Hoos for Hokies Day

I wish I could say it was because the world is experiencing miraculous detente of all kinds.

However, it is a show of support for the VaTech community in their difficult path to recover and regroup from the insanity of one poor sick guy, who got a lot of guns, and used them on campus. 

I had such a feeling of amazement when I saw the “Z” on the Rotunda steps being painted over in the Maroon-gold of Tech.  Under ordinary circumstance, if you would have asked me if that would ever happen, I would have replied “When Hell freezes over”.  It turns out that all it takes is to have one suffering person decide to share their own personal brand of hell with their entire community.  It seems obvious that this guy was probably suffering from a condition similar to autism, if not precisely mild autism, which as long as he could function was completely ignored by his family.  I know full well how parents can work hard a denial of  mental and affective disorders in their children, and they don’t have to be Korean heritage either.  Although, thinking of my friends the Chongs, and how trapped between cultures their sons often felt, it must have been very hard for everyone in that family.  However the Chong boys looked to college as the time when they would be “free”.  Perhaps Cho had the same desperate longing, but due to his inherent inability to form ordinary connections with people, he was never going to be free, or find what emotionally he was longing for.  One writer sagely observed that, although he was physically and intellectually and adult, emotionally Cho was a child - a very stunted child.