Institute a refuge to stunned LDS students at Virginia Tech

Layton resident and Virginia Tech student Sunny Drysdale was one building over from Norris Hall Monday morning, but she didn't hear any of the shooting going on inside that left 30 dead.

The shooter, Tech student Cho Seung-Hui, is reported to have killed 32 people and himself. He wounded another 17.

Among the Utah students attending Virginia Tech, Drysdale is one of about 20 Utahns who are members of the LDS Church's Institute of Religion, which has a total of about 100 members. The institute, used by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is housed on campus in a small brick building about a five-minute walk from Norris Hall.

"It's been a place of refuge," institute director Coy Bowman said.

Institute officials tried to contact each member, making sure they called home to let their families know they were safe.

"Fortunately enough, none of them were caught face to face with being shot or anything of that nature," Bowman said about LDS members. "It's going to be months before they recognize that this has never happened in this country. It's a tough circumstance for everyone."

Some LDS students have come to the institute with questions for church officials of "What if," like what if they had been in the wrong place at the wrong time Monday, Bowman added.

"I think some of the kids just feel overwhelmed" by the traumatic event, Bowman said.

LDS students including Drysdale were gathered at the institute Wednesday for lunch and to talk about the shooting inside what Bowman called their "home away from home."

That home, the campus and the "quiet, serene, quaint" town of Blacksburg this week lost some of their feeling of being a place seemingly immune from the kind of violence that took place Monday, Bowman added.

Drysdale, 27, a second-year graduate student working toward a doctorate in biology, was in a conference room in McBryde Hall on Monday to hear a friend defend her sociology thesis.

Her friend finished about 10 a.m., and they made plans to meet for lunch later. Drysdale and another friend were discussing those plans in an elevator ride when a janitor said, "You haven't heard there's a shooter loose on campus?"

Drysdale reached the bottom floor and saw groups of students peeking out onto the campus quad from inside their building that was now on lockdown.

"We could see the police officers running across the field," she said. "We were just kind of in a state of shock. We didn't understand the magnitude of what was happening at that point."