A sense of terror too familiar

Yesterday, as the details of the shooting death of 32 people at Virginia Tech began to unravel, I felt the same sense of shock and fear as any human being would.

But I also felt a strange feeling of déjà vu which instantly brought me back to the week almost 10 years ago when tragedy struck my tiny bucolic college community.

It was January 1998 at St. Mary's College of Maryland when we returned from winter break to learn that a group of students were attacked and raped during a study-abroad tour of Guatemala. This was my very first day as news editor of the college paper.

Obviously this isn't entirely analogous to the murders which took place yesterday --the St. Mary's campus, thankfully, wasn't a brutal crime scene -- but there are some real similarities.

I know what it's like to wake up one morning and see your dorm on CNN. I know what it's like to see a college campus overrun by media from around the world, all while you're still worried about the girl who lives down the hall.

I can tell you in no uncertain terms that it's insanely surreal to hear a helicopter circling over your dorm as you see and hear the same helicopter on a live national television broadcast.

I also know that the days, weeks, and months that lie ahead for Virgina Tech are going to be confusing. While united now, students will turn against one another when the discussions continues over who is to blame. Some students will embrace the comfort of media coverage that allows them to talk of the dead and injured while others with loathe the media circus created and get angry at anyone who dares to allow the tragedy to be commandeered for financial gain.

Eventually the media will leave. (At St. Mary's, we had Monica Lewinsky to thank for that.) But life at Virginia Tech will continue.

I am no longer in touch with any of the St. Mary's students from the Guatemala trip but I do think about them often. I hope they have been able to put the horrible memories behind them enough to live the amazing lives they deserve. That's something the Virginia Tech survivors will struggle with for the rest of their lives.