Embracing a new perspective one week after Virginia Tech

Looking through my friends’ pages on Facebook for the last week hasn’t been much different than watching the nightly news: Virginia Tech memorials are everywhere. The smiling faces of my friends have been replaced with memorial ribbons, praying hands and slogans like "Today we’re all Hokies."

There is no denying that what happened last Monday, April 16, was an awful moment in U.S. history; a moment worth remembering, memorializing and learning from, but is it truly a moment with the power to "define a generation?" More importantly, are these moments of violence and devastation how we want our generation to be remembered?

Generations are defined by what they do and how they do it. Our grandparents were known as the Greatest Generation; they survived the depression and fought in World War II. Most of our parents are baby boomers, known for their rock ‘n’ roll music, psychedelic vans and anti-war rhetoric. We are members of Generation Y, sometimes called the "MTV Generation," or, in the words of one Virginia Tech student, the "9/11 Generation."

Since hearing that student interview, I have found myself obsessing over the concept of being known as Generation 9/11. It’s a loaded title, one that means perhaps a little more and a little less than one might desire. The decision to embrace such a controversial title is certainly something worth examining more closely.

We are more like our grandparents’ generation than we might think. We have bonded together in moments of chaos much like they did during WWII. Unlike our parents, who were united by the common cause of civil rights and shared discontent over the Vietnam War, we have come together out of a sense of shared pain, loss and devastation.

As a generation, we have bonded through a series of moments that have been etched into our communal memory via television and computer screens. We have connected in a way that parallels the connections renewed by Americans from shore to shore in the days and weeks following the events of September 11, 2001. So I guess in a way, that student was right, we are Generation 9/11.

The bond which we, as a generation, share was never more evident than it was this week, as hundreds of thousands of students across the country came together to honor the memory of those who died so senselessly at the hands of one of our own.

On last Monday, the first images broadcast of the massacre on television came from a student recording video from his cellular phone. Later that night, interspersed with the film of bloody students being carried out of the building and yearbook photos of Seung-Hui Cho, there were images of students on college campuses across the country. Students were already holding candlelight vigils to remember the dead, show support for the families and pray for the speedy recovery of the injured.

A cynical person might say that these small indicators of support are nothing more than a strange fad or an empty effort toward doing the "right thing." I think there is much more to it than that; I think the truth is that, in some way, we have all felt the effects of last Monday’s shootings on a personal level.

In a lot of ways, as a college student it is hard to not be affected. Those students and professors are not so different from our own friends and mentors. And the shooter, Cho, outside of all his mental problems and anger, is not that different from any number of individuals at schools both large and small across the country. In a way, we are them and they are us, multiple parts of a single whole.

On Friday, April 20, I sat in the office of the new director of the Ford Institute, Al Pheley. Before coming to Albion, Pheley worked at Virginia Tech. During his time there, he worked closely with one of the professors who died on Monday, a leader in the field of bio-engineering by the name of Kevin Granata. As we talked about the events and the life of his friend, I couldn’t help but think about the interconnected nature of our world. In one sentence, cliché as it may be, Pheley offered an explanation for the changed Facebook pictures and candlelight vigils: "Things like this just really hit home for all of us."

If only for a brief period of time, these events bring tragedy and the hundreds of thousands of individuals living parallel lives into our own, and they bring their pain with them.

It is for these same reasons that, walking across campus last Friday afternoon, I was not surprised by the number of students wearing orange and burgundy ribbons as a show of support for the students and families of not only those who died in the massacre but for those who survived.

All these things: ribbons, Facebook pictures, bracelets and candlelight vigils are part of our generation’s coping mechanisms. Generations, like I said before, are defined by what they do and how they do it. We are a generation that has used horrific moments in history to bond and connect with one another; we express that pain and show our solidarity through these rather simple showings of support.

Generation 9/11. I wasn’t sure about it at first, but I think it’s starting to grow on me. The same things which originally drove me away from it are the same things that I now find compelling: simplicity and depth of meaning.

I still don’t think you can accurately define an entire generation by one moment. But I do think that you can learn a lot from how a person, or in this case a group of people, react and cope with specific moments. In many ways, the events of Sept. 11 and the national reaction to it are symbolic of our generational character.