For Virginia Tech freshman Elizabeth Burgin Monday, April 16, started just as any other school week. She and roommate Kristin Julia, both 2006 graduates of Stone Bridge High School, headed off for their 8 a.m. class to take a test. When the two arrived back at their room in the O'Shaughnessy residence hall around 8:30 a.m., they went back to sleep, unaware that a shooting had occurred at nearby Ambler Johnston Hall.
"We didn't know that anything had happened until Kristin's boyfriend called and told us," Burgin said. Julia's boyfriend does not attend Virginia Tech, but had been called and informed of the situation by another friend at the school.
"We checked our e-mail and there was an e-mail from the school saying there had been a shooting," Burgin said.
AS THE SITUATION outside her dorm escalated, Burgin said she and Julia relied on the local news to keep them informed of the situation.
"The school sent e-mails, but I had already heard everything they told us from the news," Burgin said. "The e-mails just confirmed what the news had said."
Immediately after learning of the situation from the news, Burgin called her mother, Linda, who had not yet heard about the shooting.
"She got pretty upset," Burgin said. "She asked if I wanted her to come get me."
Even with the shootings, Burgin said she will not leave campus unless they close classes for a long period of time, but that some of her friends felt differently.
"A lot of the girls on my floor said they felt unsafe," she said. "A lot of them are having their parents come get them."
ON A CAMPUS that has seen it share of dangerous situations in the last eight months, from the recent bomb threats to the escape of inmate William Morva into the Town of Blacksburg at the beginning of the school year, Burgin said students were feeling Monday's tragedy even more.
"It hits home a lot more when it is places you're supposed to be safe," she said. "This was in classrooms, your dorms, places where you should feel safe."
While there is no security to monitor people going in and out of classroom and research buildings on campus, Burgin said there is security in place at all of the dorms.
"Between 10 p.m. and 10 a.m. all of the doors are locked," she said. "You have to swipe your key in order to get in."
AS MONDAY wore on, Burgin said the atmosphere across the Virginia Tech campus changed dramatically.
"It is so different now," she said. "Pretty much people have either left or are staying in their dorms. People aren't really out."
Burgin herself left her dorm room to join her sorority sisters at the Sigma Kappa houses, where they talked about the shooting and worked to get in touch with friends they had not heard from.
"There was a lot of e-mailing and a lot of IMing," Burgin said. At one point Burgin said it was difficult to make phone calls on her cell phone, so she relied on Instant Messaging with her sister at James Madison University to relay messages to her parents in Ashburn.
"Everything was so busy with everyone trying to talk to people," she said, "IM was the only thing that wouldn't get busy."
Burgin said it saddens her to think of the families who are suffering because of the shootings and the way that the incident will travel with the school in the years to come.
"The reputation of the school is going to change after this," she said.
The school scheduled convocation at Cassell Coliseum for 2 p.m., Tuesday, April 17, for students, and Burgin said everyone she talked to was planning to attend.
"We were all just talking about it," she said. "We may have gotten in touch with everyone we know, but what if one of the people killed was that person you passed in the hallway every day or that person in your class. You may not have known them well, but they were a part of your everyday life and now they won't be there."
<1b>— Erika Jacobson