to my Hokie friends

well the Hokies are experiencing a feeling that Penn Staters know well: the defeat of their team. Cheer up, Gobblers, you're still the ACC champs. I think, however, that you've been grossly unfair to your football team, with the assistance of the media. The entire Hokie Nation suffered a horrible tragedy, and almost from the start you all expected this small group of young men to rebuild the morale of the entire body of Hokie fans, worldwide, and then carry it on, victory after victory, into one long memorial season. Now every mention of the Tech team, every interview with a coach or player, and every article on every game hearkens back to the shootings, and pins hope on the team's success as the engine of healing. That's a lot of pressure for a bunch of guys who are working through their feelings and memories, trying to make it through classes, and handling all the regular pressures of college life and life in general, just like everyone else. Here's what should have happened: all you Hokie fans should have recognized that the greatest monument to Hokie healing and resilience is the simple fact that these players continue to take the field. Even if they lost every single game, the fact that they keep playing, that the students keep attending classes and the faculty and staff keep working: that's the healing, that's the memorial to the victims: that the Hokie Bird didn't sit trembling behind a locked door, he stood up and went out to face the light of day, and struggle through his failures as well as revel in his successes, to live and play and eat and fight and cry and laugh as the victims of this shooting intended to do, because they weren't sainted martyrs, they were just college kids, and neither the team nor the students should be expected to live up to some ideal or carry on some glorious crusade in the memory of slayed heroes: they should just be college kids. In the long run, it won't really matter that this particular team lost this bowl game. What will matter, over the years, is that these players took the field with dignity and spirit, and that is what should personify V-Tech, what should be its calling card to the world, that along with the quality of its education, the history of excellence, the diversity and vitality of its students. I'm not saying that you Hokies or anyone else should forget the shootings: I'm saying that every future act ever committed by any Hokie anywhere should not have to be tied back somehow to this tragedy. I'm saying that in the future when the media or the gawkers or the misguided start in on the lurid details, the Hokie Nation should hold its head up and say: yes, but we aren't a university of victims, and our successes and glories aren't defined by these shootings. We were a great school before, and we always will be, and nothing can ever change that.

and I promise some humor for the next post.