A Chain of Grief With Links On Facebook

"Thirty-one individuals. 31 families. 31 sons. 31 daughters. 31 funerals to be planned," a sophomore wrote at 4:38 p.m. Monday:

Three hours later: "Has anyone heard from Reema Samaha? She was in French class in Norris 211 this morning."

At 1:45 yesterday morning, a grad student broke the news: "Professor Kevin Granata and Professor Liviu Librescu died today."

This is what grief looks like on the Internet. And students at Virginia Tech -- one of the most wired universities in the country -- are posting harried, thoughtful, poignant messages that are as pressing as the photographs of the missing that lined the "Have You Seen?" walls of Grand Central Station hours after the 9/11 attacks, just as mournful as the television cries for help from the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Except it's all on the Web.

On Facebook, the popular college directory, Virginia Tech students are creating groups and memorials for their fallen classmates. A friend of Samaha, the dark-haired, long-limbed dancer and singer from Centreville, started a Facebook group called "Bring Reema's face back in the book!" Samaha, 18, died Monday.

A portrait of loss. For this digital generation. Online.

"Everyone was contacting me, asking where's so-and-so, have you heard from this or that person?" says Katie Olson, a sophomore studying communications. The 20-year-old started the Facebook group "I'm OK at VT" Monday morning. Fifteen hours later, at 2 a.m., it had nearly 3,000 members. The group's goal was simple: Let everyone know you're okay today. Because when you die, your Facebook profile dies too. There's no one to update your blog, no one to post photos, no one to okay your "friend request." (If Facebook learns that a registered user has died, the site maintains his or her profile for 30 days, spokeswoman Brandee Barker said. But considering the enormity of the Virginia Tech tragedy, the site is considering extending that.)

About 39,000 Hokies, current students and alumni, are on Facebook, a lot considering that Virginia Tech has around 26,000 full-time students. After the deadliest shooting rampage in U.S. history -- "our college Columbine," Hokies call it -- students turned to the Web, searching for more information, reading dispatches from the Collegiate Times, their student newspaper, asking questions on discussion forums on VTTragedy.com ("How could he kill so many people? How could he move with guns without notice???") and, most of all, forming Facebook communities that, as of Tuesday night, numbered in the dozens.

For these young people who live on instant messaging, post videos on YouTube and disclose their innermost thoughts in their Facebook profiles, online is as intimate as offline. There is little distinction.

"A lot of people look at the Web as a collection of funny videos, a place to write your own op-ed columns, for the most part a place of fun. They miss the fact that the Web, fundamentally, is about connection through conversation," says David Weinberger, a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School. "Of course there's a difference between typing on a keyboard and talking face to face. In some ways, typing is a less rich experience. But nevertheless, we know that the connections that people make on the Web are often as rich and as profound as their relationships in the real world. That's what you're seeing in these Facebook groups."

Some groups are bitter, their anger directed at the gunman, 23-year-old Cho Seung Hui. A group called "Blame Cho-Seung Hui," which has 610 members, wrote: "Instead of the media playing the blame game, how about they and everybody else do the logical thing and blame the coward that actually shot these students?"

Many are respectful.

Late Monday, Elliott McGill, a student at Eastern Illinois University, started a group called "A Prayer for VT Students." It had nearly 1,600 members. "You all are in our thoughts, and prayers, and we are all so sorry for your loss God bless, and may God be with you all and help you get through this time," wrote a student from the University of Louisville at 10:37 p.m. On Tuesday afternoon, more groups started popping up, including more memorials. A group called "Remembering Ross Alameddine" -- the 20-year-old sophomore from Saugus, Mass. -- had 629 members, and one post read: "I just learned that Ross died, and I am so saddened by it." The message was from Jennie Kelly, Alameddine's academic adviser. "This is so shocking to me," she wrote.

Randy Jarrett, a 19-year-old from Hagerstown, has joined three Facebook groups so far: "Prayers for VT," "Hokies Together United" and "I'm OK at VT."

At 11:18 p.m. Monday, he wrote on "I'm OK at VT": "I don't know if this has been reported but Mahn Lee is okay, he was the one that reported his brother, Henry Lee . . . not so lucky."

At 12:19 a.m. Tuesday, he typed another posting: "Please wear Maroon, Orange or both . . . in support for Hokie unity . . . Thank You!"

Jarrett considers himself lucky. He hit the snooze button on his alarm four times Monday morning, and though he hurried to get to this computer science class at McBride Hall, which is right next to the building where shots rang out, the sophomore missed the bus.

"You know, at a time like this, everyone wants to feel connected," Jarrett says.

So he goes online, and reads the messages one by one.