This country was shocked and greatly affected by the horrendous tragedy that took place at Virginia Tech, and we, as college students on a college campus, have undoubtedly been forced into moments of reflection and have asked the most morbid of questions about our own safety. Yet the fear for our own physical well-being is trumped by the effect that this tragedy has had in forcing us to assess the fragility of life. Thirty-three bright, young, innocent men and women lost their lives, causing a ballooning effect of hundreds upon hundreds of others who must go on without those they love.

It is this realization brought forth by tragedy that forces people to understand not only how precious life is, but how quickly it can be taken away. The massacre that took place in Blacksburg, Va., had many more victims than just those whose lives were lost. All of us were hurt by the events that unfolded on that morbid morning.

But in our reaction to what happened, emotionally and tangibly, we must search for those lessons that cannot be found outside a travesty of this magnitude. As Americans, April 16, 2007, will be remembered, as has been repeatedly broadcast, as the most deadly single shooting massacre that our country has ever experienced. While the number of lives lost is incomprehensible to the people who comprise this nation, it is fair to say that we are blessed to live in a land in which the levels of that day's fatalities are of the absolute highest magnitude and are, in fact, incomprehensible.

It is not like this in certain areas of the world; in fact, there are places where a maniacal homicide of 33 innocent civilians would fail to make the front page of the newspaper, if it made it at all. The obvious locale that demonstrates this the most is an area where 183 innocent people were instantly killed by four large bombs in Baghdad recently, and all over Iraq, where hundreds of people are dying every day.

Consider that on April 16 we experienced something that permanently and profoundly shocked us, and on April 18, when those four bombs went off, the Iraqi people had to go through those same feelings, having done it before and knowing they will have to do it again.

This is what we must take from the Virginia Tech massacre: a deeper understanding of how it must feel to be an Iraqi citizen who lives in a place where events like these are commonplace. While establishing a sense of empathy is a complete impossibility, perhaps the lessons we have learned can help us sympathize.

According to the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, a non-partisan group that does extensive research to count all the deaths that have been caused by warfare in Iraq, there were 1,558 Iraqis killed just in the month of April — a total that amounts to more than 50 people losing their lives every single day. Whether these figures surprise you or not, they should shock you into a sense that these aren't simply numbers, they represent human beings whose families — just like those of the Virginia Tech massacre –are destroyed by the death of loved ones.

It is my hope that, as our country is known to do, we can understand the positives that can come from disaster. After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, a sense of patriotism was restored in the United States, and although the events of that day were of monumental importance compared to what took place at Virginia Tech, the opportunity to get through this tragedy in the best way possible still exists. This massacre needs to instill upon us a deeper sense of humanity for anyone who must face the evils of the kind that Iraqis face every day and that we faced for two hours on the morning of April 16. Those two hours were a time where the people of Virginia Tech experienced something so unique to our way of life that it affected everyone in our country, monopolized the headlines and created a hailstorm of unanswerable questions. Maybe the new experience we encountered during those two hours will allow us to understand that when we read "50 Dead in Iraq," 50 isn't just a number.

Ben White ([email protected]) is a junior majoring in political science and sociology.