Some from NIU support Virginia Tech in person
Just two months after a tragic shooting rocked their own campus, a group of Northern Illinois University students traveled to Blacksburg, Va., to show solidarity with another grieving student body.
"The amount of support Virginia Tech students gave us in February was incredible," said Colleen Murphy, an NIU senior from Wheaton who was part of the trip. "Getting the opportunity to give back to them was this huge honor."
The group of 43 NIU students and school counselors traveled by bus to attend a number of remembrance ceremonies at Virginia Tech Wednesday.
Among the busload were a number of survivors from the Cole Hall shooting, Murphy said. Others had volunteered extensively in NIU remembrance activities.
At a dusk candlelight vigil, Murphy described a sea of orange-and-black-clad people packed into Virginia Tech's drill field.
"There were at least 10,000, maybe more," she said.
Students representing each of the 32 victims lit their candles from one that had been burning since midnight. After a moment of silence and the playing of taps, a moment of reflection was held with candles raised in the air.
As the event ended, "Let's go" was screamed at one end of the Drillfield. "Hokies" was the reply from the other end in what became a growing participatory chant that seemed to signal the resiliency of the university and the community.
"It took a long time for everyone to leave the drill field," Murphy said. Eventually, attendees quietly filed out, walking to the nearby dormitory where the April 16, 2007, shooting occurred, planting their candles in front of the building.
Smaller, reflective gatherings took place during the day.
Trees were planted in front of an honors dormitory in memory of two members of the program who were slain. Members of several grieving families as well as students took turns shoveling dirt around a white oak for Austin Cloyd and a sugar maple for Maxine Turner.
About 50 people lay down in protest of Virginia's gun laws. The protesters stretched out on the grass for three minutes, to symbolize the amount of time they say it takes to buy a gun in Virginia.
"You can tell the community is healing," Murphy said of the atmosphere on the Blacksburg campus.
"For the group of us there, it kind of helped us in our own healing process -- seeing these people, who we have this kind of unfortunate bond with ... . All of us going back to (Northern) tomorrow are in a different place now."