Institute a refuge to stunned LDS students at Virginia Tech

0 Comments | Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Apr 19, 2007 | by Stephen Speckman Deseret Morning News

Layton resident and Virginia Tech student Sunny Drysdale was one building over from Norris Hall Monday morning, but she didn't hear any of the shooting going on inside that left 30 dead.

The shooter, Tech student Cho Seung-Hui, is reported to have killed 32 people and himself. He wounded another 17.

Among the Utah students attending Virginia Tech, Drysdale is one of about 20 Utahns who are members of the LDS Church's Institute of Religion, which has a total of about 100 members. The institute, used by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is housed on campus in a small brick building about a five-minute walk from Norris Hall.

"It's been a place of refuge," institute director Coy Bowman said.

Institute officials tried to contact each member, making sure they called home to let their families know they were safe.

"Fortunately enough, none of them were caught face to face with being shot or anything of that nature," Bowman said about LDS members. "It's going to be months before they recognize that this has never happened in this country. It's a tough circumstance for everyone."

Some LDS students have come to the institute with questions for church officials of "What if," like what if they had been in the wrong place at the wrong time Monday, Bowman added.

"I think some of the kids just feel overwhelmed" by the traumatic event, Bowman said.

LDS students including Drysdale were gathered at the institute Wednesday for lunch and to talk about the shooting inside what Bowman called their "home away from home."

That home, the campus and the "quiet, serene, quaint" town of Blacksburg this week lost some of their feeling of being a place seemingly immune from the kind of violence that took place Monday, Bowman added.

Drysdale, 27, a second-year graduate student working toward a doctorate in biology, was in a conference room in McBryde Hall on Monday to hear a friend defend her sociology thesis.

Her friend finished about 10 a.m., and they made plans to meet for lunch later. Drysdale and another friend were discussing those plans in an elevator ride when a janitor said, "You haven't heard there's a shooter loose on campus?"

Drysdale reached the bottom floor and saw groups of students peeking out onto the campus quad from inside their building that was now on lockdown.

"We could see the police officers running across the field," she said. "We were just kind of in a state of shock. We didn't understand the magnitude of what was happening at that point."

Drysdale went back upstairs to call a brother and sister and to send a text message to her parents, Tom and Laurel Drysdale, who were on a fishing trip in Mexico. Phone calls soon came pouring in from her extended family, and word quickly spread that she was fine and not to worry.

But inside McBryde Hall, Drysdale's worries weren't over. Police were cruising the campus, telling everyone over loudspeakers to stay low and away from windows. The hall she was in remained locked until just after noon.

"Somebody said, 'We need to get out of here,'" Drysdale recalled.

She had to walk past Norris Hall to get to her car in a nearby parking lot, and on the way, a police officer told her to "stay as far away as you can, cut a wide loop around."

Drysdale didn't linger to steal a glimpse of the wounded or dead, whom she heard had been taken out of the building on stretchers and in body bags. She didn't want to see that, "not at all," she said.

What she did see was "ambulance after ambulance after ambulance" and police and SWAT teams everywhere. "I think that's when it started to sink in with people how serious it was," she said.

After a two-mile trip to her off-campus apartment that took 45 minutes, Drysdale and her roommate turned on the TV for news. The first report said 22 were dead.

"We both looked at each other and said, 'There's no way,'" Drysdale said. But the next channel reported the same thing. "We both were just astonished."

The Layton High School graduate, who was named after a fashion model, said the first day, Monday, seemed surreal to her. "You just don't feel like it's really happening here," she said.

She attended a candlelight vigil Tuesday night on campus that drove home the reality. "It was nice to feel that unity with everyone," Drysdale said.

As the names of the dead became public, they were no longer just numbers. They became people, students, colleagues, she said. "It gets harder."

Classes were canceled through this week, but some of her fellow biology lab students were going to meet Wednesday morning -- until they received word of "suspicious activity," which Drysdale heard was a bomb threat. Her group called off the meeting.

Drysdale said she often will work in a biology lab until 2 a.m., then get in her car and drive home by herself. "I never felt unsafe or worried about anything," she said, until now. "I think for a few days, I'll be a bit more on edge."

She and other LDS students will continue to seek refuge at the small brick building on the corner of Washington and Kent streets. There, if needed, they can meet with an LDS bishop or a counselor through LDS Family Services.