Virginia Tech students remember those who died in shooting

Virginia Tech students remember those who died in shooting- as a freshman at Virginia Tech named Molly Pearl, she slept in the morning French class, 16 April 2007. And perhaps for this reason there is to celebrate on Friday night in the nation's worst massacre by a lone gunman with a white candle lit and placed one on the block of limestone of 32 - to each victim, a French teacher and 11 students of class he missed Pearl.

This ceremony has been every year since the shooting, but he had another meaning this year because of the increasing number of students graduating at the time of the massacre of students - a group calling itself reduced "4 / 16 Generation."

Thousands of separation is to prepare for the future with a sense of nostalgia, friendship, and guilt for surviving. Many wonder what this means for Virginia Tech after departure, when most of the witnesses to leave Blacksburg and alumni.

There are also people like Pearl, arrived on the academic progress after the shooting stopped, the depression, on leave from the university and life, but returned to track and the hope, joined the business in 2011.

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"The people in my class wanted to jump out the window," said Pearl, 21, is from Fairfax. go to "What I do, I will stay frozen? If I shoot my classes .. I may be killed."

Virginia Tech, the student population than 28,000, the loss of students who had been staying after his massacres and widespread. Almost a quarter of them died a month after the shootings by Seung Hui Cho, who killed 32 students and himself and 25 others wounded on the left. Two more classes in 2008 and graduated in 2009. It is expected that in 2010, 14 can be seen most students during the massacre.

Brandon Carroll, 21, of Poolesville, helped pack the apartment Mike Pohle, who died in a German language course in the auditorium of Pearl French class. Carroll, currently president of the student asks himself whether the 16th April is as important to prospective students.

"It was inevitable that this is a bit soft, and does not mean much to the community," said Carroll. "If you do not have a common bond with other classes, will gradually lose their meaning."

"Memorial Day Sunday" will follow the same schedule to memory the previous year. The classes will be canceled, and there are activities planned throughout the day to celebrate the achievements of the victims and honor their memory.

The elders said that he felt the tragic intensity reduction among young students, some of which seem to him especially during the holidays. The university has decided to continue holding classes on April 16, beginning in the year 2012, the fifth anniversary of the shootings.

"I will consider the gravity of 16 April raised slightly after passing through our class," Steiner said Kelsey, 21, a senior psychology major categories, the first year with Nicole White, who died during German class. "For here is the experience of emotion and fear, pain, sadness, everything that I do not think other classes."