Over two weeks have passed since the devastating shooting at Virginia Tech. Following the news, I was very pleased to see campuses across the nation unite in their efforts to offer condolences to Virginia Tech students and show that our thoughts and hearts are with them. But lately, as I look around I see that the incident brought more hate than unity.

Many hate the media for sensationalizing the tragedy and making it seem like a racial issue by constantly mentioning Cho Seung-Hui’s South Korean origin and referring to him by his Korean name. Others actually blame the Korean-American community for the tragedy. Many more still, after hearing about racial attacks on Korean-American students across the country, have become eager to hate ‘those fucking racist white people.’

First of all, in defense of the media, I believe that they are simply doing their job. You will probably disagree with me, but don’t tell me that you yourself have not been glued to your media channel of choice, be it the TV, the Internet or the newspaper, for the past couple of weeks. Let’s face it, people want to know who this kid is. They want to know about his family, his academic standing, his mental health history ‘ anything that will help them rationalize the tragedy. And I, personally, don’t think that the news and media had any agenda in printing that Cho was a citizen of South Korea, other than trying to be as comprehensive as possible in their portrayal of him.

Secondly, I am writing this article in defense of the Korean-American students. Although, fortunately, I haven’t heard about any incidents of discrimination going on around our campus, I know that in certain other schools Korean students have been the victims of racial slurs and inappropriate comments, such as ‘go back to your country’ or ‘what, are you going to shoot me, too?’ Come on, people, how freaking immature is that? There is no society around the world that teaches its children to kill other children, and South Korea is certainly no different. I know that South Korea apologized for his actions, but the truth is that they had no reason to do so ‘ other than the obvious political reasons. Cho Seung-Hui in no way represented the South Korean population or the Asian-American population, or any sort of anti-American Korean hate organization, and should not be construed as such. He was simply a person in need of psychological help.

Lastly, being one myself, I would like to defend us ‘fucking racist white people.’ (That first part was a joke, by the way.) I deeply resent everybody’s attitude toward ‘white people’ and Americans in general as this incredibly racist group that will be provoked to spout racist comments by the slightest irritant. I know that it is ‘cool’ to be ethnic this day and age, and I know that ‘white people,’ ‘Americans’ and ‘American culture’ are things that are often equated with bigotry, imperialism, WASP culture and other negative stereotypes, but I think that such an attitude is no better than equating students of South Korean origins with massive genocide.

What I am trying to say by writing this column is that we all need to stop hating and blaming each other, the media, etc. for the Virginia Tech massacre. There is no one person or group of people to blame when something devastating like this happens. Instead, we need to continue showing the students of Virginia Tech and the families of the 33 victims ‘ that’s right, I said 33 ‘ that we support them and that, even though sometimes there is no way of avoiding devastating incidents like the Virginia Tech tragedy, there is still hope.

‘ Polina Deryuga is a sophomore management and mathematical sciences major. She has a lot of reading to do before finals.