I'm sitting in Torgerson Hall as I write this. I think it's possible I'm the only living soul in this building right now. I've never seen it so quiet at this time of night. It's Thursday morning, the first time I've been in the lab in over a week, and until yesterday I didn't know whether to say something on the site. This is a movie site, meant to advertise the cinematic output of myself and my collaborators, and I do not want to trivialize what has happened. The decision was made when I checked other sites on Monday, or watched otherwise unrelated TV. I saw an article on chud.com (my favorite movie news site) mentioning those horrible things happening at Virginia Tech. Tonight, Jon Stewart mentioned the awful things happening on a campus here in America, and Ali Allawi said the words Virginia Tech. Everyone using a tone usually reserved for atrocities in parts of the world I do not occupy, but they were saying Virginia Tech. That is where I live and work. Every flick that appears on this site was made at Virginia Tech, by Tech alumni. There are people who now only know this place in the context of Massacre, and here I am, watching footage of gunshots and bedlam at the Virginia Tech campus... on a television set on Virginia Tech's campus. I am simultaneously next door to and completely distanced from what the news constantly reminds me is the worst mass-murder in U.S. history.

Monday was a long sustained shock, but it was Tuesday when the details starting pouring in; identities and profiles, names and stories. The shooter's note citing rich kids and "deceitful charlatans." We're all human, I know that I've walked across this campus feeling rage and misanthropy. The final tragic irony of these horrifying days are right there in the descriptions of the victims... students who lived like refutes to laziness and complacency, kids who worked their asses off to get the most out of life. Some of them people who had to overcome some odds. Immigrants to the U.S., the valedictorian from a tiny high school class in a small town, and a man who survived the Holocaust only to wind up sacrificing himself so some of his students might have a fighting chance. Their eulogies describe strong, substantial people, each and every one outweighing the desperate little man whose only significance was achieved by killing them. Now that I've seen his posturing, posing and awkward faux-doomsayer rhetoric on every channel, he has proven, without a doubt, that of the 33 people who died here on Monday he was the weakest human being among them. His declaration that "you made me do this" is the ultimate impotent cop-out, and that he has now acheieved notoriety in death is a complete and utter shame.

I could have come to those conclusions anywhere, but I've lived in Blacksburg for more than a decade now, first as a Virginia Tech student and now as a Virginia Tech employee. I'm not known for school spirit, I've never been a Go Team kind of guy, but I have always asserted that I am who I am, for better or worse, because of Virginia Tech. My attitude was shaped here, everything I'm proud of I did here. Besides my family, everyone I've loved in my adult life I met, one way or another, at Virginia Tech. Some of them are people I've met this year, some of them are twenty years old, some as young as nineteen and eighteen who are now redefined by the experience of this week. I'm writing this because I love so many people here at Tech, not in a shallow I love you guys attempt at solidarity. There are people here who I will remember for the rest of my life with warmth and affection, and earlier this week people just like them were killed, senselessly and horribly. A lot of people are in pain this week, some recovering from physical wounds and so many more in mourning. They should never have been, it is all so unjust, and I wish I didn't feel so powerless to help.

I'm going to leave this page up for the rest of the month, not because that's enough time to heal, but it's enough for the people who know me to know that I'm thinking about them, and that I'm here for them. For those of you who don't know me, this website belongs to someone who will forever be grateful that he wound up at Virginia Tech. As many times as I have lamented and retreated from this campus, it's who I am, and more than ever I'm proud to be here, and proud of all of my friends, all of them people who continue to follow their passions and live with more care and heart than a cynical, disaffected smartass like me deserves to have benefited from. I'll always be in debt to my friends from Tech, and this week has reminded me of that; painfully, and with striking clarity. -Jack Bennett, 4/19/07