News
Friday, May 4th, 2007 at 3:00 PM
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We have received confirmation that the copy of the petition for Governor Kaine was hand delivered
to him yesterday. Thanks to everyone who helped make this happen - especially Sandy Smith in President
Steger's office and Laura Fornash in the Virginia Tech Richmond office.
This means that all of our paper copies have reached their respective recipients! Thanks to everyone
who has helped, including everyone who signed the petition. We'd like you to know that this petition
has made a difference. We were able to chat with both President Steger and Chief Flinchum last Friday,
and both, as well as everyone in their offices, were extremely appreciative of the petition and its response.
Friday, April 27th, 2007 at 9:30 PM
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Roughly one week after this site and the petition were published, a hard copy of the petition
and its signatures was delivered to Kim O'Rourke - President Steger's Chief of Staff and
Secretary to the Board of Visitors.
Hard copies of the petition and the nearly 18,000 comments
made by its signatories were also delivered to President Steger and Chief Flinchum.
We had to delay shipping a hard copy to Governor Kaine's office. However, we do plan on
getting it to his office early next week.
A credits page was just added in appreciation to everyone who
helped spread the word about this website.
Thursday, April 26th, 2007 at 10:30 PM
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37,371 signatures and 17,743 comments were downloaded and are being printed for Governor Kaine,
the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors, President Steger, and Chief Flinchum. (Many thanks to
Terrence at the Kinkos at the Barracks Road shopping center in Charlottesville for his help!)
We are now accepting signatures again. While the new signatures won't be included in the paper
copies, we do want to allow visitors to continue to voice their support for President Steger
and Chief Flinchum.
Wednesday, April 25th, 2007 at 9:15 AM
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After lengthy discussions amongst ourselves, we have decided to close the petition down at 4:16 PM on Thursday,
26 April 2007. For a few hours after the "shutdown" time, we will stop accepting online signatures so we can prepare
the paper copies. Afterwards we will allow new visitors to sign the petition, although they won't be included on the paper
copy. We want to allow people to continue to voice their support for Dr. Steger and Chief Flinchum.
We are tentatively planning on delivering a hard copy of the petition to the Board of Visitors, as well as hard copies
with comments to Steger & Flinchum, on Friday afternoon. A hard copy will also be shipped to the Governor's office
on Friday afternoon, so Governor Kaine's office should receive it on Monday.
Once again, we want thank everyone for their support. Thank you to everyone who distributed links to this site, including
whoever submitted this digg.com article.
Not even in our wildest dreams did we think we'd have over 32,000 signatures.
Tuesday, April 24th, 2007 at 3:20 PM
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There was a minor error in our press release. The second paragraph should have
ended with: "By 11:59 PM EDT on Friday, April 19th, 15,000 people signed the petition."
In other news, we now have over 30,000 signatures!
Monday, April 23rd, 2007 at 7:51 PM
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WeSupportVT.com has officially issued our first press release.
We, the organizers, have to this point attempted to remain nameless, however this has proven near impossible. We do want to stress that the real owners of WeSupportVT.com are the 27,000 plus signatories who have signed.
We continue to be overwhelmed by the response to the petition. We cannot possibly give enough thanks to the Virginia Tech community and friends worldwide for the astonishing support.
As of this writing, the plan is to close the site to signatures on Thursday, April 26th, 2007 at a time still to be determined.
Sunday, April 22nd, 2007 at 4:00 PM
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Even though the flow of signatures has slowed down a bit since Friday, we expect
to reach 20,000 signatures quite soon. At the time of this writing, there are
over 19,600.
We wanted to take a moment to thank everyone who has forwarded this site to
friends and family via email, and everyone who has posted a link on their websites.
The list of websites include
OpieAndAnthony.com,
SouthSideMessenger.com,
and the countless number of Facebook.com
groups.
We were also linked to by an article in the Roanoke Times titled
"Hokies stand behind Steger",
by Greg Esposito. (One minor correction to the article - the paragraph
referencing our site should read:
Johnson and some Tech alumni started a Web site -- wesupportvt.com -- ...)
Thanks again to everyone who has signed the petition and spread the word!
Sunday, April 22nd, 2007 at 12:45 PM
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We have noticed a few comments that appear not to agree with the spirit of the petition, and we have received a request to remove one such comment. We believe these very few questionable comments were the work of folks who attempted humor and failed.
We have wrestled with the decision of whether or not to censor these
questionable comments. Each time we have discussed it amongst ourselves,
we come to the conclusion that we shouldn't do anything (except for censor
out phone numbers).
Why? There are a few reasons.
1) If we censor the comments, then we are setting a precedent. We just don't
have the time or resources to go through all of the comments.
2) These people did take the time to sign the petition. Whether or not
their comments reflect it, they affirmed their support for Steger &
Flinchum.
3) The great thing about this country is our right to voice our opinions
without being persecuted by the government. It is that right that allowed
us to create this site. We feel it would be un-American to censor
comments that we feel are crass and/or objectionable.
Yes, there are a few insensitive comments by our signatories. If you come
across one that upsets you, just move on to the next one. And then the
next one. And then the next one. There are more than enough sincere
words of support to make up for the very few questionable comments.
You may consider those few comments to be a sad commentary on our times,
but we consider the thousands of comments with heartfelt words of support
a reflection of the warmth and kindness of the human spirit.
Saturday, April 21st, 2007 at 11:02 PM
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In response to some questions we have received about the identities of the individuals involved with WeSupportVT.com, let the following words try to explain. We have not listed the names of the individuals involved because we do not want to take away from who really owns WeSupportVT.com... The 18,000+ signatories.
I can tell you that it was put together by two VT alumni and one future Hokie. We are legit and we will follow through as promised. The signatures will be delivered to the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors and the Governor of Virginia.
We could never have imagined this overpowering result and we hope that it keeps rising.
Thank you all for your unbelievable support and your understandable concern.
Friday, April 20th, 2007 at 6:10 PM
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We are totally humbled and impressed with the amount of support this site has received. At the time of this post,
there are over 12,000 signatures. We added a random comment to the view page, and
hopefully we'll have full comment browsing available soon.
Friday, April 20th, 2007 at 2:05 PM
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Quick update: We just added a "view" page. You can keep track of the number of online signatures
here.
Friday, April 20th, 2007 at 1:35 PM
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Our drop-down menu of US states was missing the District of Columbia. That has been corrected. We are sorry
for the oversight.
This thing has grown into something big faster than we could have imagined. As of 1:35 PM, there are over
6600 online signatures.
Friday, April 20th, 2007 at 9:40 AM
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Wow! The response in the last 12 hours has been amazing. At the time of this news post, there are over
2300 online signatures. We wanted to take a minute and remind you that we promise to follow through on this
petition and forward the signatures to the Board of Visitors and the Governor's Office. Also, we hope to have
a page that allows visitors to view the comments by Sunday evening. There are heartfelt words of support
that we would like share with the world.
Thank you all for your support!
Thursday, April 19th, 2007 at 10:20 PM
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This petition has been posted in response to the harsh criticism President Steger and Chief Flinchum have
received from members of the media following the tragedy at Virginia Tech on April 16. We believe that
criticism was inappropiate and unjustified. We ask every Hokie who agrees with us to sign this petition.
In the coming weeks, we will submit the petition and signatures to the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors
and to Governor Kaine. Bookmark this page for updates.
In the next few days, we will be adding a page that will allow visitors to view comments made by
those who sign this petition.
If you wish to contact the organizers, feel free to email us at contact at wesupportvt dot com.
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