The faculty and staff of the Grado Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering are touched deeply by the outpouring of sympathy and expressions of condolences received from around the world at this difficult time. Old friends and new have extended gestures of sympathy, empathy and encouragement and all are sincerely appreciated. We stand together as an academic community to remember and prevail.

April 16, 2007 was a day of shattering, unspeakable grief. Thirty-two lives - beautiful, brilliant human beings all - were taken from us in the most brutal, shocking and senseless way imaginable. A great number were members of the College of Engineering.

My heart aches for the lives of the students lost. These bright young men and women were in the prime of life, planning for rich, fulfilling futures. They came to Virginia Tech to acquire an education; an education that would forever change their lives, - and the lives of their children, - and the lives of their brothers and sisters - and the lives of their parents - and the lives of husbands and wives.

The murdered faculty members had devoted their lives to scholarship and education. They so beautifully embodied Virginia Tech's motto of Ut Prosim - that I may serve. They too had spouses, children, and brothers and sisters and parents.

Just as these friends would have transformed the lives of generations, now there is a void that cannot be filled. It, too, will last for generations.

Virginia Tech is a noble place. It is a nobility born of our great Land Grant tradition, a nobility born of a place of learning. Young women and men - many of modest beginnings - come here to learn. We ask that they work hard - and they do.

For generations upon generations, dating to our founding in 1872, we have nurtured this process of intellectual growth, and we have sent generations upon generations out into the world to serve the Commonwealth of Virginia and the United States of America.

While our loss is huge and our grief unbearable, the nobility of this great community of scholars is undiminished. Those of us that survive, and those that will come after will continue to dedicate themselves to teaching and learning. And we will never forget the friends that we lost. As long as there is a Virginia Tech they will be remembered. They are more than friends. They are family.

We are Virginia Tech.

We are sad today, and we will be sad for quite a while. We are not moving on, we are embracing our mourning.

We are Virginia Tech.

We are strong enough to stand tall tearlessly, we are brave enough to bend to cry, and we are sad enough to know that we must laugh again.

We are Virginia Tech.

We do not understand this tragedy. We know we did nothing to deserve it, but neither does a child in Africa dying of AIDS, neither do the invisible children walking the night away to avoid being captured by the rogue army, neither does the baby elephant watching his community being devastated for ivory, neither does the Mexican child looking for fresh water, neither does the Appalachian infant killed in the middle of the night in his crib in the home his father built with his own hands being run over by a boulder because the land was destabilized. No one deserves a tragedy.

We are Virginia Tech.

The Hokie Nation embraces our own and reaches out with open heart and hands to those who offer their hearts and minds. We are strong, and brave, and innocent, and unafraid. We are better than we think and not quite what we want to be. We are alive to the imaginations and the possibilities. We will continue to invent the future through our blood and tears and through all our sadness.

We are the Hokies.

We will prevail.

We will prevail.

We will prevail.

We are Virginia Tech.