I’ve never really been a rah-rah-sis-boom-bah kind of girl. I’m too negative and distrustful of elitist authority figures and cliques for that. And I can go off on a rant about how Paul Trible only cares about the college (and becoming more comparable to UVA and W&M), not the students.
With all that being said, this was a tough week for Virginia colleges. You probably know that, but you probably only know because there was a gunman on Virginia Tech’s campus, bringing back terrible memories of 2007 when so many people were killed. And it’s completely ok to remember that and be sad about it and post a tribute picture on your facebook profile for Virginia Tech. But how many people knew that a car full of people from CNU were in a serious accident this week and two freshman girls lost their lives as a result? I happened to be in Suffolk with my entire family a few days afterwards and brought it up right after they mentioned Virginia Tech, and not one of them had heard about it. The LA Times wrote an article about what happened at Virginia Tech this week. It was contained, it wasn’t as serious as people originally thought, and yes, a police officer was killed. I’m not downplaying that situation at all. It’s just upsetting that nobody cares about CNU, not even Hampton Roads outside of Newport News. Not to mention that recently JMU lost five students in a month, and no one seems to care about that either. When the girl from UVA went missing there was plenty of coverage about that.
And I know that Virginia Tech received the publicity they did this week because of April 2007. But this wasn’t like April 2007. I’m not saying we should forget about that day, but I do think that just because a school is smaller and doesn’t have as good of a football team or as much national popularity doesn’t mean we should ignore it when a tragedy happens. I’m not saying don’t reach out and show your support to Virginia Tech, I’m just saying show your support to everyone when they experience a tragedy.
This will probably hit a lot of people the wrong way. All I’m trying to say is that the families of Sierra Smith and Kimberley Brin deserve to have their daughters remembered as well.
