Virginia Tech Convocation

[kntspl]

This was an amazing presentation written and presented from the heart. What many people may not know is that Prof. Giovanni actually taught the very disturbed massacre killer. She fought to have him removed from the classroom and tried so hard to protect the students.

Intead of talking about herself and her efforts she demonstrated her leadership by giving honor to the community of Virgina Tech as they grieved together.

[Frakanisourimoneslie]

did the negroes dieded?

[VIIROCKS]

Cho is the rebirth of a greater power. He will return from the Heavens someday. He died that day in April 07 for our sins. He was the rebirth of Jesus Christ. It was said in the New Testament that Jesus would return someday. He returned as Cho. Invested in Cho was the Holy Spirit. But, you people killed Jesus again!!! This time it wasn't the Jews, This time it was the College System who discriminated and ridiculed CHO until he had no choice but to spite his enemies with brimstone and fire!

[fullnelson9999]

do a bit of research bud...youre wrong.

[451ianDragonist]

I'm disappointed in her. You'd think as a poet, not to mention an African American woman, she'd have some measure of sympathy for a person pushed away by society. Instead she treated him like a monster, the same as everyone else. When a black woman poet thinks you're a monster, you know that you are truly alone in the world.

[451ianDragonist]

She didn't have to kick him out of class. It's impossible to know exactly what went on in Cho's mind, but he saw himself as being persecuted (and probably was to some degree) and Giovanni's actions certainly added to that. Being scared is understandable, but as a teacher, a human being, AND a female African-American poet (who ought to know something about being different) she had a responsibility to reach out to smeone who was a social pariah, instead of persecuting him.

[451ianDragonist]

Not as a black person so much as a poet, she should have had sympathy for someone different. Instead she persecuted him for his writing. What makes it even more ironic is that she's written some pretty violent stuff... look up "nigger can you kill"

[AthleticPoet82]

@451ianDragonistshe wrote that poem. in her very first book when she was 26 years old. growing up in a era of racial injustice.that poem "nigger..." bt place that poem inside of the context, & then decipher its meaning, b/c it is not as surface as the title would suggest. she hated homosexuals for most of her life, but now feels differently about that. & i will say just because you write something now doesnt mean youre gonna believe it later. minds change bt we deal with the now not the later

[451ianDragonist]

@AthleticPoet82 I'm not saying Giovanni is racist or anything. But since she's written some pretty angry stuff, what place does she have to judge Cho's writing as inappropriate?

[dreameratw1]

@451ianDragonist don't blame her you bigoted person. students are unruly in class and get kicked out all the time, in 99.9% of cases they don't go berserk. everyone is persecuted in their own way, that kid was just very unstable and was allowed to purchase guns due to too lax gun laws

and without know anything about prof giovanni, she did reach out to him several times before his rudeness interrupted the learning of those around him in class...after he did this in several classes she

[451ianDragonist]

@dreameratw1 How am I bigoted? No, Cho was clearly in the wrong to kill people. But there's something disturbing to me about Giovanni's attitude towards him, more confrontational than compassionate. In her own words, she saw him as a bully. She also said he wasn't crazy, he was just mean and evil. After reading that I can't have any respect for Giovanni or her poetry. She seemed to see Cho (a lone individual) as someone to be faced and fought rather than reached out to as a human.

[dreameratw1]

@451ianDragonist took it to the university. she wasn't trying to get him in trouble, she was just trying to get him removed from her class because he was truly disruptive...persecute and remove from class and very different in meaning...and how can you possibly expect teachers who deal with 800+ students a semester to reach out to every student about their every problem? teachers are expected to teach period

his parents and friends and family etc should have reached out to him, that ass

[verrywellhung]

nikki giovani CAUSED the virginia tech shootings. You know it. She had the poor guy taken out of class and she said she would quit if he wasn't expelled. He was not nice and cheery, but she was wrong for ruining his schooling. That bitch should be ashamed of herself. Blood is on her hands. Truth.

[lukemclean]

this is my favorite speech of all time

[EnforcedWarwick]

Nikki Giavonni sounded like a real bigoted bitch who didn't want to acknowledge for the fact that Cho had creativity but was just angry and troubled. She doesn't really understand mental illnesses at all and rather judges people for their behaviour instead of trying to reach out and understand. Where I come from I meet a lot of people (especially educators and professionals) who have a similar mindset to her. If Cho gotten the proper help than that tragedy wouldn't have happened at all.

[jtennile]

yeah must be all those peoples fault that died. He was just misunderstood. poor little murderer. I mean he had no culpability at all, right, as you said its some other persons fault. Yeah..Im thinking maybe someone forgot to take their happy pills.

[hokie4heisman]

Nikki Giovanni personally told those who needed to know that Cho was sick and needed help. The system failed everyone. She recommended that he get counseling and he wasn't forced to get the help he so clearly needed. As someone who was there when this happened, who has been in these classrooms and cried at this ceremony I'm deeply offended by your comments. Nikki Giovanni was a beacon of light in a time of utter and complete darkness. Your comments are ignorant and inappropriate. God bless VT.

[kntspl]

@hokie4heisman

First, I'm so sorry for your pain and the loss you must feel.

As a teacher myself one of my most important responsibilities is to keep my classrooom safe both physically and emotionally. From all I read she did all that she could to do the right and professional thing. Most remarkable is her dedication to your school as she focused on others and not on herself. She could have been bitter but she does not appear to be in anyway. She has my respect!

[VirginiaTechFan200]

Yeh OK seunghuich0. Stupid pussy stop typing little bitch. Oh Please respond to what I said to you so I can hear you cry even more.

[seunghuich0]

sad because 31 of yourstudents got owned by me i faked my death im still alive. and yea your teams suck ass.

[SeptemberChild65]

you are sick! please go get your nasty self help

[SeptemberChild65]

oh my god! get over your ignorant ass.

[joshieelol]

I lol'd.

[hunterroutten123]

LETS GO HOKIIIIIEEEESSSS

[EnigmaHood]

This dumb bitch also has a tatoo that says "Thug life" which she admits is to honor Tupac Shakur. The same Tupac that shot two police officers, raped and sexually assaulted a woman, assaulted a former employee, bought and sold drugs, and other shit.

"We are virginia tech" indeed. Lol.

[SeptemberChild65]

ok. and your point???? she feels bad for everyone. She is a LIBERAL!!!! someone who gives a damn about people! And she is NOT a dumb bitch but of course you are the type she feels sorry for because of your attitude. If she does have a tattoo of TUPAC, sheesh. Sad. Otherwise....fuck the mindless assholes in the ATL who think VA Tech sucks. You only wish you had a diploma from THIS school.

[EnigmaHood]

You better look up what hypocrisy means.

[bigeeezy]

bravo bravo

[voodoou20two]

great speech...passionate

[jsherlock95]

Great speech

[Zippengurl]

this was a much needed speech.

and for people calling it stupid.

think about the people whom this speech touched. tell the virginia tech students this was a stupid speech.

grow a heart.

hokie for life :)

[swimrgirl8885]

"through our blood and tears, through all this sadness, we are the hokies, we will prevail, we will prevail, we will prevail, we will prevail, we ARE virgina tech"

loveee herrr!

[Jerseysson27]

We are Hokies, we are one, we are hokies until the setting sun, we are hokies, full of pride, we stand as one and side by side.

Christopher

[SeptemberChild65]

what a great community! Thanks for the post. I love VT HOKIES!

[swimrgirl8885]

so inspiring i love her!

[mfpbradley]

Why is the USA so afraid to amend the constitution with regards to gun laws? bottom line, guns should be banned! they become a greater catalyst to violence rather than an act of self defense.

The government US political system also has blood on their hands. Follow Europe's example.

Michael, Ireland

[orangegreen50]

Sad Story vs. Sad story when VT meets LSU... Somehow i don't think that the self proclaimed "America's team" is gonna pull this one out.

[dchokie11]

the cheer at the end is exactly what they needed.

[greendayfreek9]

god bless Virginia Tech. and all the students there. i cant even imagine how sad that must have benn. stay strong.

[lmhc86]

yea umm...wasn't she the one that threw Cho out of her class because she felt intimidated/ frightened by him?? Instead of helping him and being a mentor (her fucking job), she just threw him out of her class! How is that in any way right? I have never heard of crap like that!!!

[lovemycherrie]

actually no that wasnt her, that was a totally different professor. givoanni teaches freshman and sophmore english.

[lmhc86]

O ok. Oops. after I had posted the comment, I read somewhere else that it was a totally different person.

Thanks :)

[tookfounie]

Wrong. Lucinda Roy worked with Cho one-on-one after Nikki Giavonni kicked him out of her class. So yes, Giavonni was the poet who kicked him out of her poetry class.

[y1y1z]

you have a point...in her interview on t.v she was like "i threw him out because i cant have a kid in my class i cant control" the fukk is that? thats how she teaches?

anyway...sh1t is brutal..stop saying people deserved it we all know cho was at straight jacket status

[EnforcedWarwick]

I can understand what you mean. After all she even stated that she was going to resign if she had to continue working with him. She wrote a letter to Lucinda Roy insisting that she removed Cho from her classroom because is she didn't do that she would definitely leave the university. She didn't want to handle the stress and didn't want to take the time to understand as to why Cho was the way he was, she didn't want to see that he too was quite an intelligent young man but has been misunderstood.

[kph86]

They deserve all of it! shut up Giovanni

[greendayfreek9]

they didnt deservre this!!! how could u say this.

[al3x0102]

that sucks dude sorry...my brother wasn't shot but he was 3 stories down from the shooting

[SeppLainer]

It's true where I come from 30, 20, 10 years ago the Police and civilians alike, would stop the shooter on the spot, or die trying. Now with EVERY shooting SWAT teams sit outside and wait for the aggressor to KILL EVERYONE then HIMSELF! SWAT teams are armed with SELECTIVE FIRE MP5s, M4A1s, M16s, and various pistols, yet an ENTIRE SWAT team of at least 10 people stand around while 1 or 2 nutjobs kill everyone? Something is ifshy about shootings in the last 10 years

[KokSquad]

no... our cops just suck

[y1y1z]

this is what i was saying when this first happened...the marines would have stormed that sh1t real quick fast like..i remember on that day they had an isreali spec op coordinator on and he said that they train to run in on the first shot heard...police are cowards

[ittakes5ive13]

the shooter chained the doors shut...the police couldnt get in

[tookfounie]

Why are they applauding her? She could have taken that opportunity to apologize to Cho for giving up on him...but she chose to address some abstract "hokie strength and pride" that will somehow erase the fact that she was too incompetent to face the situation with Cho BEFORE he decided that writing wasn't going to be his chief form of expression anymore.

[Breaux9779]

people like this obviously didnt go to VT. Idiot.

[EnforcedWarwick]

This woman is nothing more than a judgemental two timing bitch. I am amazed that she is even a lecturer at all. It is unfortunate though how many students with psychiatric disabilities often get judged by those who do not understand what it is like to be in their shoes. In fact she was the one that contributed to his provocation, she is definitely lucky that she didn't end up dead like the others. She needs further educating on how to deal with students with mental illnesses, she is to blame.

[beckjl02]

I think you're an idiot. As a teacher, if you see a student as being a possible threat to everyone, you ask to remove them for the safety of the other students. Mass murderers are not "problems," they ARE mentally unstable. Are you going to put a serial rapist in a room full of women and ignorantly assume nothing will happen just because you let him know you are trying to "understand" him? Giovanni was named as the one who first alerted VT he was sick, trying prevent just such a tragedy.

[mpolo79]

With professors like this, no wonder Cho went nuts...

[EnforcedWarwick]

Yeah I totally agree, but unfortunately though many people don't do jobs such as teaching counselling or whatever jobs that involves dealing with people because really most of the time those people just see it as a job and that they are happy about the paychecks they take home at the end of the week. It was obvious that she automatically had her views on him the minute she first saw him and really she rather have removed "the problem" than try to address it. It was definitely her fault as well.

[mpolo79]

She forgot to mention the millions of europeans we saved from nazi oppresion and extermination, and resaved from communist oppresion, the millions of koreans we spilled blood and treasure to save from the hellhole that is north korea, the fact we single handedly saved the mexican economy from collapse in the mid 1980s and the brutal civil war that would have ensued, etc, etc,...

[mpolo79]

Way to go Nikki. Manipulate this tragedy into your soapbox to smother a national audience with your personal political views. Wasn't this supposed to be about the victims and their families?

[Makaveli56]

I guess she will choose her words more kindly when she destroys another student emotionally.

[yeppyea]

giovanni's poem: Can you kill a honkie Can you piss on a blond head Can you cut it off Can you kill Cho's poem: I hate him Must kill dick must kill dick Dick must die Hmm, any resemblence here? I would say this probably is a coincidence, but the fact of the matter is that Giovanni refers to whites as honkies and asians as slant eye bastards, and cho? He doesnt make a single racist remark...

[Jeff8853]

nicely done. the connection should not be ignored, nor should the supreme obcenity of having that filthy creature speak at the convocation. imagine-survivors and family members applauding her. sickening.

[Makaveli56]

As an author she should know that when the freedom of speech is taken away violence, often occurs. So why hookie fans applaud they should push her away.

[esquibelle]

This is courage.

Ever heard of that word?

All the politics and such.. did not matter in this moment.

All of sudden, she became a kind of OK writer.

And a great speaker.

Thanks, Nikki.

You stepped up.

[Jeff8853]

sorry esquibelle, that miserable ##@! did not step up-she stepped out and only after planting violent racist filth into Cho's twisted head.

[southerngal3344]

rib va tech victims..

[steveonkey]

Kykdaar, is the following that "special/unique style...that reach[es] the soul"? The True Import Of Present Dialogue, Black vs. Negro (For Peppe, Who Will Ultimately Judge Our Efforts) by Nikki Giovanni Nigger Can you kill Can you kill Can a nigger kill Can a nigger kill a honkie Can a nigger kill the Man Can you kill nigger Huh? nigger can you kill .....

[steveonkey]

"Waiver" is a noun. The word you want is "waver" as in "Hokey Jokey has never wavered in her consistent association with inappropriate role models, such as street thug 'artist' Tupac Shakur, the wellknown 'poet' of misogyny and violence."

[kykdaar]

I first met Nikki Giovanni in 1974 when she visited Roma University in Lesotho (an independent country - surrounded by South Africa - for you self-proclaimed brianiacs)

She has never waivered from her own special/unique style ... those quirky deliverences that reach one's soul.

For you ill-bread racists to attempt to besmirch her at this trying time of togetherness - just goes to show how ignorant so many of you are.

[Swookenswogle]

Aside from her career as a racist "poet" living off the taxpayer, make no mistake about it: She is one stupid woman!

[steveonkey]

Google Hokey Jokey, aka Nikki Giovanni, and you will find that she went to a separate but not equal black college (Fisk) in the 60s, and I mean THE 60s, from 1960 to 1968. At the easist time to get into school and complete school, she took a full 8-9 years to get her one and only academic degree. (She was expelled once.) Then she enrolled in social work school, dropped out, enrolled in an MFA program in another school and dropped out. She has no real education. Explains a lot.

[budavol]

Not that Google is an authoritative source on anything, but I tried that, out of curiosity. Results? 11,000 hits, not one of the first 2 pages full of which had ANY connection to Nikki Giovanni. I didn't look any farther. That is just nonsensical garbage, steveonkey.

You really have an inflamed ball of resentment for Giovanni, don't you, steveonkey? If you despise her, what good does it do you to spread that poison in your heart everywhere?

[decideyorownfate]

The speech is just okay. Her rythm and the camera zooming in slowly is what makes it seem "amazing". Most of what she said wasnt relevant and the part at the end with everyone clapping and chanting "lets go hokies" is just plain creepy!

[steveonkey]

It's nice to see that Dennis Rodman had another career option. Even if he sucked at basketball, he could have become an English professor, written horrible poetry for which he would have received undeserved praise, and then done the Hokey Jokey on national television. And his IQ is probably higher than that of this Hokey Jokey. Also, his hair coloring job looked better than Professor Nikki's.

[budavol]

Piss off, steveonkey, you ignorant scum. You just can't stand it that an African-American gave a speech that brought an audience to its feet. Why don't you cry yourself to sleep about it, stevedonkey?

[steveonkey]

I happen to have been on my feet at many speeches given by black Americans. I would love to see former Governor Wilder, of Virginia, or current Governor Deval Patrick, of Massachusetts, or Senator Barack Obama (who is getting my vote and my contributions for President) give a speech at this event. These American leaders, who happen to be black, are incredibly smart, educated, and have integrity. They have class. The only "class" Hokey Jokey has is the one she shares with Al Sharpton.

[budavol]

Blah-blah-blah, steveonkey. OK. You can't stand Giovanni. Message received and computed by everyone on this page ten times over. (Sorry to speak for others. If someone still doubts steveonkey's stance on Giovanni, please signify by saying "I".)

Put her out of your mind, have a stiff brandy, and go read CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES. Maybe having a laugh at academia's expense will shake you from your hobbyhorse about this particular professor.

[Swookenswogle]

You do a good thing when you point out that Giovanni is trash elevated to treasure. Be proud of it!

[steveonkey]

This Hokie performed a Hokey Jokey. I would have preferred to see her do the Hokey Pokey. This is just one very bad poet, who was one of the last in a series of people to reject Cho, by kicking him out of her class, responding to another bad poet's murderous rampage.

[budavol]

Blah-blah-blah, stevedonkey. You've posted this same garbage-spam on nearly every site with this fine woman's speech on it. You just can't stand it that Nikki Giovanni hit the right button dead on, can you? Go home and cry about it, stevedonkey.

[jonw64]

crazy bitch! shame on her!!

[fauxvision]

why do you say that?

[mwgmillard]

This woman is a saint. This is such a beautiful show of pride, mourning, and unity. RIP Va Tech victims, and quick recovery to those involved.

[chbroker14]

"We are better than we think, and not quite what we want to be." Amazing words...