As the country mourns and attempts to comprehend the events at Virginia Tech on Monday, students at the University of Oregon are doing the same.
A candlelight vigil that was organized in just five hours through Facebook and flyers around campus drew a crowd of about 50 supporters, including three uniformed Department of Public Safety officers, to the EMU Amphitheater Tuesday night.
“Thanks for coming. I’m sure you’re all feeling what a lot of us are feeling,” said University student Stephanie Strahan.
Organizers lit 33 candles for each of the victims who died in the shootings in Blacksburg, Va., and then read the names of the known victims.
“Ryan Clark was an RA with a 4.0. He was a triple major and taught at a special needs camp for kids,” the list began. For some there were only names, for others information about their lives, their ages, their families.
Liviu Librescu, one woman read, was a 76-year-old professor who blocked the door and was shot while he allowed his students to escape. He was a Holocaust survivor.
After lighting candles for the dead, the fire was passed from one participant to the next until each crowd member had a lit candle. Strahan called for a moment of silence for those who were lost.
People lingered, slowly filing away. One woman, late for the candle lighting, asked if she could light one anyway, explaining she was from Virginia.
Although Strahan said she had hoped to fill the amphitheater, she was pleased that people came despite the dreary weather.
Her friend, Alicia Almeida agreed, saying, “It’s better than doing nothing.”
One organizer, Kat Vetrano, said she saw the news Monday and her father suggested she should do something, so she started a Facebook group. She said before the end of the day it had more than 600 members.
Strahan said she was in shock Monday.
“When you go to college and it happens in another college, you feel like you’re in the same community,” she said. This motivated her to organize the gathering.
One attendant, Woo-Kyung Kim, a junior from South Korea, said people in South Korea were “horrified at what happened. We share this grief with the Americans.”
“The actions of one man doesn’t define our culture or our people, really,” he said. Kim expressed his fear that the events would prompt hate crimes toward Asians.
“I, like every Korean, am truly sorry at what happened in Virginia,” he said. “I don’t think anyone can sleep soundly tonight.”
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