[BtownJay]

Va. Tech students outraged over photos of costume mocking shooting victims
From NBC12 News
It’s been eight months since the shootings on the Virginia Tech campus and many students are still trying to adjust. However, some at the Blacksburg school are now expressing outrage over controversial pictures posted on the Internet.

The pictures show two Pennsylvania State University students at a Halloween party dressed up like victims of the April shootings. The students are wearing grey Virginia Tech hooded sweatshirts that are riddled with bullet holes and makeup simulating blood.

After these and similar pictures appeared on the popular social networking web site, Facebook, many students expressed outrage.

The student who posted the photos said he and his friend did it for shock value. He says they didn’t take and post the photos to be funny, but rather that it was “our thing.”

“We are notorious and infamous in the state college,” the student - who’s name is being withheld - said in a phone interview, “so we have to do things that push the envelope just for shock value."

Since the pictures first appeared on Facebook, a protest group has appeared on the site. Named “People Against This Costume,” the group contains many Virginia Tech students who are sounding off on the pictures - even threatening the Penn State students who posted them.

"This is a group of college students who now think it's trendy to be upset about their friends being killed,” said the anonymous student who posted the pictures. “I don't know what they teach people at Tech, but at Penn State we don't learn to threaten people with murder to teach them that murdering is wrong.”

The Penn State student also defended the pictures, saying that everyone was making “a big stink” about Virginia Tech, which saw “32 deaths out of the 26,000 that happen in America every day.”

After the April shootings, Penn State was vocal in its display of support for Virginia Tech. The university passed out t-shirts displaying the logos of both schools before a football game.

Penn State officials have released a statement condemning the pictures.

"We are appalled that these individuals would display this level of insensitivity, indifference, and lack of common decency and sense by dressing up in this manner,” the statement reads in part. “These two people do not represent 90,000 Penn State students - they represent themselves."

The student who posted the photos said the outfit was just a Halloween costume and that he doesn't owe anybody an apology.

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Edit - I know this is an old story, but its new to me because i just read it. KMA if you saw it before.