Blacksburg, Va. – The image most people have of Kevin Sterne is harrowing: a photo showing a tourniquet wrapped around his wounded leg as rescue workers rushed him out of Virginia Tech’s Norris Hall.
But on Saturday, there was a new image of the 22-year-old Eagle Scout: jubilant and full of life as he used a crutch to limp across the stage at the university’s Cassell Coliseum and grinned as he accepted his degree in electrical engineering.
The crowd rose and cheered Sterne in one of the most poignant moments of the morning commencement ceremony at the College of Engineering.
It was one of several campus ceremonies in which individual colleges and departments handed out diplomas, including posthumous degrees to those killed in the April 16 attack at a dormitory and classroom building. The College of Engineering was hit particularly hard, with 11 students and three professors killed.
Dr. Liviu Librescu, a Holocaust survivor, was remembered by engineering dean Richard Benson for his “profound courage” in blocking his classroom door so his students could escape out the windows. He was among those killed by student gunman Seung-Hui Cho, who took his own life.
At an English department ceremony, nearly all the 135 graduating students and many faculty members stood when asked if they knew someone killed or hurt in the shooting spree.
English professor Nikki Giovanni read, “We Are Virginia Tech,” a poem she penned hours after the rampage that infused a campus convocation with strength the day after the shootings. She was inspired, she said Saturday, by the desire to convey that “what we do is more important than what is done to us.”
