CONVOCATION
ADDRESS
NIKKI GIOVANNI - 17 April
2007
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.