We are Virginia Tech: Maddy Sault

As Virginia Tech marks the 10-year commemoration of April 16, 2007, members of our community are sharing their reflections. We recognize these words may bring forth personal memories of the tragedy that affected our campus so deeply. While these posts serve as a reflection rather than a recounting, be aware that they may contain potentially distressing material. 

Today, hear from Maddy Sault, a senior at Virginia Tech.

Virginia Tech is good at mourning.

A wary sadness permeates the campus on April 16th. Freshmen huddle together in residence halls and watch the same YouTube documentary with their hearts in their throats and their stomachs like lead. That one written account gets shared on Facebook, and reading it never gets easier as the world each student constructs in their mind every year is accosted with sudden realization --

Someone who lived through this sat on this floor.

Someone who lived through this stood in line at Owens, and skipped their McBryde lectures, and probably felt the same way as me about people who talk too loud in Torg Bridge.

Someone who lived through this woke up that morning and had no idea how their life would be changed.

Every April, we are ripped from our singular perspectives and deposited in the minds of those who experienced tragedy firsthand. Similarities glare back from computer screens and we reach out to each other for comfort -- for confirmation that what we feel is not unique.

No campus is free from violence, but our close relationship with both violence and mourning has caused us to respond to it in a different way. We are forced to consider what we would do, to start the conversation about courses of action, to examine our beliefs and what we stand for. Though those beliefs may vary, there is no denying the fact that our student body is held together by a shared experience that cannot be ignored.

Our campus lay in chaos ten years ago, but we rebuilt. We’ve stood together every year since as Hokies, pushing despair away regardless of background or personal belief.

But why stop at April?

I was eleven in the spring of 2007, and had no idea of what a Hokie was, let alone that I was destined to become one. This year’s freshmen averaged at about nine. Less and less people attend now who were directly affected by the shooting, and conversations about conservation of memory arise with more and more frequency --

Will students twenty years from now feel what we feel?

What about forty? What about ninety?

Maybe not.

April brings with it a practice in consciousness, and as time passes and distances us further from the fear that gripped the University ten years ago, our challenge is to push past the dismay we automatically feel and focus on the empathy that seeps into our hearts whenever we imagine that chilly Monday morning. Consideration of the experiences of those around us, paired with cognizance of the ripple effects our choices can produce is something that has the ability to transcend past this month and into our identity as Hokies. Virginia Tech is good at mourning -- but we can be good at other things, too.

We may never have to stand up to the horrors of the world in the ways that the victims and survivors did, but through their actions we can find the courage to confront the little injustices we see every day. We may never experience terror as intense as that which rocked its way through Blacksburg ten years ago, but we can support our peers that do know fear with the same consideration that we approach the vigils that will be held in the following weeks.

This mindful application of empathy has the potential to transcend past the university setting and follow us wherever life after graduation may lead -- passed on to those we meet and slowly but surely becoming our legacy. While students twenty or forty or ninety years from now may not be able to relate as intensely to the pain our community feels this month, the memory of the 32 doesn’t have to revolve around pain. Instead, we can choose to remember them for their kind hearts and the lessons they taught us in life, and in doing so preserve the love they chose to show the world for generations to come.