A Speaker For The Dead

Tom Tillar, Vice President for Alumni Relations, stands next to the permanent April 16 memorial

Thousands gathered upon Virginia Tech's drill field today to dedicate a permanent memorial to the students lost in the tragic events of April 16. While snow flurries and a dismal rain accompanied the frigid temperatures of that spring morning, the atmosphere at the memorial's dedication was entirely different. The 93 degree heat rippled off of the dry and brittle grass while cicadas buzzed and chirped away in the trees. A sea of orange and maroon surrounded a simple white tent that looked up the hill towards the now permanent semi-circle of Hokie stones. Atop the reviewing stand a bell rang out, marking the presentation of a ceremonial stone to the family of a fallen Hokie.

Thirty-two stones. Thirty-two tolls of the bell. Thirty-two lives remembered -- and one forgotten.

When the sun set on Virginia Tech on the 16^th of April, thirty-three Hokies lay dead - Cho's thirty-two victims and Cho himself. While Hokies United placed a semi-circle of thirty-two stones upon the Virginia Tech drill field, a 33^rd was soon added for the gunman himself. Katelyn Johnson, the student who anonymously placed the 33^rd stone explained the thoughts behind her decision to the Virginian Pilot: "If we're a community, we're a community. If we're a family, we're a family. You can't pick and choose your family." While the adornments and mementos that graced the 33^rd stone were somewhat more sparse than those that festooned the markers for the other fallen members of the Tech community, they were present nonetheless. Alongside those of his fellow Hokies,Cho's stone was likewise visited and likewise decorated with the tokens and messages of a grieving student body. One such message simply read "we forgive you because we have been forgiven."

The 33^rd Stone stood throughout the spring and summer as a symbol of redemption and hope, love and compassion. Whatever his crimes,Cho was a student of Virginia Tech taken too early by violence. Whatever his wrongs, he left behind parents who loved him and who mourn his passing. Whatever tragedy he inflicted on others he was also a victim of tragedy, both physically and spiritually. The loss felt by his family and the suffering of those who knew him is no less real and no less significant for the crimes he committed, and in the wake of the April 16^th tragedy, his death was also mourned.

This is not to say that the 33^rd Stone was not a topic of some contention on Virginia Tech's campus. The stone was removed from the ad hoc memorial on at least one occasion and, though it was inevitably replaced by students determined to mark and mourn the loss of all Hokies that fell that day, even in its absence, the empty space where it rested served as memorial enough.

But the stone, and even the vacant space marking its absence have been eliminated from the permanent memorial. To many in the Tech Community the decision not to include Cho's stone in the memorial is a moral surrender - a statement that Cho's death does not deserve the recognition and mourning of the Virginia Tech community because his actions condemn him beyond the point of such sympathies. Yet as a human being, even as a killer,Cho is still worthy of mourning. Even as a murderer, he remains a former student of Virginia Tech and a casualty of the events of April 16.

Such recognition does not pardon Cho. His actions remain heinous crimes against professors, students and the academy, but choosing to embrace an explanation of Cho as evil and beyond redemption and sympathy denies his humanity and his part in the human condition. Cho was more than a killer, more than a criminal, and more than a murderer. Were he not, we could no more fault him for his actions then we could fault a wild animal for attacking and killing a human or the fabled scorpion for stinging the turtle who agreed to ferry him across a river. Unlike the Scorpion, Cho's sting was one of decision rather than instinct and choice rather than nature. The very anger and outrage that will not tolerate a 33^rd stone demands its presence, for in faulting Cho we must also recognize his capacity for choice and thus his humanity and the tragedy of his death as well. There are other "Chos " in the world and to protect ourselves and our children from others like him we must understand him. To understand him we must be both willing and able to mourn his loss as well as the thirty-two others that he killed that April morning.

Tomorrow, as classes resume at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, thirty-two stones will greet students as they dash across the Drill Field towards the first classes of the Fall Semester. Thirty-two mourned. Thirty-two memorialized. Thirty-two remembered. And one neither memorialized nor mourned, condemned in death as he believed himself to be condemned in life: at once victim and killer, tragic and tragedy.

Amid the thirty-two stones that rest upon the Virginia Tech Drill Field are the tears and sorrows of the April 16^th shootings, never to be forgotten. Within the one that is absent are the life-saving lessons of that day, quick to fade and soon to vanish like the chill snowflakes that fell one April morning.

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