'We'd like everyone to be a Hokie'
Bath grad, now senior at Virginia Tech, describes 4-16-07
By ROB PRICE THE COURIER-ADVOCATE

BLACKSBURG - Michael Carisetti, a 2003 graduate of Haverling High School, was crossing the Virginia Tech Drill Field Monday morning when he saw members of a SWAT team moving into Norris Hall, a stone classroom building that faces the huge oval in the center of the VT campus.

Carisetti, a senior with a major in civil engineering, already had received an email reporting two shootings earlier that morning in the freshman dormitory West Ambler Johnston Hall.

Now, seeing SWAT teams and police in action, he had a simple reaction. "That's when we began moving away," he said Tuesday evening.

He spent much of the rest of the day in his off-campus home, watching as the news unfolded: two students dead in their dormitory; 31 killed in Norris, including a professor with whom he had studied the previous year and a student he knew personally.

Carisetti also got together with friends, joined several prayer groups, then volunteered with two campus service organizations to begin planning Tuesday night's candlelight vigil on the Drill Field. He told the Courier he expected the event to draw up to 50,000 people on a campus that is home to 26,000 students.

Investigators say the massacre - the worst in U.S. history - was the work of a senior English major, a South Korean student named Cho Seung-Hui, who eventually took his own life in a Norris Hall classroom.

University officials have been criticized for not alerting the campus sooner - the shootings in Norris Hall occurred two hours after the initial gunfire in West Ambler Johnston. Carisetti, however, defended the administration. "There's no way to prepare for something like this," he said. "They did a good job from my point of view."

The Bath native plans to graduate next month, then move to Washington, D.C., where he has been hired by a construction management company. In the meantime, he said, "I'd like everyone to know their thoughts and prayers are appreciated. We'd like everybody to be a Hokie" - the nickname that describes any Virginia Tech athlete and fan of VT sports. "Now we want to get back to the campus we've known and loved."

Carisetti's mother, Betsy Carisetti of Bath, says she has been in regular contact with her son since she learned of the shootings Monday morning. She has no plans to visit him, however, b e f o r e g r a d u a t i o n ceremonies.

"They're in the process of healing," she told The Courier. "It's horrific, though. The kids are going to try to make sense of it, and there is no sense."