I was appalled and embarrassed to read about the behavior and to see the comments made to the local media by one of the students who dressed like a Va. Tech victim. As a Penn State alumna, I have always had pride in the tolerance shown by the student body, but this behavior is truly embarrassing.

I was a freshman the morning of the HUB Lawn shootings. I heard the gunshots from my math class, and I saw the bodies lying on the HUB lawn in the rain.

I then spent the day camped out in my dorm room with my friends watching the news and waiting for the names of the victims to be released.

We mourned for the vicitms even though they were not our friends. They represented any one of us -- an innocent person walking to class in the rain.

Maybe, the students who dressed like Va. Tech victims have never been a part of such horrors, but it is immature, cold-hearted and intolerant to treat the event with such crassness. We all need to remember that it could be any of us and that it did happen at Penn State in 1996.

It is up to us to prevent such atrocities from happening again, not to make a mockery of them.

Jessica Weinberg Neiss

Class of 1999