Virginia Tech's engineering school remembered with tears its three professors and 11 students slain by a gunman last month and cheered wounded student Kevin Sterne, who limped across the stage with a crutch to receive his diploma.
Sterne, shown in a now-famous photograph from the April 16 rampage being carried by rescue workers with a tourniquet around his wounded leg, got a standing ovation and loud cheers as he grinned and accepted his degree in electrical engineering on Saturday.
It was one of several campus ceremonies in which individual colleges and departments handed out diplomas to students, including posthumous degrees to those who died on April 16 in the attacks at a dormitory and classroom building.
Dean of Engineering Richard Benson was overwhelmed, his voice breaking at times, as he spoke about those slain.
"Forgive me," Benson said quietly as he paused to collect himself while commemorating professor Kevin Granata, who was shot in a hallway as he tried to save students during the rampage in which 33 people were killed.
The widow of G.V. Loganathan accepted a teaching award in honor of her husband, a man Benson said students fondly regarded as the best professor they ever had, the kindest person they ever met and incredibly wise.
Another slain professor, Liviu Librescu, a Holocaust survivor, was remembered by the dean for his "profound courage" in blocking his classroom door so his students could escape out the windows.
He was among those killed by student gunman Seung-Hui Cho, who took his own life.
Professors, students, their families and friends wept openly as those attending at the political science department's ceremony were asked to remain silent while a bell chimed for each of nine slain students and their posthumous degrees were awarded.
At an English department ceremony, nearly all of the 135 graduating students and many faculty members stood when asked if they knew someone killed or injured in the shooting spree. The crowd of several hundred rose and applauded loudly as posthumous degrees were awarded to sophomore Ross Abdallah Alameddine and senior Ryan Clark. Clark was one of two students killed in a dormitory before the gunman moved to the classroom building.
English professor Nikki Giovanni read We are Virginia Tech, a poem she penned hours after the rampage that infused a campus convocation with strength the day after the shootings.
She was inspired, she said on Saturday, by the desire to convey that "what we do is more important than what is done to us."
The individual school ceremonies continued the theme of striking a balance between celebration and sorrow that began with commencement on Friday.
While one engineering student's mortarboard cap read "This 2 shall pass," and one bore the name of victim Jarrett Lane, another graduate's said "4 HIRE."
Students tossed around an inflatable beach ball and booed when it was confiscated.
Faces were somber as the dean commemorated the dead, but graduates broke out in cheers and tossed their mortarboards in the air as the ceremony concluded.
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