By Kathryna Hoyman · Managing Editor
On March 12, a gunman rushed into an Old Dominion University classroom of ROTC students in Norfolk, Va. Many shots were fired, but the attack killed only one — Professor of Military Science Lt. Col. Brandon Shah, the instructor teaching at the time of the event.
When the gunman opened fire, Shah lunged at the shooter, saving lives by taking a majority of the shots, according to Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger. The ROTC students, two of whom were hospitalized with injuries, also rushed at and subdued the gunman, with one stabbing him with a knife. The shooter was declared dead on the scene, according to The Virginian-Pilot. The political implications of this attack remain under discussion.
Even with the hazy specifics being investigated, the occurrence of another campus shooting is relevant to us at Grove City College, especially following September’s swatting incident.
The decisive and self-denying actions of those within the Old Dominion classroom, specifically Shah, stand out in their prevention of potential mass casualties.
In the immediacy of the response, Shah’s resolute action clearly resulted not from deliberation, but rather a disposition of resolve and selflessness. The outcome of the moment of tragedy was not reduced to what happened in the classroom, but by how Shah lived. What is to be applauded is not only Shah’s heroic action, but the many, many small decisions he evidently made throughout his life that formed him into the kind of person who took bullets for his students in the instant of the threat.
Each year, when Grove City College graduates its seniors, the world they are stepping out into is unknown. We current students, like the ones who came before, are unaware of what our time at the college will need to mean for us. We are ignorant of what we will go out from this place to face.
Occurrences like this in history — when one man’s inclination to lay down his life for his students was tested and determined in the span of a moment — can deliver reminders that these four years at college do more than shape us for career fields: They shape us as people with characters and dispositions and souls.
Grove City College, more than most schools anywhere, recognizes this. In this 150th anniversary year and following this week’s inauguration of President Lingo, I hold great hope that the school’s attention will remain primarily on nurturing students into good humans who strive to live well before cultivating them into good scholars and loyal employees.
That said, most personal formation, even at this school, falls onto us students, to take advantage of opportunities to learn, to find professors who we respect and be mentored by them and to remain in prayerful consideration of growing in self-denial, so that in being faithful in little (though the little on this campus often feels quite consequential), we may grow to be faithful in much.
