Bereaved Students Return To Virginia Tech, A Week After The Shooting

When the bell rang for classes at Virginia Tech Monday, it wasn’t the usual sound.

An ancient bell tolled 33 times at 9:45am, one for each victim, marking the approximate time a week ago the worst school shooting in North American history began.

Thousands of the university’s students showed up grim-faced but determined to resume their lives, after the massacre that shocked the world.

Thirty-three white balloons also floated softly into a sunlit sky, in tribute to the lives lost to gunman Seung-Hui Cho’s crazed hand.

He killed two people in a dorm, then made his way to the other end of the Blacksburg, Virginia campus, where he took an additional 30 innocent lives before turning his deadly weapons on himself.

It’s been a difficult transition for those returning to the scene of the crime a week later.

“I don’t know how it’s going to feel, seeing the empty seats in the classroom, noticing the people who aren’t here anymore,” 19-year-old David Patton frets.

He was friends with two of the victims and isn’t sure if he can get over their loss. “I’m wondering where they are now, if they are in heaven, and when I’ll see them again.”

Many don’t think they’ll be able to put it all behind them.

“I thought last week as time goes by that I could forget this tragic incident,” grad student Sijung Kim adds. “But as time goes by I find I cannot forget.”

“It’s hard coming back,” agrees another. “It’s definitely different. I mean you can’t deny that, but — I just think you have to move on.”

Those were the ones who showed up.

Many others didn’t, unable to bring themselves to come back to the scene where so much horror shattered their lives.

The school has awarded posthumous degrees to the victims and advises those who can’t face a return this semester will be allowed to drop classes without a penalty or use their current grades as their final marks for the year.

But most believe not coming back would be giving the killer what he wanted. And they won’t consider it.

“I want to go back to class just to be with the other students,” avers Ryanne Floyd. “If you just left without going back to classes, you would just go home and keep thinking about it. At least here, being with other students, we can get some kind of closure.”

And others aren’t worried about their own safety or peace of mind as much as those who knew the victims directly.

“What do you say?” wonders one young student about the prospect of meeting the friend of a slain classmate.

Some of them may be English majors, but one thing seems certain – in a case like this, there are no words that could possibly say enough.