Reporter's Notebook: On campus, the reality of a tragedy sets in

(The reporter recounts his experiences covering the Virginia Tech tragedy in Blacksburg, Va.)

After driving over six hours through the night to Virginia Tech and getting a few restless hours of sleep at the trusty EconoLodge, the idea of actually visiting the Tech campus left me with a mix of emotions.

The gravity of the situation still hadn't set in, and I was completely overwhelmed by the thought of speaking to actual students who were involved and hearing their stories.

But I quickly pulled myself together and, tape recorder and notebook in hand, we made our way over to campus to see the aftermath of Monday's tragic shooting.

The first thing I noticed was the eerie silence on campus, and students would point out the same thing throughout the day, describing it as a ghost town, or like 9:00 a.m. on a Sunday morning. There were people outside, but no one was saying anything.

And yet, as we soon found out, just because people weren't talking didn't mean they had nothing to say.

The first student that I spoke with was standing outside the building next to Norris Hall, where the shooting had occurred. He was a senior named Matt Box, and although he didn't appear visibly upset, he had an unusual lack of emotion in his voice.

I didn't even know how to begin, but soon his story began pouring out.

He had been in the building right beside Norris Hall and recalled the swarm of policemen frantically running around. He said the SWAT team came into his building and escorted his class outside.

Then he revealed that one of his professors had been killed, and that two of his friends were still unaccounted for.

Things suddenly became a lot more real.

Next was the memorial Convocation service, and even arriving two hours early still put me in the back of a line that stretched for at least a mile. I talked to a number of students in line about their stories.

Sophomores Jessica Gray and Alexandra Sarris were in touch with each other throughout the entire morning. Jessica was on her way to class when Alexandra called to warn her about what was going on.

They described an atmosphere of utter confusion where students had no idea what to do. Jessica was approaching Norris Hall when a policeman pointed a gun at her and told her to get inside a nearby building. Her natural instinct was to run in the opposite direction. They are grateful to be alright, but a good friend of theirs' is currently in the hospital with extensive injuries.

It's one thing to hear about these stories on the news, but actually being there, I couldn't help putting myself in the shoes of these students. I tried to imagine a cop with a gun telling me to get inside Van Pelt, or watching bodies be carried from Houston Hall from the window of my dorm room.

That's what freshman Cheryl Cordingley saw as she watched from the seventh floor of her dorm on Monday morning. She told me about how she sat with her friends for an hour and half watching what she now knows were bodies being carried out of Norris and into waiting ambulances.

For me, the sadness hit close to home when I ran into a friend from high school, Ashley, outside of the memorial convocation service. She was crying and holding onto a friend, both wearing matching sorority shirts with a piece of black tape across the Greek letters. I immediately gave her a hug and she told me that one of her sorority sisters had been one of the victims.

I could feel my stomach drop. All I could say was how sorry I was, and, as the words came out of my mouth, it tore me up because I knew that my 'sorry' wasn't going to fix anything. I felt completely at a loss, standing there as thousands of grieving students in orange and maroon passed by.

Even after this, having been on campus for a day, I still have trouble grasping the implications of the tragedy. My thoughts kept coming back to Penn. As I spoke with students who had lost people important to them, I imagined what it would be like if it had been my own hall, my own classes, my own friends. There were times throughout the day where I had to stop and simply take a deep breath, overwhelmed by the intensity of my feelings.

I was especially struck by one of the last things that freshman Whitney Perdue said to me after the candlelight vigil. She told me how she was going to spend as much time as she could with her friends now, because you never know what could happen to them.

Whitney was the last student that I spoke to before returning to Philadelphia. I hope that we will all note the strength, unity and spirit that Virginia Tech students showed in the face of such hardship, and I hope they realize that students around the world are feeling their pain.

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