Virginia Tech unloads a small document dump spurred by a FOIA and the terms of the June 17 settlement that sheds light on what school officials were thinking in the wake of the school massacre. The Post discovers: school brass were concerned about their image!

The Post writes:

“Within a week of the incident, one memo shows, university officials had developed a media strategy that centered on three main messages: ‘We will not be defined by this event,’ ‘Invent the future’ and ‘Embrace the Virginia Tech Family.’”

School administrators handpicked sources for the media and coached them, and graded published stories from a rating ranging from positive to negative. None of this is much of a surprise. I was there covering the tragedy. If you wanted to get beyond the press conferences and well-staged interviews, it was easy. V-Tech is a huge campus with thousands of students and faculty. There were plenty of people willing to go off message. And the Post did amazing work according to our media critic. But I don’t blame the school for trying to manage the tragedy.

Still. This guy really is naive. The silliest suggestion came from an administrator who tried to get the school to coin its own tragedy phrase:

“A two-page memo from Chris Clough, who works in the University Relations office, is dedicated to the language choices the school had to make.

‘We likely will live with the label ‘Virginia Tech massacre,’ or ‘Virginia Tech tragedy’ for years to come in the media, however, we can use our own language in our own media to help prevent the event from defining us and may gain success in influencing history,’ he wrote.

Clough offered three suggestions on how to refer to the killings. The first is the ‘West AJ/Norris tragedy’ because it ‘confines the incident to specific locations within the university and doesn’t allow it to completely define the university,’ he wrote. Then there is the ‘Holocaust Day tragedy’ because the shooting fell on the same day as the Holocaust remembrance day Yom Hashoah. Finally, he suggests, the ‘Best and Brightest tragedy.’

As you all know, the anniversary of the Virginia Tech shootings is today. We wrote about the massacre’s immediate aftermath. The Roanoke Times did great work then and continues to do so today. The paper has a blog dedicated to today’s events, both big and small. It’s worth checking out if only to realize that yes, people are still thinking about this tragedy, that there really is no “moving on” or such a thing as “closure.”

It seems that the Post—along with its gazillion other blogs—now loves event blogging (for the new Nats stadium, for the Pope’s upcoming visit). Now we get to read its Virginia Tech blog marking the one year anniversary of the school shootings. The blog is being written—or at least this entry—by Tech student Austin W.G. Morton. So what’s Morton’s relevance? He was Seung-Hui Cho’s R.A.

After reading his serious, reflective post, I hope his entry doesn’t get too lost in the Post’s massive Web site. He begins his entry with a set of startling facts:

Forty. That’s the death tally for 10 months’ worth of shootings at universities. Arguably, three more - the number of student shooters - could be added to the total; although, whether they are included depends on whom you ask.

Since the April 16 shootings at Virginia Tech, three fatal shootings occurred on various college campuses around the United States: Delaware State University, Louisiana Technical College and Northern Illinois University. The cost in human lives is equivalent to that of one person per week.

And then Morton goes on to wonder if school shootings are preventable—he doesn’t think so. (Though he does endorse one prevention measure—serious at-risk assessment by campus medical staffers). It’s a conclusion, we made last year as well with this story.

Hey, remember William Morva? The Dude-Ball-playing, barefoot, raw-meat-eating coffeeshop regular of Blacksburg? It took a jury under four hours to give him the death penalty. Can’t get enough? Check out Roanoke Times‘ online package “Homicide on the Huckleberry,” if purely for the title alone. —Jule Banville

D.C.’s hotshot personal injury lawyer Peter Grenier, retained by at least seven families of Tech victims, has to be a real threat to the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Grenier, partner at Bode & Grenier, 1150 Connecticut Ave., told the Washingtonian in ‘02, when the mag named him one of D.C.’s 75 best lawyers: “I try to take cases so obvious that even a baboon could win them.”

It’s hard to find so a modest lawyer around these parts. I mean, could a baboon get a jury to agree to an unheard-of $98 million against the D.C. police? That’s the dollar figure attached to the Grenier legend, the one awarded (later knocked down to $1.1 million) to the mother of a police informant on the Georgetown Starbucks triple homicide, killed while in police custody and making an undercover drug buy in ‘97.

So, hey, VA: You’ve been warned.

1. After reading the Washington Post story today about the 23 Virginia Tech students hospitalized for carbon monoxide poisoning, I’m beginning to wonder. Every university has its share of stupid and tragic. My alma mater—Penn State—had a school shooting, an incident where a student was killed by a falling tree branch, and a massive riot one summer. And we all know about the University of Maryland’s troubles. But, shit, Virginia Tech just can’t get a break. Is the campus cursed?
2. If you cat-sit, you are supposed to change the feline’s water and replenish its food bowl. A good sport will keep the litter box clean. I’ve done all those things for Blakey. But then the cat—which is huge, almost panther-huge—seems to want some sort of attention. So I sit on the couch and pat at the cat’s ears and head for a while. But petting a cat is kind of boring. So how long do you have to play with your friend’s cat as part of your cat-sitting duties? And do you even have to bother?
3. During halftime of the Redskins second exhibition game, Joe Theismann was featured “interviewing” a pre-injured Jason Campbell. The interview was stultifying in the usual Theismann way. The former Skins quarterback talked more than enough about himself. He also came to the interview dressed in gym shorts. And let’s just say the way the interview was shot, I kept thinking we were going to end up seeing Theismann’s balls. Thankfully, the viewers were spared such sights. Instead, we got a good look at his fucked-up leg. So my question: Why are TV producers still putting Theismann on the air?

Last week’s tragedies produced an inevitable mix of graceful and awkward moments. Nobody prepares for these kinds of things. There is no manual on how to behave, no rules of proper comportment. I left Saturday night with these last moments on my mind, some amazing, some not so.

• After NBC announced it had the Cho video and manifesto, reporters and cameramen left the press conference. Some walked into the bathroom and could be heard grumbling: “Fuck NBC.”
• At noon on Friday, a moment of silence on the Drillfield became more than a moment. By 12:07 p.m., university President Dr. Charles W. Steger looked at his watch. He then conferred with a man decked in a maroon suit. After whispering a bit, Steger took a rose from a student memorial and walked up to the memorial’s main hub of flowers, cards and candles and placed the rose among the rest.
• On Friday night, a mother sat beside her daughter’s memorial stone on the Drillfield. She sobbed. She talked to that stone as if it was her daughter. Her entourage had dwindled to one friend. There were no more grief counselors, Red Cross workers, or Salvation Army coffee cups. “I can’t bury her,” she said. A woman, who looked like a student, walked over to the mother and just sat down and listened.
• By Friday night, the Drillfield had filled up with memorials, candles, and boards covered with messages from Tech students and beyond. The candles made the field smell like a funeral home.
• On Saturday afternoon, most of the media had gone home. The media room in the alumni-center wing of the Inn at Virginia Tech was empty except for a half-dozen reporters filing stories. Finishing those stories was made only more difficult by the constant cell phone ring from, I believe, a Richmond Times-Dispatch reporter. His ringtone was a Spin Doctors song.
• On Saturday evening, I got to listen to the Richmond paper’s reporters discuss plans to go play beer pong. Old fat men should not be playing beer pong. Leave those Tech kids alone!

The subject line on a memo sent to CNN staffers today held all the subtlety of Cho Seung-Hui pointing a gun at the camera: “RE: Cho video and gun pictures–NO MORE USEAGE!!!”

CNN’s in the process of killing out of its system all images Cho sent to NBC, which slapped its logo on them to indicate the “exclusive.”

From the memo obtained by City Desk: “The John King package, ‘First Killing Why?’ and the Sean Callebs pkg: ‘Cho: The Early Years’ have been updated using appropriate video. All packages are being updated on a per request basis.” So don’t expect to find the shots in CNN’s Web archive.

Most news agencies agree they would have run at least some of the photos and videos if Cho sent his manifesto to them, but the backlash against NBC has gained steam since parents of victims canceled their scheduled appearances on Today the morning after NBC broke their piece of this story. CBS and Fox News have also scaled back their usage. The New York Times ran out front with the photo of Cho that puts the viewer square in the barrel of his gun. The Post went with Cho’s gunslinger stance in the print product Thursday and posted online a tamer version of it here.

What do you think? Should media outlets run Cho’s photos? Should they erase them from their archives?

About 24 hours following Monday’s shooting rampage, students started making the pilgrimage to the Inn at Virginia Tech—some to comfort families of lost loved ones, others to sit on the slope bordering the parking lot and watch Big Media do its thing. Rows and rows of satellite trucks—30 dishes tilted skyward—can be a wonderously absurd thing.

But today yesterday, Virginia Tech students started turning on the media. There is the sign in a first-floor classroom building urging the media to go home. There are the boxes of Gatorade, Powerade, and water placed on the Drillfield, in front of the student union and the performing arts building. Attached to the boxes is a sign: “Free for Hokies.” By 5 p.m., a student, a young cheery woman, passed out flyers to the media mass congregating at the hotel’s conference room. The flyers stated:

We are Hokie Nation, and we need to mourn and heal. We need each other.

The media has taken advantage of our situation and are exploiting us for their own sensationalism. We will not tolerate the abuse; we love our community far too much to stand for this any more.

We, the students of Virginia Tech, are asserting ourselves. We are taking back our campus.

All media, if they have any respect for Hokie Nation, will no longer attack our administration. They will no longer hound our students.

Leave us to heal. Leave us to ourselves. Hokie Nation needs to be UNITED.

Return our campus to us.

We are Strong. We are Virginia Tech.

They keep coming. Virginia Tech’s student population continues to slowly make its exodus home. But the Jesus People are still here, still preaching on the grounds of the Drillfield. This afternoon, it’s Christian folk rock augmented with a set of African drums. This paper’s managing editor may approve. But when I arrived they were still in full drum-circle mode unable to pick a song and stick to it. They sat cross-legged in a circle, sheet music blowing everywhere when it wasn’t tucked under their feet or an empty guitar case. And they strummed and strummed before the inevitable camera man from Sweden or Japan.

J.R. Duren, the lead strummer on a Taylor acoustic six-string, flew in from San Diego (”the good part”) on Tuesday morning. He said he was just moved to come here. “It’s not like I’m some superstar relief worker,” he says.

Duren, 29, admits that 9/11, Katrina and Columbine just didn’t hit him the way the Virginia Tech shootings have. But he’s not sure why. “That’s a mystery,” he says. “I’m a little bit on the outside….We’ve seen a lot of tired people.”

The award goes to Blacksburg’s Holiday Inn. At the hotel chain’s counter, they have a flyer listing events for the week. After the massacre on Monday, someone reprinted the flyer so that it now includes a special nod to the students. It goes like this: On Sunday, April 15, there’s a prime rib special. On Monday, April 16, the Holiday Inn’s Prayers are With You, Virginia Tech. And on Tuesday, April 17, there’s a battle of the bands happening somewhere.

The flyer either makes Holiday Inn look like it new about about the shootings beforehand or they think there’s nothing like a little battle of the bands after a shooting spree. You decide!

Yesterday, President George Bush, speaking at the Holocaust Museum, declared slain Virginia Tech Professor Liviu Librescu a hero.

Librescu, a Holocaust survivor, had used his body to barricade the door of his classroom in Norris Hall. Cho Seung-hui apparently fired off a shot and the bullet ripped through the door and stuck the professor.

While Bush was right to call Librescu a hero, his students knew him as one of the more easygoing profs. Michael DuVall, an interpreter who works with a deaf student in one of Librescu’s classes, recalled that he was known for not punishing kids who skip his class. On average, roughly half his students would show up unless it was closer to test time. “He’s a soft touch,” DuVall says. “Maybe too nice.”

This afternoon, Jason Dellinger was the only non-media type working the grounds of the Drillfield. His job: to bring Jesus back into the school. His method: a handy flyer and the polite hectoring of grieving students passing by.

Dellinger, a pastor with the Kerygma Church in Concord, N.C., drove the roughly three and a half hours because he says he was pissed about yesterday’s convocation ceremony.

“We watched the convocation and we thought it was an abomination that Jesus wasn’t mentioned. We thought kids had to know the Truth,” Dellinger explains. He then rattled off the various denominations that took part in the service.

“I think there was a Lutheran,” he adds. “Didn’t say nothing about Jesus.”

“The Muslim guy was the only one that got up and spoke like a man,” Dellinger says. “I think he mentioned Allah six times.”

Dellinger believes that the shooting could have been avoided if the school had allowed for a little more Jesus inside its walls.

By 3 p.m., Dellinger had run out of flyers.

If you haven’t noticed our home page today, last night we posted a story about the aftermath of the Virginia Tech massacre. Jason Cherkis took off for Blacksburg on Monday evening and chronicled the first night after the killings, including some heartbreaking scenes as family members wait to hear about their loved ones.

Jason will remain in Blacksburg for the time being; we hope to bring you more dispatches over the next few days.