I believe it was Hemingway who defined courage as "grace under pressure." Certainly the Virginia Tech community qualifies as extraordinarily courageous.

I've just returned from my niece's graduation from Virginia Tech, and am profoundly impressed by what I saw there. The community has come together to support one another and to show a united front to the world. They somehow, without discussing it yet knowing what everyone needed to do, decided how they would speak to the press and the world. They will neither hear nor speak of any criticism of their administration. They will share their grief, but make clear that they are not diminished by what happened.

Among the many impressive things is how they are handling their disagreements. For example, on the highly emotionally charged issue of whether to include the shooter in some of the memorials, they are conducting a discussion that is thoughtful and respectful of the other point of view. We could all learn a lot from them on how to conduct public debate.

The speeches all walked the delicate line between acknowledging and respecting the feelings of the families of the victims, and allowing the rest of the students to have the graduation they deserve--full of hope and promise for the future. But all were profoundly aware that 27 students and 5 faculty members were robbed of those hopes and promises, as was, in a way, the 28th student--the one who did the robbing.

VT handles its graduations by having one big ceremony with all the grads, and then each of the schools confer the actual degrees in smaller, separate ceremonies. With somewhere around 40,000 people--between grads and family and friends--at the big ceremony, the complete silence during the time that the families of the victims were presented with class rings was astonishing. You hear the number of people lost, but it really sinks in how many there were when you see this ceremony.

The School of Engineering, from which my niece was graduating, conferred its degrees on Saturday morning. The grads joked and showed off as grads everywhere will do (the fellow who put a light bulb on his mortarboard that lit up when he got his degree was a standout). But when the posthumous degrees were awarded--in alphabetical order with the rest of the students--and when the student in a leg brace and on crutches from his injuries received his degree, everyone was on their feet applauding them.

These young adults have been through so much. They have determined NOT to put it behind them, but to make it part of them. Everywhere in Blacksburg are banners of what Nikki Giovanni said in her speech soon after the shootings: "We are Virginia Tech. We will prevail." And the students and faculty have taken this to heart.

We can all be proud of them.