Tech and Generation Vexed

April 29, 2007 12:36 am

Rampages at Columbine High School--whose victims are memorialized at a Colorado site (above)--and Virginia Tech reinforce an unsettling era for younger Americans.

Terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center are part of the images that form the world view of a generation.

Mourners gather on the Drillfield at Virginia Tech.

GRAFTON--Police storming a school. Lines of ambulances with sirens blaring. Candlelight vigils. This all seems far too familiar. Although these scenes currently belong to the horrible events at Virginia Tech, they also serve as grim replays of past school shootings at Columbine and Jonesboro--and in doing so, call to mind how much tragedy and violence this generation of young adults, my generation, has experienced since our formative years.

My peers and I have grown up in an unsafe and chaotic world, and if recent events are any indication, our situation won't be improving any time soon.

We have endured much, my generation. We practiced hiding under our desks after Columbine, attended candlelight vigils for Oklahoma City, and watched in horror as the towers fell on Sept. 11.

Now, more bloodshed, more loss, and more unanswered questions as we see some of our best and brightest lost to another heinous act of violence. Although we may not know the victims personally, we can put ourselves in their place and imagine the horrors they experienced.

We know them; they're us.

Our world gets no sunnier once out of Blacksburg, as the news isn't any better out of Iraq. Ages 20 through 22 years old rank as the top three ages of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. All totaled, more soldiers between the ages of 19 and 24 have been killed in the War on Terror than all other ages combined.

It's our friends, relatives, classmates, and teammates fighting this war and paying for its mistakes--and when they come home in flag-draped coffins, our world gets a little bit grayer.

The hits just keep on coming. Our generation has come of age in the dark shadow of global warming, avian flu, roving interstate snipers, AIDS, West Nile virus, the USS Cole bombing, anthrax, sexual predators, weapons of mass destruction, the Axis of Evil, Y2K, shark attacks, dirty bombs, letter bombs, shoe bombs, oil crises, and a litany of other threats, fears, and dangers, each more ominous and deadly than the last.

We are told that we are safe but not yet safe, that smoking guns will come as mushroom clouds, and that the worst is yet to come. Things, as they say, are not looking up.

What's more, despite numerous opportunities to invite this generation to the table and seek our help in improving our world, the powers that be have consistently said "You kids play outside; the grown-ups have to talk."

After Sept. 11, we would have done anything for our country, yet our president only asked us to go shopping and resume our regular lives. Unless we plan to join the Army ourselves, it seems that the thing we can do to support our troops in Iraq is to put a magnetic ribbon on our car.

This generation has learned the hard way that the world is a far more frightening and dangerous place than we could have ever imagined--and yet we have only received a color-coded alert system and a roll of duct tape with which to defend ourselves.

In spite of this latest tragedy, and the mounting number of tragedies that document my generation, I believe we still have the capacity for hope. We hope that some good can come from the loss of life at Virginia Tech. We hope that the families and friends of those affected will find hope and comfort in their time of need.

Most of all, we hope that, when it's our turn, we will create an America far better than the one we inherit--so that the nation we've read about in books and watched in movies will be the one we see with our eyes wide open.