Virginia Tech Survivors Reunion

UPDATE 4/13

Thank you to everyone who has donated, shared, tweeted, and sent kind words. The anniversary weekend is here, so this campaign is no longer accepting donations. If you are interested in supporting survivors of school violence, please consider donating to the Koshka Foundation for Safe Schools. The homepage for the Koshka Foundation is http://koshkafoundation.org/.
                                                                         - Lisa Hamp
                                                                   www.lisahamp.com

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I am raising funds for my Virginia Tech classmates and myself to attend the events of the ten year anniversary of the tragic shooting that took place on April 16, 2007.

The anniversary events will take place April 14 – 16, 2017 in Blacksburg, Virginia. The funding would go towards travel and hotel costs to make our reunion possible.

When I found out that Virginia Tech was paying for the hotel stay for physically injured survivors to attend the ten year anniversary events this upcoming April in Blacksburg, I wrote a letter to the university asking them to fund the hotel stay for myself and the other physically uninjured survivors of the VT Shooting. Unfortunately, VT won't fund our hotel stay for the weekend. I don't understand why and it really upsets me.

My classmates and I were in one of the five classrooms that were attacked on April 16, 2007. There were eleven survivors in my classroom (room 205).  We were sitting in class when the gunman tried to enter our classroom. We built a barricade with desks and chairs to keep the shooter from entering our classroom through his multiple attempts.  He shot at the door and tried to kick it down while we laid on the floor inside our classroom pushing against it.

We haven’t seen each other since that week.  Here is a picture of us a few days after shooting. This was the only time we have gotten together since the shooting.

I am interested in attending the ten year anniversary and reuniting with my classmates. I’ve reached out to my classmates and 7 of them are interested in attending the upcoming anniversary events.

I’ve calculated the costs as follows:

$3350 – 2 nights hotel stay for 8 rooms at the Virginia Tech Inn
$2000 – travel cost (an average of $250 for travel per person)
$5350 – total cost for room 205 survivors

If I raise over $5350, I would spend the additional funds on hotel and travel costs for other uninjured survivors from other classrooms to attend the ten year anniversary events. To my knowledge, there were 9 uninjured survivors from the other attacked rooms (rooms 204, 206, and 207). The hotel and travel cost for an additional 9 uninjured survivors would be $6020 (using the same assumptions above), for a total cost of $11,370.

Thank you in advance for your donation!