Current status at Virginia Tech

For my friends and colleagues on ChoralNet, some of whom have already emailed me:

 

The reports we’ve been getting all afternoon have been somewhat ambiguous and conflicting, but some things have been confirmed.  After reports of gunshots on campus earlier this afternoon the campus was locked down.  Public schools in town and perhaps in the county have also been locked down.  Reports have two people having been shot, one a police officer, both fatally, and a friend who just came off shift at the hospital confirmed that a police officer had been brought in and may have been dead.  There are no reports yet of a suspect having been found.  And CNN seems to know as much or more than any of us do!

 

Today was “Reading Day” in preparation for Final Exams that start tomorrow (Friday).  Those Friday exams have already been cancelled, but we don’t have a revised exam schedule yet.  I was supposed to give a student a makeup exam this afternoon, but we mutually put it off and I told her to hide under her bed!

 

I was safe at home, slaving over my computer as usual, when the first reports came in, as I was in April ’07 when we had our first shootings.  Thanks to the changes made after that event, campus response has been almost instantaeous, and I’ve been getting Alert Updates all afternoon both by email and by robophone (with the emails coming much faster, if anyone is interested).  Ironically, a court hearing opened today relating to whether our Administration did or did not react properly 4 years ago.  And even more ironically there was a (VERY small) rally on campus a couple of weeks ago by people who want everyone to be able to carry concealed weapons to classes–perhaps not the best campus in the world for such a rally!–while one can probably assume that the police officer reportedly shot WAS armed, for all the good it did!!!  (A fact which horrified our friend from England who is a retired Bobby when he found out that our law enforcement officers routinely went armed, although he felt better when they told him that none of them had actually ever shot anyone.)

 

Thanks for the concern.  Pray for us, and for sanity in the world. 

 

John