a year, it brings a cloud over the campus.

Many schools have students die throughout the year. The school closest to me, Arizona State, had a student commit suicide in front of a professor in a campus building in October.

A majority of these deaths are accidents or illness or self-inflicted. A murder of a student tends to be more jolting, especially if they are gruesome or apparently random. Virginia Tech had two students shot and murdered near a hangout spot in August.

Haiyan Zhu killed on campus, decapitating a woman in the Graduate Life Center. Just those two events could make a campus feel nervous and scared, not including an on-campus mass murderer and now potentially a fourth dead Tech student and an alumnus killer.

A victory in the Chick-Fil-A Bowl isn’t really going to clear up this cloud of horrible events. It might provide a few moments of cheer. Virginia Tech basketball making the NCAA tournament would allow for some excitement around campus, where students hand out brackets.

For a campus that has handed out way too many candles recently, any moment of pride is welcome. If I’m flipping around the television and see a Virginia Tech game at home, I’ll keep it on and root for a Hokie touchdown, so the fans can sing their fight song.

The Virginia Tech fight is constant and tragic and any moment where they can unify with joy is desperately needed.