Students Light Beacons of Hope

At the end of this horrific week, I have more hope for this country than I thought possible.

In the darkest hour, during the deadliest shooting in modern U.S. history, bright lights flickered, ignited by the children who grew up in the wake of Columbine and 9/11. They're called Generation Y, or the Millennium Generation, but after watching them in action, I'm inclined to call them the generation of hope.

The news of Monday's killing spree at Virginia Tech first came as a series of news bulletins in my e-mail. Quickly, the numbers climbed. I turned on CNN, hoping, praying, that the news was not as bad as it seemed. It didn't take long to learn it was even worse.

Most of us cannot make any sense of a troubled young man arming himself with two guns and enough malice and firepower to blow away 32 innocent people. How did Seung-Hui Cho get to that unspeakable place of hatred where he could look into the eyes of so many frightened, unarmed people and fire, again and again?

But the response of so many of the students -- during the onslaught and in the days after -- has been balm for a grieving nation's wounds.

Graduate student Jamal Albarghouti dove to the ground when he heard the shots, but pulled out his cell phone and recorded the awful sounds of gunfire. His was the first eyewitness account I heard, and I stared as he held a CNN microphone and calmly, ever-so-politely, answered a barrage of questions from Wolf Blitzer.

He loved Blacksburg, Va., Albarghouti said, and everyone there was now "so sad, so stunned."

"I'm from the West Bank," Albarghouti said. "You can imagine I've been in cities when problems did happen … I never thought such a thing would happen in front of me, in Blacksburg."

Senior Zach Petkewicz said he was "scared out of my mind" when Cho opened fire in his classroom. At first, he hid behind a lectern. When Cho stepped out, Petkewicz told himself, "You've got to do something." He and two other students barricaded the door and held fast after Cho returned and fired into the door.

Petkewicz, wearing a gray hooded VT sweat shirt, spoke in a measured voice to CNN until the reporter asked, "What are you saying when people call you a hero?"

That's when he broke down.

"Just glad I could be here," he said softly.

Twenty-year-old Clay Violand was also in a classroom where Cho opened fire. As Cho stepped out to reload, Violand cautioned everyone to stay quiet and play dead, including the girl next to him who had been shot in the back.

"She didn't cry the whole time," he told NPR. "I was looking at her in the eyes most of the time when we were under the desks, just, kind of, staying human."

Amie Steele, editor-in-chief of the campus newspaper, the Collegiate Times, made a split-second decision: She and her staff would work round-the-clock providing vital information through blogs, video and photos on the paper's Web site. Major news outlets from around the country linked to the paper's site.

"This was our initial reaction," she told Editor & Publisher. "We figured there would be rumors swirling around campus, so this would be the best way to know the truth."

I'm not romanticizing an entire generation. There were plenty of scared, panicked kids on that campus. Most of them are in too much shock to see how much their world has changed, yet again.

But we got a chance this week to get a good look at some of the kids who had to grow up too fast. Most of them were in elementary school when Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris shot up a high school in Colorado, and they were in middle school when the Twin Towers came crumbling down.

We knew those tragedies would change our children. What we didn't know was how. This week we got a glimpse, and when we looked into their faces, we saw something other than our own fear reflected back.

That is why I have hope.

Connie Schultz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Plain Dealer and author of two books from Random House, "Life Happens" and " … And His Lovely Wife." To find out more about Connie Schultz (cschultz@plaind.com), and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, please visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
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