While many college students around the country most likely spent this past Monday bogged down prepping for final exams and feverishly preparing for pending job interviews, those students at Virginia Tech had a far more daunting and emotional task to complete – get through the day of classes as for the first time in five years, the university held classes on the anniversary of what quickly became the country’s deadliest mass shooting.
The Virginia Tech massacre, a school shooting that took place on April 16, 2007 on the campus of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Va., was perhaps one of the most harrowing and disturbing events that has taken place in recent years. That day, Seung-Hui Cho, a senior English major at Virginia Tech, fired on students and faculty all over campus, killing 32 and wounding 25 in two separate attacks approximately two hours apart, before ultimately committing suicide. Cho, who prior to this shooting had been diagnosed with a severe anxiety disorder, was responsible for the second-deadliest act of mass murder at a school campus, behind the Bath School bombing of 1927, according to reports.