On Monday, April 16, 2007, an act of meaningless brutality stunned our nation: 23-year-old Cho Seung-Hui, a senior at Virginia Tech, shot and killed 32 people during the largest on-campus massacre in U.S. history.

Our thoughts, prayers and deepest sympathy go out to the families and friends of these students and faculty, to Virginia Tech and to the memories of the students themselves.

We can’t explain this random act of senseless violence. We can’t rationalize it. We don’t know why it happened. We can’t fix it in 500 words.

Less than a week later, all that has been answered-and answered partially, at that-is, “How?” Details have trickled out in narrative form since Monday-details of time and place, details of Cho’s early life, heart-wrenching details of budding lives callously cut short. All we know, all we have, is the cold fact that 33 people are gone.

What we all desperately want to know, then, is, “why?” Why did this happen, and what was the motive? Why these students? Why this young man? Why now? Why ever? Though we fear that we’ll never find a definitive answer, that we’ll never know just why this happened, we continue to search. We need an explanation to feel safe. We need it to restore our faith in the human condition. We need it to justify the loss of 32 innocent human beings, however paltry that justification may be.

Without a living culprit, it becomes tempting to assign blame anywhere it will stick. Irreparably injured observers have blamed police for their slow reaction time, University officials for not canceling classes, politicians for lax gun control laws and news media for probing and sometimes insensitive coverage. Each of these groups is partially to blame. But what we hate to admit, what terrifies us, is that ultimate fault rests with one disturbed, deceased young man. As a result, we feel disconcertingly helpless.

Our thoughts, as we’ve glimpsed victims’ photographs, have invariably fixed on the realization that these students are just like us.

No, they aren’t just like us-they are us.

Though we can’t explain, prevent or ameliorate this catastrophe, we also cannot avoid acknowledging it. We would disservice the lives and memories of Virginia Tech victims if we aimed to explain their deaths away as quickly as possible and then move on as if nothing happened. That approach might seem easier at first. It might lighten the arduous burden on our minds and hearts to secure a motive, to fix an explanation, to “continue to invent the future” (as Virginia Tech’s Web site states) and step shakily toward tomorrow.

To truly honor these young people, however, we must talk about them. We must raise the difficult questions. We must reflect on their lives. We must reflect on their fading potential. We must question their deaths. We must attempt to decipher the motives of their murderer. We will not arrive at a single, convincing “why,” but by taking time to acknowledge the loss, we will come to comprehend some version of truth through the overwhelming, apparently insurmountable, confusion we face now.

What, then, can we do? We can discuss what happened. Converse. Converse in groups. Converse in class. Don’t just hurry up and move on. Reflect. Look at pictures of those who were killed. Read about their lives. Read about their dreams. Acknowledge that they lived and breathed and moved and loved and strove for things greater than they had the chance, or time, to achieve.

We can also honor Virginia Tech by being more cognizant of our neighbors. This week, this year, this lifetime, be men and women for others. Go out of your way to be considerate. Be sensitive to others’ feelings and opinions. Instead of walking down the quad with your headphones on in your isolated, i pod-inspired world, do something. Say hello. Make eye contact. Genuinely ask somebody how they’re doing. Reach out now.

This happened. This jolted us out of our apathetic doldrums, out of our self-centered existences. It forced us to consider our communal frailty. We cannot dwell forever, that is true-but we must now recognize our communal strength. Think of these people as you move forward. We are Saint Louis University. We are Virginia Tech. We are a community. We are a nation. We are human.