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Students Make Connections at a Time Of Total Disconnect
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"Dude, Jamal, you're crazy," wrote a friend.
Wrote another friend: "You are one brave guy Jamal! Glad you are safe!"
A stranger wrote in: "I don't know you at all, but I hope [you're] all right. . . . "
Jamal wasn't the only one getting online messages. Yesterday afternoon, student Trey Perkins was overwhelmed by IMs and Facebook messages when he returned to his apartment, still shaken with grief.
IMed a friend: "U okay?"
Another one: "Where are u? Where are u?"
And another: "Hey, hey, I just heard . . ."
Perkins, 20, was in his German class in Norris 207 when the gunman barged in at around 9:50 a.m. and opened fire for about a minute and half -- "some 30 shots in all," said Perkins, a sophomore from Yorktown, Va. He hit the floor and couldn't take out his cellphone. An hour later his younger brother Daniel, a senior at Tabb High School in Yorktown, heard about the shootings and text-messaged him: "Hey, what's going on," he asked. The older brother couldn't answer at the time.
"He [the shooter] knew exactly what he was doing," Perkins said. "I have no idea why he did what he decided to do. I just can't say how lucky I am to have made it."
Albarghouti, too, is unsure what the root of the tragedy was.
He just knew that the moment he heard the shots -- "bang! bang! bang!" he said -- he had to get it on his cellphone.
"How can someone do this? I can't explain. No one can explain," said Albarghouti, who's getting a master's degree in construction management. Yesterday, before the shooting started, he was on his way to meet his adviser, Anthony Songer, to work on his thesis.
The thesis is on leadership skills.
