OSU students to send symbols of peace to Virginia Tech

Thursday, April 19, 2007

A person with blonde hair wearing a headband and a gray shirt holds a pink toy airplane while another person in a gray sweatshirt with blue and yellow "K W" letters helps support it. Wooden shelves with books and a television are in the background. — SGA members Alex Shadid and Danielle Toussaint work on cranes, a global sign of peace, to send to the campus of Virginia Tech.

Oklahoma State University students are working to make and send paper cranes to the Virginia Tech campus. The paper crane is considered a sign of peace around the world. The OSU Student Government Association is organizing the gesture.

“OSU students want to send our sympathies to the Virginia Tech family following this week's tragic event,” said OSU Student Government Association President Claire Carter. “The magnitude of the Virginia Tech loss is unimaginable, and as fellow students, we want them to know they are in our thoughts and prayers.”

OSU’s SGA is also asking other schools to join in this effort so that thousands of cranes can be placed across the Virginia Tech campus.

“The cranes will be a reminder to their campus that students from across the country are thinking of them and praying for them,” Carter said.

People can support the effort in many different ways by e-mailing, printing, folding, and distributing instructions. The cranes can also be sent or dropped off at the SGA office at 040 Student Union, Stillwater, OK 74078.

The paper crane, an age-old Oriental symbol of good fortune and longevity, achieved added significance as a symbol of peace throughout the world because of the story of Sadako Sasaki, a 12-year-old Japanese girl who has leukemia, remembered the Japanese legend that anyone folding a thousand paper cranes is granted a wish set out to do just that from her hospital bed.

Hiroshima, the site of the World War II atomic bombing, eventually built a peace memorial with a figure of Sadako holding a large golden crane above her head with outstretched hands. Every year, children from Japan and other countries send thousands of folded paper cranes to Hiroshima as a prayer for worldwide peace.